Polling Watergate the Battle for Public Opinion

American Association for Public Opinion Research

Polling on Watergate: The Battle for Public OpinionAuthor(s): Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt LangSource: The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 4, Polls and the News Media: A Symposium(Winter, 1980), pp. 530-547Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public OpinionResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2748470 .

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Polling on Watergate: The Battle for Public Opinion

GLADYS ENGEL LANG AND KURT LANG

7 HROUGHOUT the long months of controversy over Watergate, there was constant talk in and by the press of a "nation torn apart." Both Richard Nixon, in resigning as president, and Gerald Ford, on taking office, stressed the first priority of the new administration as "healing the wounds" of a nation divided by a shattering political scandal. A month later President Ford cited the need for reconciling divisions as the main reason for his pardon of Nixon.

This theme of a nation divided by Watergate has become part of our folklore. Yet by the time Nixon, on the evening of August 8, 1974, announced his resignation effective the next day, most people-about eight of every ten Americans-approved his departure from office.' Only between one and two out of ten were unhappy with the out-

1 A special Gallup telephone poll immediately after Nixon's speech showed 79 percent of a national sample believing Nixon did the "best thing" by resigning and just 13 percent that he should have "stayed." A telephone survey (N = 337) that we conducted in heavily Republican Suffolk County, New York, the next two nights again found 79 percent believing Nixon was "right" and 11 percent that he was "not right" to resign. Roper, at the end of August, found 67 percent believing it best that Nixon had resigned, 26 percent preferring impeachment.

Abstract How do polls become part of the political process through which decisions are made and issues resolved? Case studies of the development and outcome of political controversies, like Watergate, can go a long way toward clarification of the direct and indirect impacts of the polls.

Gladys Engel Lang is Professor of Sociology and Communications at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Kurt Lang is Professor of Sociology at the same university. This paper is based on research by the authors as Fellows at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. This support is gratefully acknowledged, as well as a small grant from the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation.

Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 44:530-547 ? 1980 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/80/0044-530/$1.75



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POLLING ON WATERGATE 531

come; even this minority, while a bit disillusioned, nevertheless ac- cepted the necessity of Nixon's leaving. Few were bitter or vengeful. Seldom, indeed, had there been a greater display of national unity, except in a national emergency, than when Nixon finally stepped down. Whatever political division there had been, the public, for the most part, agreed that Nixon was guilty of obstruction of justice, of abuse of power, of deceiving and lying to the nation, and of abusing their trust.2

Nor did Ford's succession to the presidency stir the controversy it might have. Not that people were as unanimous or enthusiastic about his accession to power as the media were reporting. Ford's approval rating in the polls just after he took office-71 percent, according to Gallup-was below that of Johnson (79 percent) and Truman (87 percent) when similarly elevated from the vice presidency. The legitimacy of this changeover was open to question on several grounds. Ford was not only the first "unelected" chief executive but also Nixon's hand-picked successor (albeit confirmed by Congress) and one of his staunchest defenders during Watergate almost to the bitter end.

The Nixon presidency nevertheless ended "not with a bang but a whimper," without any serious political clashes or much visible dis- sent, without much joyful demonstration or dancing in the streets. The public response was strangely muted. Long months of apparent polarization had suddenly ended with minimal mass display of affect.

The transition would not have taken place so quietly had it not been preceded by a dramatic reversal of public opinion. Who would have dared suggest at the beginning of the second Nixon administration that a president reelected with a lopsided majority and at the peak of his popularity could be forced out of office 18 months later? Or that the highest secular office in the world would be turned over, with the nation's blessing, to a man with only limited national recognition? Richard Nixon himself believed that public opinion was the critical factor in what he called the "overriding of [his] landslide mandate" (Nixon, 1978:905f). His struggle to stay in office, especially after the firing of Archibald Cox in October 1973, when impeachment became a real possibility, was for him a "race for public support," what he called his "last campaign," only this time it was not for political office but for his "political life" (Nixon, 1978:972).

2 Our survey on Long Island showed roughly three-fourths of those interviewed judged the president guilty of obstruction of justice and abuse of power, charges on which he would have been tried by the Senate. About two-thirds judged him guilty of income tax fraud and misuse of the taxpayers' money for private purposes, charges on which the House Judiciary Committee had failed to vote articles of impeachment.



