NSA Leak More of a Problem, Less of a Scandal

Although the Obama administration has several scandals swirling over its head, American voters see the National Security Agency surveillance leak as more of a problem rather than a scandal. According to a new Rasmussen poll, the NSA leak is a few steps ahead of other controversies in being problematic for the administration.

The poll found 43 percent of voters viewed the NSA's secret surveillance program as a serious scandal, while 20 percent of voters said it was no big deal. Fifty-one percent of voters see the IRS targeting of conservative political groups as a serious scandal, and over half of voters saw the Benghazi incident as a serious scandal. Forty-seven percent of voters believed the collection of reporters' phone records is a serious scandal.

But when it comes to the most serious of all of these controversies, voters saw the NSA surveillance program as the most serious of them all.

Scott Rasmussen says the underlying theme in all of these controversies is a public distrust in government. Many in Washington are frustrated by the public distrust. They dream of public relations programs to overcome it, said Rasmussen in a recent newspaper column. What is needed, though, is for the government to change its behavior, so that it can earn the trust of the people it serves.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 30-July 1. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.