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Rich people. Rich people are always happier than poor people. I mean anyone who says that money can’t buy happiness hasn’t read not only our polls, but polls over the years. In rich countries . . . In . . . In . . . In rich countries, it’s the rich people who are happier than the poor people. And when you do a global survey, it’s the richer countries where people express the most satisfaction and happiness with their lives. I mean there’s some exceptions to this. One of the things that our polls have shown recently is that over the past five years, as . . . as many countries . . . middle . . . let’s say middle income and poorer countries have gotten richer, the people have gotten happier. More people say they’re contented with their lives. They’re achieving their objectives. Their incomes are good. You can’t underestimate income and also good family relationships and health . . . good health, and you know the basics.

Recorded On: 9/14/07

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You know I don’t think that . . . that . . . that . . . that describes it. The new, younger generation is a little bit more secular than younger people were, say, 10 years ago. But it’s only . . . that’s only . . . represents a reversal of a trend of more religiosity that we saw in the ‘90s. This remains an extremely religious country. You’re right about the trend; but in sum and substance, this is the most religious, rich country in the world. In fact it’s probably the only religious, rich country in the world. There is a negative correlation between how religious a country is and what its per capita income is. All you have to do is look at secular Europe, another wealthy part of the planet. And really there’s a lot less religiosity and religious church attendance and all sorts of things in Europe than there is in the United States.

Recorded On: 9/14/07

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Well it’s pretty low. We just did a survey of . . . of 45 countries. And in 33 of these countries, we have trends since 2002. And the __________ . . . the favorable ratings of the United States has declined in 25 of these 33 countries. And the image of the United States and Western Europe is quite low. I mean in Germany in 2002, it was 78 percent favorable. Today it’s 30 percent favorable. In Spain it’s only 21 percent or 25 percent, something like that. And in the Muslim world it’s abysmal. I mean not only is the United States disliked; it’s literally hated. And the image of the American people have . . . have taken somewhat of a hit too. I’m not trying to say that Americans are hated in Europe; but the American people and . . . and the American way is not as popular as it once was. And so there’s great concern these days about American power, which is a consequence of dislike of American policies. We’re the sole superpower. That wasn’t a problem throughout the ‘90s when there wasn’t concern about our policies. But there is a concern now that the . . . much of the world thinks the United States goes its own way and decides to do what it wants to do without soliciting the views of its allies or the assent of international organizations.

Well the Iraq war is the poster child for disliking American policies. But in the Middle East, American policies with respect to Israel and the Palestinians is also a very big issue. I think those are the major ones. And you know they affect . . . Iraq in particular affects how much support there are for other things. Support for the war in Afghanistan, which was generally very strong, is now going down in much of Europe. The public’s divided about where there should be German and French troops in Afghanistan.

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How do we . . . How do we help people who are struggling with a lot of the problems that . . . that . . . that are important to . . . to greater public content in a more civil American society?

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I think consider the other person’s plight. Consider the other person’s point of view.

That we’re doing right? There’s an interesting concept. (Laughter) I think . . . Let me think

about that. What do the polls say we’re doing right? I think the public thinks that we’re d

oing scientific developments in the area of new medical procedures; and not the way we

practice healthcare, but the way we . . . the way we develop our . . . our ability to heal people

and to deal with disease. We’re . . . we’re doing that right. I think they would say that we

are probably happy . . . happier with all of the information resources that they have; that

we’re doing a good job of giving them choices to . . . and what they can access in terms

of information, both for news and entertainment. Not necessarily happy with the quality of

the news and what’s on the news. There’s much . . . there’s much more choice. So those are

two . . . a couple of examples, I think.

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Oh I don’t know. I can’t answer a question like that. You know you can say you’re optimistic and . . . You know the world is full of surprises, Lord knows. In 2001 we thought, you know, we had no enemies. The world . . . We were on a course. . . The only problem seemed to be that the stock market boom seemed to be a little bit over, and look what happened. History . . . The course of history . . . The course of the . . . The course of the world and the course of this country has at least changed, which affects the course of the world. And I don’t think you can be too sanguine about what the future holds.