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532 LANG AND LANG

As Nixon saw it, the main danger of being impeached resided in the public's becoming conditioned to the idea that he was going to be impeached. This was good enough reason for Nixon strategists to keep a close watch on all indicators of public sentiment-letters, telegrams, telephone calls, editorials, television commentaries, press reports, and especially, on what the polls were showing.3 The president also developed a media strategy specifically and directly aimed at winning the "battle of the polls" as a means of rallying support for his firm stand against further probes. He did this while publicly downgrading the importance of polls. Resignation because a president "happened to be low in the polls," he argued in a televised question- and-answer session held on March 15, 1974, "would forever change our form of government" (Public Papers, 1976:79). Yet by late June he was despairing that despite his accomplishments abroad, "it seems almost impossible to break through in the polls" (Nixon, 1978:101if). It was his defeat in this battle for public opinion, as he saw it, that ultimately left him no alternative but to step down. We examine, first, the role of the media in this battle and, second, that of public opinion and of public opinion assessment.

The Media Role

The media, especially television, were the battlefield on which the major confrontations took place, with television itself sometimes taking an active role in the conflict. Let us briefly illustrate the crucial role of television, which simply by being available as a vehicle of transmission and by the way it chose to cover some developments helped move impeachment sentiment along.

First, television served as a means of communication between elites, making public what were essentially esoteric transactions between officials and/or the agencies they represented. All parties to the controversy were acutely aware of the presence of "bystanders," the television audience, and oriented their behavior partly toward this audience.

In no Watergate development was this media role more evident than during that extraordinary sequence of events, most of them played out on and through live television, that are remembered as the "Saturday Night Massacre." In almost all the moves, the main actors-on both sides-were consciously addressing not only one

I The section of the book on this last crisis (Nixon, 1978) contains frequent references to the Gallup and Harris Polls but no references to the Sindlinger or other private polls. Nixon also acknowledges receiving advance copies of poll releases (see, for example, p. 823).



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another but also a public whom they invited to intervene in their favor.

It all began on Friday evening, October 19, 1973-after the evening news-when Nixon, in a radio statement ordered Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald S. Cox to cease and desist from his "fishing operation" for Watergate evidence, especially the tapes. The timing of the announcement-on the first night of a three-day holiday weekend-had been shrewdly calculated. Morning dailies were on deadline and could scarcely have time to get much in the way of response; Cronkite and the other commentators would not be back before Monday evening. But Cox scheduled a press conference for the next day. On national television he declared that, Nixon not being in compliance with the law, he would continue his pursuit of evidence.

The nationwide audience to Cox's press conference included the representatives and senators, in whose hands the crucial decisions would lie, as well as the very people whose next steps depended on what Cox was about to do-U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica, Attorney General Elliot Richardson, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, the White House staff, and, most likely, the president himself.4 When the conference ended with Clark Mol- lenhoff, one of the reporters, suggesting that an outpouring of telegrams, calls, and mail might apprise the president of the public mood, the nation did more than rise to the occasion. Although it is almost impossible to arrive at an authentic count of messages, the deluge was certainly, as it was so often said to have been, unprecedented.5

Second, television news has always been better at mobilizing sentiment than at informing opinion, and this seems to have been the end result of the video coverage that weekend. What happened after the press conference is probably too well remembered to need any lengthy recounting. Richardson, directed by Nixon to fire Cox, resigned. Ruckelshaus, next in line, also resigned. The last person who

4 The "presence" of so many key figures is not conjecture. Documentation can be found in Richardson (1976), Doyle (1977), Sirica (1979), Dash (1976), Jaworski (1976), and Mezvinsky (1977) (see also Neustadt, 1976:4-5). Nixon has never publicly admitted to having viewed the press conference on television; his staff did watch but, asked if Nixon, too, was viewing, declined to say. The Memoirs, however, leave little doubt he watched Cox along with much of the nation-his reactions can be found on p. 933.

5 We have come across estimates of a half-million telegrams having been delivered to congressional offices that weekend, of a million calls and telegrams engulfing the White House. Western Union reported 30,000 messages transmitted to government offices on Sunday, October 20, and a tenfold increase-300,000 telegrams-arriving during the ten days following the "massacre." Sociologists who analyzed the response to Nixon's 1952 "Checkers" speech counted 302,000 responses-130,000 letters, 38,000 cards, and 134,000 telegrams (O'Brien and Jones, 1976).



534 LANG AND LANG

could succeed to the office of attorney general, the solicitor general, finally fired Cox.

But matters did not stop there. That Saturday night, Nixon's press secretary announced not only that Cox had been dismissed but also that the Office of Special Watergate Prosecutor had been abolished. When FBI agents occupied the offices of the Special Prosecution force and sealed off their files, Cox's staff made certain that TV cameras recorded the guards barring them from their offices (Doyle, 1977:200f). Their televised remarks, made in the heat of emotion, alarmed not only the public but also Judge Sirica and others who witnessed these developments over television, along with the general public. Sirica wrote that "it began to look as if some colonels in a Latin American country had -staged a coup. . . . As far as I was concerned, the president was breaking the law" (Sirica, 1979:167). Sirica's reaction counted far more than the opinion of just one ordi- nary viewer, but his response was not atypical.

