Poll: Partisan views of surveillance differ dramatically under Bush & Obama

Republicans were much more likely to find controversial NSA surveillance operations acceptable under President Bush than under President Obama, according to a Pew survey. For Democrats, the opposite is true.

A new survey by Pew finds that Americans, by 56 percent to 41 percent, describe it as “acceptable” that the “NSA has been getting secret court orders to track calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism.” In January 2006, during the Bush administration, Pew found that by 51 percent to 47 percent, a majority of Americans found it “acceptable” that the “NSA has been investigating people suspected of terrorist involvement by secretly listening in on phone calls and reading emails without court approval.”