The series of commercials sponsored by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that question Democratic candidate John Kerry's military record sparked an extraordinary amount of debate about the "fairness" of this year's political dialogue. The Democratic and Republican National Conventions fueled that debate, as the Rev. Al Sharpton and Sen. Zell Miller unleashed vitriolic diatribes against Bush and Kerry, respectively.
A new Gallup Poll* conducted just after the Republican convention sought to determine whether Americans perceive either candidate as being unfairly attacked by the other party. Slightly more than half of Americans (52%) say they believe that the Republicans have unfairly attacked Kerry; 41% say that Kerry has not been unfairly attacked. Americans are slightly less likely, at 41%, to believe that the Democrats have unfairly attacked Bush; 53% say Bush has not been unfairly attacked.
Partisan Differences
The overall results for these two questions mask substantial partisan differences. It's no surprise to find that Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to feel that Kerry has been slighted by Republicans: 77% of Democrats say that the Republican Party has attacked Kerry unfairly, compared with a quarter (25%) of Republicans. The partisan gap is somewhat smaller on the other side, with 59% of Republicans saying that the Democrats have unfairly attacked Bush and 22% of Democrats saying so. Independents are more evenly divided, though they are somewhat more likely to feel Kerry has been treated wrongly -- 57% of independents believe Kerry has been unfairly attacked and 44% believe Bush has been unfairly attacked.
Bottom Line
Criticism of Kerry was intense during the Republican National Convention last week; the Kerry camp responded in kind at a midnight rally after the convention with harsh words for the president and vice president. As the mudslinging intensifies this fall, it will be interesting to see how much each side is willing to test Americans' tolerance for "going negative."
*Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,018 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Sept. 3-5, 2004. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