Third, at several crucial points, television-and the print media- acted to subvert Nixon's strategy of defining the situation before the media could redefine it to his disadvantage, so as to move public response in the direction he wished it to go. One remarkable example was the media role in countering the immediate response to Nixon's April 29, 1974, televised speech releasing the edited transcripts. Part of a calculated media blitz, the speech was considered one of the potentially most effective and impressive he ever gave.6 Deliberately, no advance text was supplied to the press but, to assure the "right" coverage, Nixon's lawyer, James St. Clair, had provided an account of what the transcripts showed to guide the press in reporting on their content before the transcripts themselves were released the following day. Great reliance was also placed on the visual impression to be given by the height of the stack of volumes seen on television. Their inflated bulk was meant to convey to the public just how much had been demanded of the president and how far he had gone to accede to these demands.

Mainly, the White House counted on the fact that most people would not read the transcripts or certainly not read much of them. This is where they may have miscalculated. They certainly did not count on the interest the copies of the edited transcripts and com- mentary, made available by government and private presses within days, would stir up. The New York Times not only serialized them but

6 Reactions reported next day on the front pages of both the New York Times and the Washington Post were sometimes ecstatic, at least grudgingly admiring. See William Greider's report in the Post and that of the Times's R. W. Apple, who called the speech Nixon's "most powerful Watergate defense since the scandal broke."




rushed a paperback into print, as did the Washington Post. They became bestsellers.

But the White House also underestimated the ingenuity with which television news staffs proceeded to get the evidence out. The problem with the transcript story, so far as TV was concerned, was the lack of pictures. CBS produced a special, aired in prime time May 1. Its top reporters read the transcripts, "starring" as Dean, Nixon, and Haldeman. On May 4, after the evening news, NBC broadcast a similar 90-minute reading with professional actors in the White House roles. Thus, even those who would never have read the transcripts were exposed to their content.

Three days after the speech Gallup conducted a telephone survey for the New York Times .7 Of those who said they had watched or read about the speech, 42 percent now had a less favorable opinion of Nixon, 35 percent felt as before, and only 17 percent had developed a more favorable opinion. Nixon's attempt to persuade the people he was not involved in Watergate had been no more effective than past attempts. People, according to Gallup, were as inclined to believe Dean's version as they were Nixon's. And a plurality now believed there was enough evidence for the House to vote impeachment. Most important, the public backed the House Judiciary Committee's refusal to accept the transcripts in lieu of the tapes by a 62-24 percent margin. But the committee, in making its decision, could not have known that it had such wide backing.

The Role of Public Opinion

Broadly speaking, there were three views of the role public opinion played during the period beginning with the Cox firing and ending the following summer, when the House Judiciary Committee was pre- paring to vote on articles of impeachment.

The first view more or less echoed that taken by Nixon and his immediate entourage, who regarded public opinion, stirred up by the media and tracked by public opinion analysts, as the force that drove him from office. Many who shared this view, unlike Nixon's supporters, regarded this as "democracy at work," a favorite metaphor of the news media. It was echoed by the new president in his inaugural address. "Here," he told the nation, "the people rule." The claim by Louis Harris that "our polls on impeachment . . . had a profound effect. I know they did" (Wheeler, 1976:172) carried the same message.

A second view was less widely held but more common than the 7Conducted May 2, the polling results were published May 5.



536 LANG AND LANG

public record reveals. Some critics of the polls, like Michael Wheeler (1976) and Timothy Crouse (1976), and even some pollsters, like Peter Hart and Patrick Caddell, have argued that the polls and other assessments of public opinion exaggerated the opposition to impeachment and thereby acted as a restraining influence on Congress, whose members hesitated to support such a move until they could be certain the public would back their action. Its proponents argue that, whether by inadvertence or design, the most influential polls, especially those of Harris but also Gallup's, were slow to register the pro-impeachment groundswell during the crucial months after the Saturday Night Massacre, when the country appeared ready for impeachment. Some of the critics (e.g., Crouse, 1976) have accused the pollsters of persistently asking the wrong questions, of letting themselves be manipulated by the White House, and of playing up every sign of opposition to Nixon's departure from office while ignoring the contrary evidence. In this way, they helped to prolong the crisis and to keep Nixon in office longer than necessary.