Well I think this age will be remembered as a time in which America really struggled with is world leadership. The United States went into a new phase of . . . of . . . of . . . of economic development when it . . . as its . . . as its . . . as its technologies became more dominant, its populations changed from . . . became an older population and began to become an increasingly Latino population. I don’t have a quick adjective – the age of whatever – but I think those are the dominant themes.

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Well I think . . . I’m a little out of my depth here. This is not a polling question. What has shaped humanity, I think, is the march of technological progress, the development of democracy, and the value of . . . the value of . . . of the individual, and freedom of expression, and . . . and the development of . . . of a . . . of a mercantile system in trading and . . . But as much as anything technology, and economic, and material progress along with the development of ________ civil societies is what’s shaped humanity more than anything else. And you know licking the basics such as disease, and famine, and things like that.

I think what shapes us is when – and I’ll refer to my polls now – when we did surveys about the millennium, we asked people what were the most important things that have influenced where . . . how the United States . . . what the United States achieved in the 20th century. And despite all the complaints about democracy and political polarization, people said “the system”. They said the . . . our . . . our . . . our way of governance, the way we have organized ourself more than anything else; more than our abundant . . . our abundant country, and more than the many things about us, it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s the kind of political system under which we live. There are other . . . lots of criticisms about the way we do it, but I think the basic . . . the basic American framework – political framework – of governance, the first democracy, the oldest democracy, is one of the most important things to understand about what shapes the United States. And of course the waves of immigration that have freshened . . . refreshed America. You can see it . . . you can see this wave of Hispanic immigration refreshing America, just as the European immigrations of the 20th century refreshed America. And we have such a tremendous capacity to take people in and make them American. The American system is so . . . is so strong that it is an . . . it changes, it reacts, but it also . . . it . . . it . . . it reshapes itself a little bit. But it’s so encompassing, and to a certain extent so welcoming. If you look at the way Americans feel . . . Despite the debate about immigration these days, if you look at it, about the way Americans feel about bringing people in and being an American. The view is if you come here and wanna be an American, and act like an American, you are an American. That is certainly not the view in large parts of the world. And in many . . . many western countries in the . . . in . . . in . . . in the public . . . that’s not the view of the public and many of our allies.

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Well I think that in the short-run, the public is of the view that (a) we should get out of Iraq, and (b) we should be very careful about the use of force. Our resources are stressed . . . stretched. We just have had a very bad experience, and that always tends to sour people on the use of force. But if you look at the way Americans feel about the legitimacy of using military force as a way of dealing with international problems, it’s much stronger than it is in many parts of Europe. It’s . . . There’s still more support in the United States for preemptive war, even given disillusionment with Iraq than there is among our European allies. So in short, Americans are sort of down on war right now; but the public has a very Jacksonian view of . . . of . . . of . . . of use of military force. Generally they’re loathe to do things; but hurt us or threaten us and we’ll go at you. But the public’s also very pragmatic. When things aren’t working they want out, and they don’t wanna see American lives wasted.

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Well I think in the short term what we’ve seen is values are drifting toward the Democratic direction. There’s more concern about the social safety net. There is more concern about income inequality. There’s less of a view that . . . of a strong national security posture; an aggressive national security posture is the best way to protect the country. All of those things are good for Democrats. The political landscape in 2008 in terms of values is looking good for the United States . . . for the . . . for the Democrats rather, and it represents a turnaround from the trends that we saw in the 1990s. We’ve been measuring . . . We have a basic set of political measures . . . political values that started in ’87 . . . 20 years. Between ’87 and ’94 they went in a more conservative direction. Now they gradually began to drift back. If you look at the status, it’s a testimony to the notion that Arthur Schlesinger had about cycles of history. Americans moderate their views. They don’t settle on one ideological point of view. In terms of broader long-term values, I think the most important thing to recognize is that the American public is becoming more socially liberal over time even though there are arguments – ferocious arguments about some of these issues. There’s more acceptance of homosexuality than there was even though there’s not acceptance of gay marriage. The younger generations of people have different views about the role of women. And progressive social latitudes are associated with new . . . the younger generations of people. And that will affect . . . is affecting American values. On the other hand, in terms of government, there’s not a great deal of faith in government. And even though the public wants government to do more about . . . to help poor people, it’s very leery and suspicious of how well government operates. So you have almost . . . You can almost say that over the long term, the combination of suspicion of government and more socially . . . social liberal ideas almost calls out for a more libertarian trend. But you know we’re talking about small differences. Social values don’t change in major ways. It’s a pretty . . . I mean you’re talking about values. You’re not talking about things that change every six weeks. You’re talking about things that change slowly.

