Survey Cites Conservative ‘Vocal Minority’ : Politics: Talk radio callers or those who write their lawmakers seem to be more critical of Clinton than average citizens are. Public opinion is distorted.

The “vocal minority” who call radio talk shows or contact the White House and Congress are much more conservative and critical of President Clinton than is the average American, according to findings released Thursday by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press.

“American public opinion is being distorted and exaggerated” by these voices, providing Republicans a significant advantage over Democrats in important outlets of public expression, said Andrew Kohut, who directed the recent nationwide poll.

“As a consequence, Bill Clinton’s disapproval score is 10 to 15 percentage points higher among people who have talked on the radio, written their congressional representative or responded to call-in polls than it is in the general population,” he noted.

Talk-radio callers and listeners were found to be particularly conservative. Their support for prayer in schools was greater than in the public at large, as was their opposition to gays in the military, tax increases and military involvement in Bosnia.

“In the current environment, these new voices of public opinion can caricature discontent with American political institutions, rather than genuinely reflect public disquiet,” Kohut said.

The Times Mirror Center is a unit of Times Mirror Co., the owner of the Los Angeles Times and other newspaper, broadcasting and publishing enterprises. Pollsters conducted telephone interviews with 1,507 adults nationwide May 18-24. The results have an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Nearly one in five Americans (18%) responding to the survey said that they called or wrote Washington in the past 12 months. That was substantially more than those who attended a town meeting or public hearing, wrote some other elected official or responded to any 800 or 900 call-in survey.

Those who contacted representatives in Washington tended to come from the better-educated, more affluent segments of society, the poll found. They were most likely to be Republicans: 39%, compared with 27% who were Democrats and 33% who were independents.

The survey showed that almost half of Americans listen to talk radio relatively often. About one in 20 said that they have called in and gotten on the air. The number of conservative callers and listeners was twice that of liberals.

Clinton is taking a heavy rap from these activists. Survey questions put to this group found they are more critical of his job performance, more negative about his economic program and more hostile to him than is the public at large. Those responses had an error margin substantially higher than that of the overall survey.

“The vocal minority’s views on Clinton may reflect the influence of talk show hosts who conduct the political discourse,” Kohut said, noting that a poll of 112 such hosts showed that they were “extremely critical” of the President.

Only 26% of the hosts approved of Clinton’s performance--and 42% said that they expected him to fail to achieve his most important legislative goals.

Nevertheless, the talk show hosts were found to be more middle-of-the-road and politically independent than their audiences, despite the prominence of conservative personalities like Rush Limbaugh.

Those Americans who speak out tend to be strongly anti-Congress: 58% hold an unfavorable view, compared with only 36% of the general populace. The activists also hold less favorable opinions than other Americans of network television news, newspapers, the United Nations and the Supreme Court.