From still a third point of view, the importance attributed to the role of public opinion and public opinion polling in Nixon's downfall was totally misplaced and Nixon's strategy misdirected. Continuous polling neither hastened nor impeded the process. The "battle for public opinion" was only a sideshow. The media in treating the issue as a political struggle for public support, the argument runs, diverted attention from the one crucial element in the downfall of President Nixon: the accumulation of evidence against the president (Man- kiewicz, 1975; Sussman, 1974). If Watergate was a political contest, as it obviously was, the stakes consisted of information. The documents and tapes were necessary because the judgment on whether or not to impeach would have to be based on harder evidentiary stan- dards than the public normally applies in answering the pollsters' questions. But those pressing the case against Nixon would still have to be concerned over public confidence in the fairness and objectivity of the process by which he was being judged (Mezvinsky, 1977; Jordan, 1979; Dash, 1976).8 Both the Senate Watergate Committee and the House Judiciary Committee enjoyed high ratings on this count.9

8 This concern with not only being fair but appearing, fair, stressed in first-hand accounts such as those cited, was further underlined for us in an interview with Francis O'Brien, political assistant to Representative Peter Rodino, Chair of the HJC, Feb. 27, 1976.

9 When a national sample was asked which individuals and groups "looked good" or "looked bad" in the "whole (Watergate) affair," late in August 1974, topping the list of those who "looked good" -in this order-were: Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski; the Federal Courts tied with the House Judiciary Committee; and the Senate Watergate Committee (Roper Reports 74-8).




Our purpose here is to examine the relative merits of these views by looking at the evidence for the period following Cox's firing, which made impeachment a respectable topic of conversation. Within two days 84 congressmen, including one Republican, introduced 22 different impeachment bills and resolutions calling for impeachment or, at least, for an investigation of the possibility of impeachment. When the House Judiciary Committee, granted jurisdiction over the inquiry, met for the first time on October 30, it had taken the first official step toward possible impeachment of a president in over 100 years. There- after, both sides to the impeachment question maneuvered for mass support that neither could take for granted, with Nixon launching such counteroffensives as Operation Candor, his State of the Union address ("two years of Watergate are enough"), and his release of the transcripts instead of the tapes-all with the idea of turning public opinion around and winning the battle of the polls.

The difference between the first two views of public opinion reflects differing assumptions about whether impeachment sentiment was "really" stronger than that shown in the polls. Our examination of questions and our interviews with some of those responsible for drafting them turned up nothing to convince us that public pollsters during this period deliberately slanted their questions or even that their findings grossly distorted the actual speed with which the tide was turning against Nixon. As to just where the public 'actually stood at any point, much depends on what questions one selects from the many that were asked. Thus, throughout the seven months in which the House Judiciary Committee looked into the possibility of impeachment, polls indicated public support for its mission and approved its quest for the tapes as well as other specific moves.10 Perhaps questions about the impeachment inquiry provided a more valid measure of public sentiment for impeachment than more direct questions about impeaching Nixon. Nevertheless, the news media tracked impeachment sentiment by focusing on the changing percentage who favored Nixon's impeachment, mainly because the question reappeared in the same standardized form in more polls and more often than specific questions about executive privilege, who should have control over the evidence, and so forth.

The strength of impeachment sentiment obtained through various questions did indeed depend on how the questions were phrased. Table 1 charts the responses to eight questions on the issue of Nix- on's removal from office during four key months, all from respected

10 For example, responses to Gallup questions, covering various periods-August 3-6, 1973; November 2-5, 1973; and May 31-June 3, 1974-all showed large pluralities favoring the release of tapes to properly designated persons/groups.



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Table 1. Proportions Favoring Resignation/Impeachment in Selected National Polls

August November April June Question 1973 1973 1974 1974

Harris (A) resignation 28 43 40 Gallup (A) impeachment 26 35/37a Harris (B) impeachment

(conditional) 39 53 64 Yankelovich

Resignation 20 29 38 Impeachment 10 10 17 Total removal 30 39 55

Roper-impeachment With charges (42)b Without charges (47)b Both versions 44 53

Gallup (B) impeachment 52 50 Gallup (C) conviction 46 44 Harris (C) impeachment 42 52 Range on impeachment 10-39 10-44 17-53 44-64

a Gallup took an early and a late November poll. b The difference is not statistically reliable but may be real. VERSIONS OF IMPEACHMENT QUESTION: Harris (A): In view of what happened in the Watergate affair, do you think President

Nixon should resign or not? (June 1973-April 1974, asked 11 times) Gallup (A): Do you think President Nixon should be impeached and compelled to leave

office or not? (June 1973-February 1974, asked 8 times) Harris (B): If the Senate Watergate Committee decides that President Nixon was

involved in the coverup, do you think Congress should impeach him, or not? (August 1973-July 1974, asked 7 times)

Yankelovich: Would you like to see Nixon continue in office, decide to resign, or be impeached? (August 1973-April 1974, asked 3 times)