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Well the American public is more distrustful of the news media than it’s been for some time. But it’s been distrustful of the news media for some time. The public is worried about the political agenda of the media – whether it gets the story right; whether it’s . . . it’s a watchdog for its own sake rather than for the sake of protecting the public interest. They worry . . . It worries about sensationalism; that the media is . . . is too focused on sensationalism. On the other hand, the public is, you know, has a casual (laughter) . . . a casual connection to serious things in the world. But that isn’t to say for the most part and for most people the over emphasis, especially in the cable world, on the Paris Hiltons and the Lindsay Lohans is very troubling to people.

Well the thing that’s changing media consumption more than anything else is the Internet rising as a primary source of news; and the fact that newspapers and other traditional media – broadcast television – are taking it on the chin. And in particular, newspaper readership is . . . is . . . is really . . . is really hard hit not only by the Internet – the Internet is . . . is . . . is . . . given a . . . given a big . . . has really hurt it a lot – but newspapers have been going down now for . . . for the past . . . for the past decade or more. So these new generations, younger generations of people got their news out of cable, or television; and the newspaper is not so much the indispensable part of life that it is for people who are my age and older.

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Yeah. I mean there have always been two Americas. And haves and have nots per se is not a bad thing. I mean one of the ways in which capitalism works is hopefully a rising tide lifts all boats, and rich people are rich . . . there are some people who are rich and some people who are poor. But the way it should work is that when the rich get richer, the poor should get a little richer too. And the concern is that that . . . that . . . that that is not happening. And I’m not an economist. I’m not an expert on these sorts of things, but I do see . . . You just have to look at the . . . You just have to look at the real wage gains, and they haven’t been coming. You have to also look at the fact that, you know, the bottom quartile, the bottom quintile remains pretty poor. Now to put that into some perspectives, the bottom quintile in the United States still owns a lot of stuff and still does relatively well to the bottom quintile of most parts of the world. But given who we are, and given what this country is, and given what the wealth is at the top end, it would be great if . . . if . . . if . . . if that . . . if that were . . . that would not be the guess.

Well I mean on these issues there is a great deal of concern about haves and have nots. There’s a larger percentage now than in the 1980s – a much larger percentage saying that this is a have-have not society. When we first did this survey, we compared it with public opinion in Britain in the late 1980s. And 70 percent of the Brits said, yeah, that describes Britain. And only about 40 percent or 30 percent of the United States . . . of the public in the United States said that. Now it’s up to close to 50 percent. So I think there is a fair agreement and a fair assessment on many of these issues.

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I think we also have to never underestimate the fact that race continues to be an important issue. We tend to forget about it when it’s not problematic. There are an awful lot of African-Americans who are still stuck, and alienated, and don’t participate in mainstream America.

Recorded On: 9/14/08

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And of course the waves of immigration that have freshened . . . refreshed America. You can see it . . . you can see this wave of Hispanic immigration refreshing America, just as the European immigrations of the 20th century refreshed America. And we have such a tremendous capacity to take people in and make them American. The American system is so . . . is so strong that it is an . . . it changes, it reacts, but it also . . . it . . . it . . . it reshapes itself a little bit. But it’s so encompassing, and to a certain extent so welcoming. If you look at the way Americans feel . . . Despite the debate about immigration these days, if you look at it, about the way Americans feel about bringing people in and being an American. The view is if you come here and wanna be an American, and act like an American, you are an American. That is certainly not the view in large parts of the world. And in many . . . many western countries in the . . . in . . . in . . . in the public . . . that’s not the view of the public and many of our allies.

