A new Washington Post‐ABC News poll finds that respondents favor “smaller government with fewer services” over “larger government with more services” by 58 to 38 percent. Reporter Dan Balz notes:
The poll also shows how much ground Obama has lost during his first year of trying to convince the public that more government is the answer to the country’s problems. By 58 percent to 38 percent, Americans said they prefer smaller government and fewer services to larger government with more services. Since he won the Democratic nomination in June 2008, the margin between those favoring smaller over larger government has moved in Post‐ABC polls from five points to 20 points.
I’ve noted previously that
I’ve always thought the “smaller government” question is incomplete. It offers respondents a benefit of larger government — “more services” — but it doesn’t mention that the cost of “larger government with more services” is higher taxes. The question ought to give both the cost and the benefit for each option. A few years ago a Rasmussen poll did ask the question that way. The results were that 64 percent of voters said that they prefer smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes, while only 22 percent would rather see a more active government with more services and higher taxes. A similar poll around the same time, without the information on taxes, found a margin of 59 to 26 percent. So it’s reasonable to conclude that if you remind respondents that “more services” means higher taxes, the margin by which people prefer smaller government rises by about 9 points.
In fact, Rasmussen has continued to ask just that question, and found a month ago that voters preferred “smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes” by a margin of 66 to 22 percent. That’s a larger margin for the alternative wording than I had previously estimated. I know some people are skeptical of Rasmussen’s polling. (A Republican consulting firm recently found results very similar to the Rasmussen poll.) So I invite Gallup, Harris, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other pollsters to ask this more balanced question and see what results they get.