Roper: [Following a list of possible criticisms or charges against Nixon about which the respondent was asked if "you think it is a serious offense and . . . think he may be personally responsible for it"; the other half of the sample was not given such a list.] Actually, impeachment of a president begins with an investigation of charges made against him by the House of Representatives and, if they think the charges have a sufficient basis, a later trial by the Senate. Because of the various charges that have been made against President Nixon, do you think impeachment proceedings should be brought against him or not? (November 1973-May 1974, asked 3 times)

Gallup (B): [Following an explanation of the impeachment process similar to Roper's] Now let me ask you first of all if you think there is enough evidence of possible wrongdoing in the case of President Nixon to bring him to trial before the Senate, or not? (April-August 1974, asked 5 times)

Gallup (C): Just from the way you feel now, do you think his actions are serious enough to warrant his being removed from the Presidency, or not? (April-August 1974, asked 5 times)

Harris (C): All in all, do you think President Nixon should or should not be impeached by Congress and removed from office? (March-June 1974, asked 4 times)




national polls. The range of variation during any one month is quite considerable. It averages close to 30 percentage points.

These data only underline the observation, familiar to survey researchers, that the ambiguities of a question, the alternatives provided the respondent, and the context in which a question is asked inevita- bly make a difference.

As for ambiguity, the question that drew most fire from Wheeler (1975) was Gallup's "Do you think President Nixon should be impeached and compelled to leave office or not?" This phrasing called on the respondent to make two judgments at once: Should Nixon be forced out? Should this be accomplished through the constitutional impeachment procedure? The question, first introduced in June 1973, was repeated in seven subsequent Gallup polls until February 1974, and then changed. In April, Gallup asked people, quite directly, whether they thought there was enough evidence to bring the president to trial before the Senate. The consequence was a considerable jump in pro-impeachment sentiment between the February poll, when the old or A version was last asked, and the one two months later, when the revised B version was introduced.

The alternatives in a question can also influence the response. There is an obvious difference between resignation (Harris A) and removal by impeachment (Gallup A). To the extent that these two polls are truly comparable, they show a slight but hardly overwhelm- ing preference for resignation over impeachment. But when these two are posed as alternatives, resignation gains, as in the Yankelovich question: "Would you like to see Nixon continue in office, decide to resign, or be impeached?" Late in November 1973, given these choices, the public opted for resignation; the 10 percent favoring impeachment is far below what any of the other polls were then registering and surely the one statistic that might have bolstered the sagging spirits of pro-administration forces. The alternatives, as of- fered, were made to appear less ambiguous than they were in fact. A president remains in office while he is impeached; he is removed only after the Senate has convicted. Given the wording of the question, most respondents were not ready for an impeachment that they probably understood as "forced removal from office." Those aware of the tedious nature of the impeachment process might have been content to have him resign, immediately.

Questions that asked about impeachment and/or removal from office as conditional on some finding of guilt also drew quite different responses from those that sought simply to elicit what persons thought "now." This is evidenced by responses to two questions asked in the same 1973 poll before the Cox firing. One was the Harris



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B version, with impeachment conditional on an adverse finding by the Ervin (Senate Watergate) Committee; the other simply read, "Con- sidering all the developments of the Watergate case, do you think Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, or not?" The two questions brought vastly divergent results. The distribution is just about reversed (see Table 2).

How the context of questioning further affects response was demonstrated by the Roper Organization. A question prefaced with an explanation of what impeachment meant, asked in November 1973, found the public less leery of impeachment than other polls at the time, in particular the one by Yankelovich with the triple alternative, cited above. Only the conditional question (Harris B) gave a higher reading on impeachment.

That different polls give different readings of public opinion at any given time is probably less surprising and less serious than the different readings of trends over time shown in Table 1. The April and June 1974 Gallup responses suggest a decline in impeachment sentiment, albeit of only two points and possibly due to sampling error, but the Harris Poll recorded a 10-point rise during the same two- month period. Harris also showed support for impeachment finally passing the 50 percent point.

The wording of some questions leads one to believe that some pollsters may, to begin with, have been as confused as the public about the impeachment process. Answers obtained were in good part reactions to a word that, for some, stirred images of the ultimate punishment (removal from office) and, for others, the initiation of a legal process that could as readily exonerate the president as prove him guilty.

The Gallup A question, which clearly led to an unduly low estimate of impeachment sentiment, should have been changed and clarified. But once asked, it provided a month-by-month record of change of whatever it was that the question was recording. Since trend data are valued, Gallup was, quite understandably, reluctant to reword the question until the need to do so became painfully evident. Some of the rise recorded in April reflects the change in the question (Gallup B) rather than in public sentiment.

Table 2. Impeachment Attitudes Elicited by Two Types of Questions in October 1973

Impeachment

Question For Against Don't Know

Conditional version 52% 34% 14% Unconditional versioni 29 58 13

SOURCE: Louis Harris Associates, October 1973.