Recorded On: 9/14/07

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I think what shapes us is when – and I’ll refer to my polls now – when we did surveys about the millennium, we asked people what were the most important things that have influenced where . . . how the United States . . . what the United States achieved in the 20th century. And despite all the complaints about democracy and political polarization, people said “the system”. They said the . . . our . . . our . . . our way of governance, the way we have organized ourself more than anything else; more than our abundant . . . our abundant country, and more than the many things about us, it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s the kind of political system under which we live. There are other . . . lots of criticisms about the way we do it, but I think the basic . . . the basic American framework – political framework – of governance, the first democracy, the oldest democracy, is one of the most important things to understand about what shapes the United States.

Recorded On: 9/14/07

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I think what shapes us is when – and I’ll refer to my polls now – when we did surveys about the millennium, we asked people what were the most important things that have influenced where . . . how the United States . . . what the United States achieved in the 20th century. And despite all the complaints about democracy and political polarization, people said “the system”. They said the . . . our . . . our . . . our way of governance, the way we have organized ourself more than anything else; more than our abundant . . . our abundant country, and more than the many things about us, it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s the kind of political system under which we live. There are other . . . lots of criticisms about the way we do it, but I think the basic . . . the basic American framework – political framework – of governance, the first democracy, the oldest democracy, is one of the most important things to understand about what shapes the United States. And of course the waves of immigration that have freshened . . . refreshed America. You can see it . . . you can see this wave of Hispanic immigration refreshing America, just as the European immigrations of the 20th century refreshed America. And we have such a tremendous capacity to take people in and make them American. The American system is so . . . is so strong that it is an . . . it changes, it reacts, but it also . . . it . . . it . . . it reshapes itself a little bit. But it’s so encompassing, and to a certain extent so welcoming. If you look at the way Americans feel . . . Despite the debate about immigration these days, if you look at it, about the way Americans feel about bringing people in and being an American. The view is if you come here and wanna be an American, and act like an American, you are an American. That is certainly not the view in large parts of the world. And in many . . . many western countries in the . . . in . . . in . . . in the public . . . that’s not the view of the public and many of our allies.

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I think it’s important because it gives a voice to the people. It gives a . . . a quantitative, independent assessment of what public . . . of what the public feels as opposed to what experts or pundits think the public feels. So often it provides a quick corrective on what’s thought to be the conventional wisdom about public opinion. There are any number of examples that I could give you about how wrong the experts are here in Washington, in New York and elsewhere about public opinion that are revealed . . . that are revealed by public opinion polls.

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What inspires me is to try to answer the question . . . the most important questions about public opinion. Next week the question will be, “What is the public’s reaction to the Petraeus report?” Doing a good job of . . . of . . . of covering the way the public has reacted to what President Bush and General Petraeus have said about the surge and the course of our . . . our future troops . . . troops in Iraq is what . . . what inspires me.

Well you know this is both an art and a science. I mean the science . . . The scientific aspects of this develop . . . determine the sampling and the analytical . . . some of the analytical statistically . . . statistical analytical tools we use. But in terms of writing the questions and drawing conclusions from the data, that has to do with one’s . . . how good one is as an analyst. We have a lot of material, just as in any scientific adventure. And we have a lot of data. And a good deal of the skill is what we can make out of it; and how coherent, and defensible, and authent . . . replicable a case can we make for conclusions that we come to about public opinion.

Recorded On: 9/14/07

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I’m a public opinion pollster. I’ve been an opinion pollster all of my life, or a survey researcher all of my life – not always in the area of public opinion since I did do a lot of market research in my early years. And I now run the Pew Research Center, which is a . . . I think it’s not an under . . . or an overstatement to say that it’s a unique organization. We study public opinion about politics, about media, about international issues. We also have a group that studies the Internet. We have an effort on religion in public life. We have a social trends unit, and probably I’ve left some . . . We have a news organization that studies policy developments at the state level. So we do a . . . We have a broad effort that examines the most important public policy trends, political trends, and media trends. And we do it as a public service. We do it to provide information to the people, to the political leaders, to the media about . . . about American society and global public opinion and those sorts of things. And I’m delighted to be heading this. And it’s been quite successful, and I’m very proud of it.

I think it’s important because it gives a voice to the people. It gives a . . . a quantitative, independent assessment of what public . . . of what the public feels as opposed to what experts or pundits think the public feels. So often it provides a quick corrective on what’s thought to be the conventional wisdom about public opinion. There are any number of examples that I could give you about how wrong the experts are here in Washington, in New York and elsewhere about public opinion that are revealed . . . that are revealed by public opinion polls.

