Survey Report

Following a White House security breach and reports of other Secret Service problems, roughly equal shares of the public think the recent issues are mainly isolated incidents (42%) as think they are signs of broader problems with the agency (43%).

The new national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Oct. 2-5 among 1,007 adults, shows that Republicans are more likely to see these episodes as signs of broader Secret Service problems (54%) than mainly isolated incidents (35%). Among Democrats, about half (51%) say the occurrences were mainly isolated, while 38% think they are signs of broader problems.

Those who paid close attention last week to Secret Service problems and the resignation of Director Julia Pierson are the most likely to see signs of broader agency problems. Among the 21% who closely followed the reports, six-in-ten (60%) say the incidents show signs of broader problems and just one-third (33%) see them as mainly isolated. About a quarter each of Democrats (27%) and Republicans (24%) followed news about Secret Service security problems very closely, compared with 15% of independents.

A majority of the public has at least some confidence in the Secret Service to improve its job performance. About seven-in-ten, including roughly equal shares of Republicans and Democrats, say they have a great deal (19%) or fair amount of confidence (50%) in the agency to improve the job it does providing security. Roughly three-in-ten offer not too much confidence (21%) or no confidence at all (8%) in the agency to get better.

Blacks and whites have similar views about whether recent security slips by the Secret Service represent isolated incidents or signal broader problems; about half of blacks (48%) and whites (47%) say the latter.

However, blacks show less confidence in the agency to provide better security going forward. Roughly our-in-ten blacks have little or no confidence in the Secret Service to improve its performance, compared with 29% of whites. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to say they have “no confidence at all” in the agency to improve (16% vs. 8%).

In general, people who see the recent Secret Service problems as signs of broader issues are less likely to express confidence in the agency to reform itself: Still, 57% of those who say the incidents are signs of broader problems have at least some confidence in the agency to improve its job, while 42% have little or no confidence. Among those who view recent reports of security problems as mainly isolated incidents, 84% have at least some confidence that the Secret Service will improve and just 15% lack confidence.

The Week’s News

The current outbreak of the Ebola virus, including the first reported diagnosis in the U.S., garnered the most news interest last week. Fully 36% of the public closely followed the story, up 9 points from the prior week.

About three-in-ten (31%) closely followed news about U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In the week before, 37% followed news about the airstrikes.

Roughly two-in-ten (21%) tracked news about problems with White House security and the resignation of the Secret Service director. In addition, 15% were closely following news about next month’s congressional elections and 7% paid close attention to political protests in Hong Kong.

Among all age groups, news about Ebola received considerable attention. Three-in-ten adults under age 30 (30%) closely followed the story, as did 45% of adults 65 and older. Interest in the week’s other news stories was much higher among older adults than younger adults. For example, 25% of adults 65 and older were closely following the midterm elections, compared with 5% of adults ages 18-29.

The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted October 2-5, 2014 among a national sample of 1,007  adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States (501 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 506 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 288 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology, see:  http://pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/politics/methodology/

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the 2012 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status, based on extrapolations from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting.

The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.