Mieke Eoyang, Ben Freeman, Ryan Pougiales, Benjamin Wittes Fri, Nov 23, 2018, 11:46 AM
Last year, we began a polling project intended to serve as a running gauge of the public’s confidence in a variety of institutions on national security matters. We had observed that traditional public polling had only asked about national security when it appeared as a topic in the public discourse, and thus was of higher salience. But this was biasing. People are more worried about terrorism right after a major attack, for example. What about in times when national security topics are not in the news? How elastic is people’s confidence in institutions on national security matters?