October 21, 2002
Report & Analysis · Data · Other Poll Releases
Seventy-seven percent of Georgians believe another terrorist attack on the U.S. is either very likely (37 percent) or somewhat likely (40 percent) within the next 12 months, according to the latest Peach State Poll. Although respondents in the Atlanta metropolitan area are more likely to say another attack is very likely than are those in other parts of the state, the notion that another attack is imminent is quite wide-spread.
The Peach State Poll is a state-wide quarterly survey of public opinion conducted by the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
Despite fear of attack, the Georgia public expresses a good deal of confidence in the federal government's preparedness for any such attacks. About three of every four respondents (76 percent) to the September poll said that the federal government was either very prepared (18 percent) or somewhat prepared (58 percent) to deal with a large-scale terrorist attack. A majority of Georgians (58 percent) believe that the creation of a Department of Homeland Security will make the country safer.
Other survey results:
* Sixty percent of the public say that they did something to mark the first anniversary of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
* A vast majority of the Georgia public (71 percent) say that they have not changed any aspect of their daily lives in response to the September 11 attacks. Of the 28 percent who did change daily life, the most common change is that they are more cautious and alert when carrying out daily activities.
* More than one-third of the public in Georgia are very concerned (37 percent) that the measures enacted to fight terrorism could restrict individual freedoms, and another 32 percent say that they are somewhat concerned about this. Nonwhites express a higher degree of concern about the impact on individual freedoms than do whites.
* There is less intense concern for the financial costs than for the costs to individual civil liberties. Only 28 percent of the public say that they are very concerned about the financial costs of homeland security measures, although another 40 percent say they are somewhat concerned about these costs.
* Cutting spending on social programs or increasing taxes are both preferred to cutting external defense spending as a means of paying for homeland security.
These data are taken from a Peach State Poll survey conducted between September 18 and September 24, 2002. The poll included 800 telephone interviews of randomly selected adults in Georgia. For a sample of this size, the margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level is +/- 3.5 percent.