Well I think some of the most important ones are . . . are in the realm of the Pew Global Attitudes project. We’ve been principle chronicles of the rise of anti-Americanism all around the world since 2002. We’ve conducted 165,000 interviews, and we’ve . . . in 60 nations. And we’ve observed the ways in which American policies and the American approach has alienated many people around the world and brought the esteem of the United States down in . . . in many places.

Well global opinion is a little more complicated than the typical public opinion poll. Let’s do a typical public opinion poll. I think that would be easier. A nationwide survey is conducted in the following manner. There’s a sample of . . . of working banks of telephone numbers are drawn. Numbers are . . . Telephone numbers are randomly generated within those banks, and a group of interviewers working on . . . on . . . on . . . on computers with . . . with questionnaires on their screens begin to call these numbers that have been randomly generated from all over the country, soliciting the views of adult men and adult women . . . if that’s the . . . all adult men and all adult women. And they have a prescribed questionnaire. In our case it generally runs about 20 minutes, sometimes less. You can’t keep people on the phone for much more than that unless you make an appointment with them about some particular thing that is close to their lives. And we write the questionnaire. It’s based upon many long-term measures that we have about . . . about public opinion. Do you approve or disapprove of the way President Bush is doing his job? Or Congressional or political preference questions. But it also includes a mix of questions about current . . . about current policy. Did you . . . Have you followed what General Petraeus has said about developments in Iraq since the surge? Do you generally agree . . . approve or disapprove of his recommendations? Or in many specific questions, staying on the Iraq example, we’ve been trending since 2003 how well is the war effort going? Did we do the right thing in going to war? Should we keep out troops there ‘til the situation is stable, or should we get out? And we have long-term trend lines on these things as well as what people know about what’s going on in Iraq. And we’re able to assess the ways in which public opinion about Iraq or other issues have evolved.

I think it’s the best way of gauging public opinion – doing something that’s independent, that’s quantitative, that doesn’t give just the loud voices’ say in . . . about how things are going; or doesn’t give expert . . . so called experts . . . the notion that they know what public opinion is. I think those are . . . those . . . that . . . that’s what makes public opinion polling pretty important. Quantitative . . . Qualitative assessments of public opinion; going out and talking to people and understanding the nuance to what’s behind the numbers. I think it’s awfully important as well. And the other thing is . . . Another measure of public opinion is behavior – how many people are doing this and how many are doing that. You can see those reflections of public opinion in official statistics, and market trends and all kinds of things.

Oh in lots of ways. First of all, public opinion polling is used . . . not the kind of polling that I do, but the kind of polling that the political consultants do has been used now for two decades to help candidates get elected. It helps shape messages. It helps . . . Most importantly it helps monitor the great expenditures that political candidates make these days in media. You can’t go out and spend millions of dollars with no sense of whether or not it’s working until you wake up in the . . . wake up on Election Day to find out. So with the advent of telephone polling, which began extensively and became the norm in the 1970s, that enabled political people to go into business as political pollsters as opposed to doing what I do, and what Gallup does, which is doing independent public opinion polling for the media, and for . . . in our case for the public itself through the Pew Research Center. But you have the independent media pollsters. You have the . . . You have the partisan pollsters. They do different things.

In any event, when I first started there were two or three major polling organizations: Gallup, and Roper, and Lou Harris. Since then, with the advent of opinion polling, the news organizations were able to go into opinion polling themselves. And they started their own polls and all of the partisan polling that we’ve talked about. So there’s much more polling. There’s now polling that’s done in using the kind of high-tech methods – polling that calls people with auto dialers. They’re not real interviewers, but recordings – so called robo-polling. There’s Internet surveys. I’m not a great fan of robo-polling. And as far as Internet surveys, you can do a very good survey on the Internet if you can get a good sample of people. But drawing a random sample of . . . of . . . of the country, or the state, or of the town is very difficult because no place to go to draw a systematic or a random sample of e-mail addresses. And I’m not a big fan, and I’m very suspicious of these polls that are predicated upon the harvesting of people who volunteer to be polled. People who volunteer to be polled are essentially different than the people we . . . we call up and have to root out of their dinnertime to take some questions about President Bush, or how they feel about healthcare reform.

