Before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, the national news media reported that a large majority of Americans were in favor of going to war. The reports came from polls that were ostensibly aimed at gauging public support for the invasion. But were people really in favor of the war, which is now well into its sixth year?

“We all know that prior to the war in Iraq, polls were showing about 2-1 support among the public for going into Iraq,” said author David W. Moore. “The question asked whether or not people would support American troops going to the Gulf region in order to remove Saddam Hussein from power. That phraseology came directly from the (Bush) administration.”

When the war broke out, Moore was vice president of the Gallup Organization and managing editor of the Gallup Poll. At the time, Gallup conducted its own poll to get a better picture of public opinion about the looming war.

Among people who said they supported going into Iraq, the Gallup poll asked if they would be upset if the United States did not invade. Among those who opposed the war, it asked if they would be upset if the U.S. did invade. The poll also gave people the option of admitting that they had no opinion on the issue.

The experiment revealed that the public was not clamoring for war, as the Bush administration and the news media would contend. According to Moore, only about 29 percent of those polled said they supported the war and would be upset if we didn’t go into Iraq, while about 30 percent opposed the war and said they would be upset if we did go. The remaining 41 percent had no opinion.

Clearly, the public was sharply divided on the war, and a large percentage of Americans were unengaged on the issue. Most of the national reports, therefore, were both inaccurate and misleading, and the deceptive results may have affected how some politicians in Washington, D.C., voted on the war.

“Would that have made a difference to President Bush? Probably not,” Moore said. “Would it have made a difference to some of the Democrats who we might have expected to oppose the war?”

Maybe. Moore noted that several prominent Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted in favor of the war (including vice presidential nominee Joe Biden and former presidential contender Hillary Clinton). Had those Democrats not been led to believe that the vast majority of Americans supported the war, they may have voted differently.

Moore appeared at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter on Sept. 16 to talk about his new Beacon Press book, “The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls.” A senior fellow with the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, Moore worked for Gallup from 1993 to 2006. He is the author of two prior books, “The Superpollsters” in 1992 and “How to Steal an Election” in 2006.

Despite his objections to the way polls are typically conducted in the United States, Moore maintains that polling can provide meaningful information.

“Where I object to the polls is when they deliberately mislead us with respect to elections and with respect to public policy,” he said.

The problem with polls, according to Moore, is that they often ask the wrong questions of the wrong people. What’s more, these faulty methods are often deliberate. Many polls are not intended to accurately measure public consensus, but to frame issues in a way that supports the governing administration’s agenda and provides fodder for the national news media.

“The way polls work is essentially to complete, in many cases, a spin cycle from the administration,” Moore said.

He pointed to the example of Guantanamo Bay. When news first emerged about the military prison facility in Cuba, most Americans knew next to nothing about it. As reports of human rights abuses and torture at Guantanamo started to spread, some people called for the prison to be closed down. So Gallup conducted a poll.

The question, Moore said, was phrased like this: “As you may know, the United States has a prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where it houses suspected terrorists. Do you think the United States should close down Guantanamo Bay?”

Many of the people polled had never heard of Guantanamo Bay, let alone the controversy over human rights violations, Moore said. All they knew was what the poll told them—that Guantanamo was a prison for terrorists.

“If you had never heard of it, why would you say, ‘Yes, close it down’? It houses terrorists,” Moore said.

So, national media outlets, many of which now own their own polls, reported that most Americans did not think Guantanamo Bay should be closed—happy news for the Bush administration. Similar tactics were used when it came to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.  

But it’s not only the Bush administration that has used polling for deceitful purposes, Moore said. Bill Clinton’s administration used similar methods in the aftermath of the Waco siege in 1993, when polls asked whether federal agents had waited a proper amount of time before they assaulted.

Even polls that are not deliberately misleading often get things terribly wrong, Moore said. He noted that national election polls conducted in the fall of 2007 projected that Rudy Giuliani would win the Republican presidential nomination and that Hillary Clinton would handily win the Democratic nomination. Here in New Hampshire, polls conducted just days before the January primary predicted that Barack Obama would carry the state, but Clinton wound up winning by a fair margin.  

Poll defenders say their results were off because people changed their minds. But Moore believes that many people had never made up their minds to begin with. Forced to pick a candidate back in 2007, many randomly selected someone they had heard of.

“A lot of times, when we ask people about their opinions, they give an opinion because they’re pressured to give it by the interviewer. They may not know what they’re talking about,” Moore said.

A UNH survey showed that between 20 and 25 percent of people who voted in the New Hampshire primary made up their minds within the last two days, and last-minute media events affected their decisions.

An audience member in Exeter later commented that she and her friends ignore the polls and attempt to think independently about the issues. She said she finds polling manipulative and doesn’t care what even accurate polls suggest.

But Moore said polls can be useful if they are conducted properly. Asked how he would phrase poll questions to accurately determine who New Hampshire voters will choose in the presidential election in November, Moore said he would ask several questions. First he would ask whether they support Barack Obama, John McCain or an independent candidate. Then he would follow up by asking if they strongly support that candidate or if they were just leaning in that direction. He would also offer people the option of saying they don’t know who they’ll vote for.

“Instead of forcing people to come up with an opinion when they don’t have one, the polls ought to at least allow people to admit that they don’t have an opinion,” he said.

On Sept. 17, the Gallup Organization announced poll results revealing that 47 percent of registered voters supported Obama, while 45 percent supported McCain. Will Obama’s apparent edge hold up? We’ll have to wait and see.