P&I Online readers were split nearly evenly on the issue of the Pew Charitable Trusts recent entry into offering pension advice to policymakers.
The question was asked in conjunction with a Pensions & Investments story about Pew officials moving beyond their traditional role as researchers into providing technical assistance to troubled public retirement systems.
Fifty-three percent of poll respondents felt the change was an extension of Pew's traditional research, and 47% percent felt it was a conflict of interest for Pew.
The close results could be attributed to promotion from competing interest groups. The poll was promoted by the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems via Twitter and by the Lew Rockwell blog. Their promotion helped send traffic to the poll, which received 1,347 votes.
Although the number of votes was unusually high for a P&I Online poll, it was not the highest traffic record. That honor goes to a question asked the week of April 8. Like the Pew poll, it asked about a politically heated issue: President Barack Obama's proposal to cap tax-favored retirement accounts to $3 million. Readers overwhelmingly were opposed to the proposal.
