In the poll on con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries I men­tioned a few days ago, I most­ly focused on the item about vac­cines, men­tion­ing in pass­ing the fact that Democ­rats (and lib­er­als) bought into far few­er con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries than Repub­li­cans (or con­ser­v­a­tives). I did­n’t point out that, of the “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” Democ­rats were more like­ly to accept, sev­er­al require a rather fine pars­ing to reg­is­ter as con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries (rather than sim­ply an over-broad but accu­rate account of history).

For instance, the PPP poll asked whether “the CIA was instru­men­tal in dis­trib­ut­ing crack cocaine into America’s inner cities in the 1980s.” There’s no doubt at this point, as even the CIA acknowl­edges, that con­trac­tors the CIA spon­sored to bring guns to the Con­tras were haul­ing drugs back. The CIA claims to have been shocked (shocked!) that the smug­glers they employ­ing could pos­si­bly be smug­gling drugs, and denies help­ing these smug­glers evade the DEA. Whether you believe that or not, there’s no doubt that the CIA was help­ing the folks who were mov­ing drugs, espe­cial­ly cocaine, into the coun­try. Does that make the CIA “instru­men­tal”? Prob­a­bly not, but is that a dis­tinc­tion you make when a poll­ster’s record­ing is on the phone with you?  (For what it’s worth, polit­i­cal Inde­pen­dents were the most like­ly to agree with that poll item.)

These sub­tle shades of mean­ing are even more impor­tant on the ques­tion about whether “Pres­i­dent Bush inten­tion­al­ly mis­led the pub­lic about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of weapons of mass destruc­tion in Iraq to pro­mote the Iraq war.” As a sim­ple his­tor­i­cal mat­ter, Pres­i­dent Bush, his admin­is­tra­tion, and oth­er advo­cates for war def­i­nite­ly made false claims about Iraq’s WMDs; the main jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for war was the claim that those weapons – and pro­grams to cre­ate more – exist­ed, but they did­n’t. After the inva­sion, exten­sive and unhin­dered inves­ti­ga­tions found no evi­dence of active nuclear, bio­log­i­cal, or chem­i­cal weapons pro­grams, nor of usable stockpiles.

To turn this fac­tu­al assess­ment into a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry lib­er­als might endorse, PPP adds a lay­er to the ques­tion, ask­ing whether Pres­i­dent Bush “inten­tion­al­ly mis­led.” It’s a ques­tion of men­tal state: did he know his claims were false, or did he craft a biased process for gath­er­ing and vet­ting intel­li­gence that gen­er­at­ed biased evi­dence and analy­sis, thus allow­ing him and his staff to over­es­ti­mate and over­state the threat posed by Sad­dam Hus­sein? Posed with that ques­tion, 14% of Democ­rats felt that Pres­i­dent Bush did­n’t lie (15% were unsure), while 73% of Repub­li­cans felt he did­n’t lie.  Quite a gap.

A big part of that gap comes because of a coun­ter­fac­tu­al belief that’s wide­spread in Repub­li­can cir­cles: the belief that Sad­dam Hus­sein real­ly did pos­sess weapons of mass destruc­tion.  A sur­vey from Dart­mouth, con­duct­ed in late April, 2012, found that 63% of Repub­li­cans agreed that: “Iraq had weapons of mass destruc­tion when the Unit­ed States invad­ed in 2003.”  By con­trast, 63% of Democ­rats cor­rect­ly recalled that there were, in fact, no WMDs in Iraq when we invad­ed (15% thought there were WMDs, 22% were unsure). That par­ti­san dif­fer­ence in fac­tu­al knowl­edge shows up con­sis­tent­ly in pub­lic opin­ion polls ever since the invasion.

So, com­bin­ing those polls, we learn that 63% of Repub­li­cans think there were WMDs in Iraq, and an addi­tion­al 10% (give or take the mar­gin of error) know there weren’t, but want to give George W. Bush cred­it for hav­ing fooled him­self into believ­ing the BS he was selling.

Com­bin­ing those polls gets tricky though, since more Democ­rats seem to think Bush lied (per the PPP poll) than think there weren’t WMDs in Iraq (in the ear­li­er poll). I’d guess that the strong word­ing of the ques­tion trig­gered a stronger par­ti­san, even trib­al response. Repub­li­cans were more like­ly to try to defend Bush, while Democ­rats were more like­ly to vil­i­fy him.

You can see this effect in the ques­tion about cli­mate change, which 58% of Repub­li­cans in the PPP sur­vey said was “a hoax.” But that same week, a new sur­vey from the researchers who pro­duce the “Six Amer­i­c­as” assess­ment of pub­lic opin­ion on cli­mate change showed that only a quar­ter of Repub­li­cans or Repub­li­can-lean­ing Inde­pen­dents think cli­mate change is not hap­pen­ing. Half know that it is hap­pen­ing, and more – 6 in 10 – think we should do some­thing about it.

Again, phras­ing the ques­tion in a more politi­cized way and in stronger terms made peo­ple more like­ly to reject the sci­ence. The Six Amer­i­c­as sur­vey defined cli­mate change care­ful­ly, as “the idea that the world’s aver­age tem­per­a­ture has been increas­ing over the past 150 years, may be increas­ing more in the future, and that oth­er aspects of the world’s cli­mate may change as a result.” That care­ful, sci­en­tif­ic fram­ing strips the issue of its polit­i­cal con­text: it isn’t a ques­tion about eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy or alle­giance to a par­ti­san agen­da. Ask­ing whether “glob­al warm­ing” (the more politi­cized term) is a “hoax” taps into the par­ti­san fram­ing. Sen­a­tor James Inhofe has used that phrase as a book title and in Sen­ate hear­ings, to attack both the sci­ence of cli­mate change and the poli­cies pro­posed to address it.

While you might expect that stronger charges would attract less sup­port – log­i­cal­ly, the sub­set of peo­ple who think glob­al warm­ing is a hoax ought to be nest­ed with­in, and there­fore small­er than the sub­set who think it isn’t hap­pen­ing – we see that they don’t. Plac­ing charges into a polit­i­cal con­text draws in peo­ple who know that the under­ly­ing fac­tu­al claim is wrong, but still want to endorse their tribe’s posi­tion. As I’ve said before, it’s often worth being wrong in order to main­tain group membership.