Since the Harris Poll as a rule asks more political questions than Gallup, it also included more questions on Watergate. Initially, questions about Nixon's leaving office most often posed the issue in terms either of resignation or of removal from office under certain conditions. It was not until March 1974 that Harris first asked such a question without any "ifs" attached. The new question (Harris C) was almost the exact equivalent of the one Gallup was about to abandon because of growing doubts about its validity as a measure of impeachment attitudes. This timing lent some substance to Wheel- ers's suspicion about the motive behind the change. Did Harris intend to show less support for impeachment than there actually was? This is doubtful in view of the many other questions asked concurrently with this one. Thus, if one looks at responses to the conditional question (Harris A), a case can be made that the Harris Poll had called attention to wide support for impeachment early on. Indeed, one of the questions used by Harris showed a plurality favoring impeachment as early as September 1973. This had turned into a majority by mid- October, even before the firing of Archibald Cox. Let us cite the example of a Harris release dated February 25, 1974. It began: "By nearly 3 to 1 the American people want impeachment proceedings against Nixon carried forward, but they are in no rush. . .

Given the many disparate measures, no one can say with any certainty just how the public divided on impeachment or how much support there would have been for such a move had the House Judiciary Committee moved more rapidly. If polls did in any way misrepresent support for impeachment, it was in large part because of the significance the news media assigned to certain statistics that were singled out. The publicity given these measures helped define the opinion climate. It does make a difference whether a headline reads "only a slim majority opposed to impeachment" or "less than half the U.S. favors Nixon's exit." Even syndicated columnists like Harris and Gallup are at the mercy of headline writers and editors, who may make cuts to conserve space. And they have even less control over interpretations given their findings-by Congress, the White House, commentators, pressure groups-once these have entered the public domain.

What the debate about polling effects often overlooks is that polls do not speak for themselves but are subject to journalistic judgment. News values help determine both what questions are asked by pollsters and what findings are reported and when and how they are reported. The main customers of the public polls are, after all, the newspapers, news magazines, and television networks. Gallup and Harris are syndicated. Yankelovich is linked to Time magazine. Since



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Watergate, the networks have strengthened their own polling operations, usually in conjunction with newspapers, for example, the New York Times/CBS News Poll or the NBC/Associated Press Poll, which also has many newspaper subscribers. Hence, the questions deal with issues considered timely and newsworthy. Mainly, they reflect what the news columns have emphasized or become news themselves.

Only a small proportion of all releases by the polling organizations during Watergate ever became national news. Of 38 Gallup press releases between September 2, 1973 and July 28, 1974, 10-just over one out of every four-made the television evening news on at least one network. News organizations varied in the emphasis they gave to polls of every kind. NBC spent the most time on tracking Watergate sentiment, with CBS second, and ABC a rather distant third. More precisely, NBC gave two-and-a-half times and CBS twice as much time to items based on polls as did ABC. Yet the time devoted to these items on all three networks amounted to much less than 1 percent of news time.

The one poll question most prominent on TV news was the presidential popularity rating, which served as a kind of Dow-Jones aver- age of the Watergate story, the barometer by which the press, politicians, and public judged Nixon's changing fortunes. Because these measures raised more questions than they answered, the play given them spurred Nixon supporters into accusing the press-or at least part of it-of being in cahoots with the Democratic left, of trying to undo a political mandate (for example, Safire, 1973:47). This, of course, is the opposite of the argument made later on by Wheeler.

Pollsters are not always innocent victims. In seeking to establish the relevance of their ratings, they may exaggerate their importance. One finds examples of this in the syndicated columns which Louis Harris wrote during the Watergate months. He was partial to phrases such as, "Mr, Nixon has gone a long way toward losing his trial by public opinion" (Jan. 21, 1974), and "The key to Mr. Nixon's fate ... over the .. . months .. . he has been on trial" (Jan. 31, 1974). The big play is reserved for the "majority" who believe, agree, have confidence in, approve, and so forth. Thus Harris could write as late as the end of January that the public had "not entirely closed the door on possible ultimate presidential exoneration" (Jan. 31, 1974). And how did he know this? Because the number who endorsed resignation or impeachment was still short of "the critical 51 percent." It was big news when Harris and Gallup found majorities in favor of impeachment-a barrier, incidentally, a Roper survey had crossed some months before.

Insofar as the news media, including the releases by the pollsters




themselves, harped on the significance of the "magic majority" for all it was worth, they came close to imputing to it the binding force of the ballot box.1" In this respect the polls, despite all their inadequacies, probably depicted public opinion as firmer and less movable than it actually was. Lack of attention to what the public might settle for if given decisive leadership tended to exaggerate the hardness of the opposition to impeachment.

