Voters Say NSA Spying Most Likely to Linger in Headlines

Several scandals rocked the U.S. this year, including the Internal Revenue Service's probing of conservative groups, Benghazi, and the National Security Administration's snooping on millions of ordinary Americans. But when it comes to the NSA scandal, over half of Americans either see the ordeal as "an embarrassing situation but not a scandal," or "not a big deal."

Half of Americans believed the Benghazi scandal and the Department of Justice's probing into journalists' phone records were both serious scandals, and almost half -- 48 percent -- viewed the IRS targeting of conservative political groups as a serious scandal.

When it comes to which one of these incidents will still be making headlines a year from today, however, 30 percent of American voters believe the NSA scandal will still be making the news -- a percentage higher than the rest of the controversies that plagued the Obama administration in 2013. Nearly as many voters -- 26 percent -- think the administration's handling in Benghazi, Libya, where the U.S. ambassador was killed last fall, will still be a major story a year from today. Only 13 percent expect the IRS's targeting of tea party and other conservative groups to be around, and a smaller number -- 7 percent -- feel that way about the Justice Department's targeting of reporters at the Associated Press and Fox News.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted Sept. 8-9. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.