Public Opinion on arming Syrian rebels– we don’t really know

I was somewhat intrigued by the headline “Public Remains Opposed to Arming Syrian Rebels” of a recent Pew survey as my sense is that the public is far too clueless on the issue to support or oppose.   I suspect what the average America knows about the complexities of arming (or not) the Syrian rebels is incredibly minimal.  I’ll admit to hardly paying attention myself but due to elite cue-taking, rather than laziness, I’m going to assume that if Obama thinks it’s a good idea, than it’s probably not a horrible one.  I suspect that it is what the administration thinks is the “least bad” idea.  Anyway, here’s the data from Pew:

And why should the administration not be the least bit concerned to seemingly be opposed by a full 70% of the public?  Here’s why:

That’s probably less interest than in Kim Kardashian’s baby.

Honestly, my biggest problem with this survey is that “don’t know” is a voluntary response, rather than an offered choice.  I think that is a huge mistake on an issue with such little interest.  My supposition is that with a more honest question wording that included, “or do you not know enough about the situation to have an opinion?” we would have a much more realistic assessment where “don’t know” was actually a plurality winner.  One of the ongoing pervasive mistakes in public opinion is implicitly encouraging people to choose a “know”ing response option even when there’s reason to believe many people just don’t know or care enough.  Unless (appropriately) encouraged otherwise, most respondents want to give a main response category.  Pew knows this and should take it into account.

Of course, on its own, this is not so horrible, the problem is that all the news headlines are going to present this as if Americans have a clear consensus on the subject.  Absent better question wording that takes into account Americans’ lack of interest on the subject, I think that is not a fair conclusion.  I should also mention, this is a major theme of David Moore’s The Opinion Makers (an excellent and highly readable book for the layman that I assign for my Public Opinion course) on how public opinion in the run-up to the Iraq War was largely mis-understood and mis-reported.