There is another way in which "precision journalists," acting as pollsters and playing the numbers game, might also be seen as playing the White House game. In putting the emphasis on whether more people agreed than disagreed, they reinforced the idea of Watergate as a purely partisan issue. To make it appear this way was an essen- tial ingredient of the Nixon strategy, based on the expectation that the public would tire of a political fight and put pressure on Congress and on the media to direct their attention to other, more pressing matters (Nixon, 1978:850).

What of the other view, that the polls hastened Nixon's resignation? First, Congress, understandably wary about the 1974 elections, did not want to be too far out of step with public opinion. Its members did take the pulse of their districts through trips home and other contacts by mail and telephone as well as through questionnaires incorporated into their letters to constituents.12 Most members of Congress lacked the resources to commission scientific surveys but found some questions in published polls tailored to their needs, for example, the question that asked if respondents would vote for a congressman who voted for or against impeachment, or whether they thought Watergate would have an impact on the Republican party's chances in 1974, etc. Nor did anyone, one assumes, fail to note that Nixon's every effort to turn the polls around-in Operation Candor, in his State of the Union message, through the release of the transcripts-ended in failure. Nixon, the most avid poll watcher of them all, went out of his way both publicly and privately to assure Congress that he knew they were worried by what they read (Nixon, 1978:948). His own view was confided to his Diary early in 1973: "I don't give one damn what the polls say insofar as affecting my decisions. I only care about them because they affect my ability to lead, since politicians do pay attention to them" (Nixon, 1978:753).

I Harris, in a mid-April 1974 release, tried to right any wrong impression readers might have received about the role of public opinion in the impeachment process. While public reactions to Watergate disclosures were an important part of the process, the representatives of the people had to make the final judgment, he reminded them.

12 We have examined 84 polls on impeachment, collected by Professor Jack Orwant of American University, sent out by congressmen during 1974; 14 of them were by members of the House Judiciary Committee.



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Second, whatever their effect on Congress, the publicity given the polls, along with other reporting of Watergate, helped the public to become aware that Nixon might be impeached and to accept this as a real possibility. It also appears that developing an understanding of impeachment was related to its acceptance. As a Roper survey showed, a question prefaced by an explanation of impeachment elicited the strongest support for impeachment (Table 1), and people who understood the meaning of impeachment without any explanation favored it somewhat more than those who had to have it explained to them (Roper Reports, 1974, no. 4). Furthermore, the rise in support for impeachment that followed the April release of the transcripts reflected mainly a decrease in the proportion who had seen the process as "too destructive for the country," while "the percentages opposing impeachment because of a belief that the charges [against Nixon were] either not true or not serious enough remained constant" (Roper Reports, 1974, no. 5). We further suggest that the continuous questioning about impeachment and the publicity given polling results gave the idea extra currency and thus made it more familiar and less threatening.

Third, polls documented the extent of suspicion about Nixon whenever he withheld evidence or sought to explain himself by going on television to appeal directly to the American people, as he did at such critical moments as after the Cox firing or in the speech ex- plaining why only the transcripts, and not the actual tapes, were being released. The polls could have demonstrated, to anyone inclined to read them this way, that a majority was quite prepared to accept the judgment of an impartial body, provided the judges proved themselves fair and to be acting on the basis of evidence. By the fall of 1973, the public wanted a full investigation of Watergate. Thereafter there was too much distrust of major institutions (Harris, 1973; Miller et al., 1975) for the controversy to be resolved on faith alone.

The ability to invoke public opinion in pressing for disclosure of the evidence Nixon was so reluctant to yield became a great asset during the controversy. The published record of the proceedings of the House Judiciary Committee (U.S. House of Representatives, 1974) contains many references to the public demand for a full investigation and the mandate that the committee, whether for or against, appear "just."913 Appearances mattered and even entered the deliberations of

13 Some members thought that information on polls had no place in the debate. Thus, Representative (now Senator) William Cohen, speaking on May 1, 1974: "I was in- terested to hear one of my colleagues mention that he has been polling his district to find out what the public wants .... Frankly, I do not think that is a proper considera- tion .... The great decision which faces us cannot be based upon the shifting sands of public opinion" (U.S. House of Representatives:441).




the Supreme Court in disposing of the tapes issue. In view of Nixon's challenge that he would only obey a "definitive" opinion, the justices felt impelled to speak with unanimity. Justice Lewis F. Powell, according to Woodward and Armstrong's insiders' account, recom- mended a delay until after the vote of the House Judiciary Committee because, so Powell is said to have argued, those "opposed to impeaching could make the point that without the tapes they would be now authorized to have, the Committee would be acting prematurely in judging Nixon." Others believed that any postponement would be playing into Nixon's strategy of delay but also insisted that the Court should never adjust its timetable to promote whatever secondary political effects the justices might prefer (Woodward and Armstrong, 1979:345-46).