I don’t know. It’s very hard . . . It’s increasingly hard. A number of media organizations, for example, are taking the least expensive road . . . route, and they will do some of these surveys that I think aren’t as methodologically sound as what the CBS, New York Times poll does, or what Gallup does, or what we do. One of the most important things to . . . for people to do in evaluating an opinion poll is look at the question that was asked. Looked at the inferences that are being drawn from the results of the question, and also say to themselves, “Well how would I have answered that question? And what would that say about my opinion about what to do next in Iraq?”

Certainly polling is a tool for leadership. It’s not the . . It’s not a program for leadership. And you can abuse a tool. You can overuse it. A leader who looks to the latest poll finding and says, “Well that’s what I should do” . . . that’s not a very good leader. I mean that’s someone who is not taking this poll and saying, “Well what am I gonna have to do to get public acceptance of my policies?” It’s someone who is interested in . . . in . . . in their own election or re-election, and their own popularity rather than serving . . . genuinely serving the public interest.

No, because so often you see polls . . . poll trend lines reverse themselves. There’s a lot of popularity for a particular figure, and all of a sudden it goes in a different direction. Look how popular President Bush was for a number of years. If polls were fulfilling . . . self-fulfilling prophecies, his approval ratings would have never come down.

I think that the networks have done a pretty good job of policing – except to insiders – what those early takes on the exit polls have shown. You know every . . . every . . . every person . . . every member of the media political community in Washington by four o’clock has known what the early exit polls have been showing in the presidential elections. And that has a different set of problems. But in terms of the voters themselves, the networks and the media have generally cleaned up their act, and they’re not reporting at six o’clock or seven o’clock what the polls are suggesting. And I don’t think there’s much risk that voting is being discouraged by these polls.

Well we have a very good record, and the polls that I’ve done have been pretty good. I’ve had a couple of bullseyes on presidential elections where the numbers are absolutely right. And every presidential election that I’ve directed, I’ve been within the margin of error so to speak; and sometimes even well within the margin of error, right on the nose. But the one that I’ll always remember is I got the New Hampshire primary wrong in . . . in 1988. And there’s nothing worse than being publicly wrong. (Laughter) It is a . . . It is a . . . It is a humbling experience because everyone says, “Hey, I thought you said that so-and-so was gonna win the New Hampshire primary?” And so that, you know, I . . . I sincerely hope that somewhere along the line it doesn’t say in my obituary that this, this and this (laughter), but he got the New Hampshire primary wrong in 1988. I’m just teasing there. I’m sure it won’t. I’m hoping it won’t, at least.

Well it’s easy for us ‘cause we go out and keep polling, and we then show that . . . that we . . . we’ve learned a lesson. I mean Gallup, who again I started with back in the late ‘60s, you know he was wrong in ‘48. It shaped views about public opinion polling. It certainly shaped his notion, shaped his business. And a lot . . . You know and that was an extraordinary event in his life, and in his career, and in the course of his polling. God, there were congressional hearings about how could the polls get . . . how could all the polls get it wrong? And what he did is he turned his methodology over to a great statistician at Gallup, and they revamped what they were doing. I mean you learn from these experiences. But you know to get back to this point, I think having to get it right not only with regard to the presidential election, but to have your polls conform to . . . to what the census is showing about the distribution of the population; or what official statistics are showing about, you know, certain patterns of behavior or ownership of things. You have to work hard to make the measures, and the questions, and the sampling be accurate.

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Well many people say that they’d like to see another party; but we have a long tradition of two parties, and I think many people ultimately are drawn back to their parties. People are more attracted to third party candidates as individuals than they are to the ideas of particular parties.

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Well I think this age will be remembered as a time in which America really struggled with is world leadership. The United States went into a new phase of . . . of . . . of . . . of economic development when it . . . as its . . . as its . . . as its technologies became more dominant, its populations changed from . . . became an older population and began to become an increasingly Latino population. I don’t have a quick adjective – the age of whatever – but I think those are the dominant themes.