Time for a change?

 I wanted to write a post on opinion about redistricting, but there are only a few survey questions on the subject.  Two points are clear:  most people think it should be done by some body other than state legislatures and most people pay little attention to the issue (many don't know how it's actually done in their state).  In the course of looking for questions, I ran across one that I'd written about in the pioneering days of this blog, where people were asked to choose among three statements:

a.  "Our form of government, based on the constitution, has stood the test of time and no fundamental changes need to be made in it."

b.  "The Constitution has served its purpose well, but it has not kept up with the times and should be thoroughly revised to make it fit present day needs."

c.  "Changing times have outmoded our system of government and we might as well accept the fact that sooner or later we will have to have a new form of government."

At that time, I just found that it was asked in 1971, but now I discovered that it was also asked in 1973, 1976 and 1979.  The percent choosing each response:

The earlier numbers are from a question that had the same statement for option b, but somewhat different statements for a and c (see the linked post for complete wording). Over the long term, opinions shifted away from "no change" and towards the middle option, but between 1971-3 and 1976-9 there was a move towards "no change."  I can think of two possible reasons:  first, the celebration of the bicentennial in 1976 brought a lot of mostly favorable attention to the founders and second, after the Watergate scandal concluded with Nixon's resignation there was a widespread feeling that "the system worked."  

As far as group differences in opinions, liberals were more likely to favor revising the Constitution, but it was only a small difference.  The Democratic/Republican difference was even smaller.  Two larger differences were that younger people and blacks were more likely to favor revision or replacement.  Education also mattered:

Not HS grad:    36%     35%    28%

HS:                   44%     43%    13%

College:            63%     33%      4%

College graduates were substantially more likely to favor "no fundamental changes," and much less likely to favor "sooner or later we will have to change."  In my earlier post, I found the same general pattern in the 1971 data, and remarked that it could be regarded as surprising because more educated people are usually less attached to tradition.   I think this example shows something important about the effect of education on political views.  There's a tradition, going from Joseph Schumpeter through Rob Henderson's "luxury beliefs," that educated people are attracted to oppositional or edgy views.  But in some cases, like this one, educated people are more strongly attached to what you could regard as the core beliefs of a society.  

Hopefully someone will repeat the question in connection with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  I think that the connection with ideology and party would be considerably stronger today, since the idea of constitutional originalism has become a central part of conservative thought. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]