The manifest concerns of the various actors and institutional agents, including Nixon himself, cast serious doubt on the third view, namely, that public opinion played no role whatsoever in the outcome of Watergate. The view is nevertheless popular among the Washing- ton press corps and the legal fraternity. It is reinforced by members of the House Judiciary Committee who insist that, in deciding the issue, they were guided by nothing but the evidence. Even if they did poll their constituents on the question, they were not in any way bound by the majority; what counted was the legal case against Nixon.14 But while Nixon's resignation on August 8 was not the simple and direct consequence of a "battle for public opinion," which Nixon felt he had lost, an "iffy" question about which we can only speculate remains: Would the House and the Judiciary Committee have pushed as hard for impeachment after October 1973 if Nixon had continued to be strong in the polls and would there have been the same support for the Special Watergate Prosecutor to pursue his independent role? No one can possibly know the answer. It stands to reason, however, that some politicians and some editors would have acted differently and that Watergate would not have ended as quietly as it did. And the wounds, reopened by Ford's pardon of Nixon, would not have been so readily healed.

The major role of the news media in any political controversy lies in their ability to create a by-stander public (Lippmann, 1925; Lang and Lang, in press) which, as a third party to the dispute, has constantly to be wooed by the other two. When that public has no voice of its own, the media, by projecting an interpretation of public opinion, provide the political actors with a "looking-glass" image of how they

14 Many members of the House Judiciary Committee have made statements to this effect for the public record. Several of those we interviewed reaffirmed their view that public opinion had played no role in Nixon's resignation.



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appear to the public. The polls and how they are reported are an important element, but by no means the only one, in creating this image. They become important insofar as certain selected "opinions" are communicated to political actors and assimilated into their view of possible reactions to be taken into account.

There has been much discussion, especially during campaigns, about the possible influence of public opinion polling on the political process. Much of the debate centers on whether or not the polls change voting decisions and voting behavior and thus have an effect on election outcomes. The basic question, however, it seems to us, is not whether scientific polls and their reporting have any impact, but how they become part of the political process through which decisions are made and issues resolved. Case studies of the development and outcome of political controversies, like Watergate, can go a long way toward clarification of the direct and indirect impacts of polls.

References Crouse, Timothy

1976 "How many polls does it take to make a president?" Esquire 85:16- 18+.

Dash, Samuel 1976 Chief Counsel: Inside the Ervin Committee ... The Untold Story

of Watergate. New York: Random House. Doyle, James

1977 Not Above the Law. New York: Morrow. Louis Harris, Inc.

1973 Confidence and Concern: Citizens View American Government. Survey for U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Jaworski, Leon 1976 The Right and the Power. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest.

Jordan, Barbara 1979 Self-Portrait. New York: Doubleday.

Lang, Gladys Engel, and Kurt Lang In "Mass communication and public opinion: strategies for research." press In M. Rosenberg and R. Turner (eds.), Sociological Perspectives on

Social Psychology. New York: Basic Books. Lippmann, Walter

1925 The Phantom Public. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Mankiewicz, Frank

1975 U.S. v. Richard M. Nixon. New York: Quadrangle Books. Mezvinsky, Edward

1977 A Time to Remember. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan. Miller, Arthur H., Jeffrey Brudney, and Peter Joftis

1975 "Presidential crises and political support: the impact of Watergate on attitudes toward political institutions." Paper read at Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Ill., May 1-3.




Neustadt, Richard 1976 Presidential Power, with Reflections on Johnson and Nixon. New

York: Wiley. Nixon, Richard M.

1978 RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Grosset and Dun- lap.

O'Brien, Robert W., and Elizabeth Jones 1976 The Night Nixon Spoke. Hwong Publishing.

Public Papers of the Presidents, Richard Nixon, 1974. 1976 Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Richardson, Elliot 1976 "The Saturday night massacre." Atlantic 237:40-44.

Safire, William 1973 "The 27th amendment." New York Times, Nov. 8, p. 47.

Sirica, John J. 1979 To Set the Record Straight. New York: Norton.

Sussman, Barry 1974 The Great Cover-up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate. New

York: Crowell. U.S. House of Representatives

1974 Impeachment Inquiry. Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., Book 1, Jan. 13-May 15.

Wheeler, Michael 1975 "The unholy alliance." New Times (May):39-42. 1976 Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. New York: Liveright.

Woodward, Bob, and Scott Armstrong 1979 The Brethren. New York: Simon and Schuster.



Documents

Polling Watergate the Battle for Public Opinion