More than two-thirds of people who live near a shuttered California nuclear power plant where a radiation leak occurred believe it can be restarted safely, at least according to poll results released Friday.

Just days before that survey came out, however, a different poll arrived at a very disparate result. It concluded that a majority of people in the same region wanted to permanently shut down the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. It also found that 73 percent harbored some fear about a nuclear accident.

The conflicting conclusions aren't surprising, polling experts said.

Voter surveys can be crafted in ways that generate exactly the result an interest group desires, said Darry Sragow, a Los Angeles-area Democratic strategist who has run statewide campaigns and helped design and analyze polls.

"It is a no-brainer to influence the results of a poll," Sragow said. "Any professional who does polling or who commissions polls knows how to influence the results."

The wording of questions and the order in which they're asked can sway the results of opinion surveys, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

If pollsters ask several questions about environmental disasters and then ask whether San Onofre should be reopened, that's likely to spur a negative answer, Sonenshein said. Conversely, if questions about energy shortages precede a query about whether the plant should be started again, he said, the result will be different.

The early questions, Sonenshein said, are "priming the person to look at an issue in a particular way."

The contradictory opinion results arrived as Southern California Edison Co., operator of San Onofre, announced it is seeking permission to restart one of two steam generators at the crippled San Diego County facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must approve the request.

Edison argues that it can run the Unit 2 generator at 70 percent power and avoid the vibrations that caused tubes to wear against each other and degrade. NRC identified that as the main cause of the Jan. 31 radiation leak in the Unit 3 generator. Although the generators are similar in design, Unit 2 was built later and has a superior support structure that makes it less susceptible to tube wear, Edison said (Greenwire, Oct. 4).

Edison sponsored the survey by GfK Roper that concluded residents have confidence the plant can be restarted and run safely. Environmental group Friends of the Earth funded the poll from David Binder Research that found many people prefer switching to conservation and renewable power over reopening the plant.

Neither poll could be considered a neutral inquiry, said Sragow, who looked at all the questions and results in both surveys.

"The way the questions are worded and the order in which the questions are read predisposes the respondents to reach different conclusions," he said.

Preliminary questions count

Both polls asked questions of people who live in the area where San Onofre supplies power, which includes much of Los Angeles County and several nearby counties.

The Edison poll reached 1,031 registered voters by telephone from mid- to late September and had a 4.5-point margin of error. The Friends of the Earth survey talked to 700 registered voters in the same region from Sept. 11 to 17 and had a 3.7-point margin of error.

The Edison poll asked a dozen questions before reaching the inquiry about whether the plant could be reopened safely. Several of the early questions asked people how much they agreed or disagreed with statements that included:

"The continued operation of existing nuclear energy plants will help California energy companies meet the state's new clean air standards," "The continued operation of existing nuclear energy plants maintains the diverse energy supply California needs so that we are not overly dependent on any single source of energy," and "Nuclear power generation in California should be replaced with renewable energy sources such as wind or solar even if it means construction of new transmission lines through communities and neighborhoods, including your own."

While people can answer negatively to those statements, Sragow said, each one subtly argues for nuclear energy.

"By the time that you get to the ultimate question, you have basically an environment where the respondents have gotten information about nuclear energy, all of which is positive," he said.

The question about safely restarting the plant is prefaced by a statement on the history of the plant and the radiation leak. It concludes with information that Edison, outside experts and NRC are seeking to "identify a solution to safely reopen the power plant and resume operations," and that Edison "has stated publicly it will not resume operations until it and [NRC] are satisfied that the power plant can be run safely."

The poll then asked registered voters how confident they are that the plant can be restarted and run safely, and 68 percent answered very or somewhat confident.

Asked about the poll structure, Edison spokesman Scott Andresen said that "we have been up front saying that we did commission a poll by GfK Roper about San Onofre." He referred the request about the poll's questions to GfK Roper. That firm did not immediately respond to an emailed inquiry.

In the Friends of the Earth poll, 58 percent said they supported permanently shutting down the plant. That response came after voters heard negative information about San Onofre, Sragow said. The pollsters read a paragraph about the facility that included the words "accident that released radiation," "significantly flawed computer analysis," "federal probe" and "heavy wear to the alloy tubing."

"A genuinely objective poll would state the arguments for reopening the plant and then state the arguments against reopening the plant and then ask voters what their opinion is," Sragow said.

Friends of the Earth spokesman Bill Walker defended that group's poll.

"David Binder is a reputable pollster and it's no secret he usually works for centrist Democrats," Walker said in an email. "That said, if you look at our poll you will see that we did not shy from reporting results that would not necessarily be considered favorable to us -- i.e., that 55 percent of those polled believe California's nuclear reactors are operating safety.

"We told the truth in our questions, although the wording of course reflected what we think are the logical reasons for closing the plant," Walker said. "To ask the questions in a way that included Edison's arguments would have made no sense, as we frankly believe that Edison's arguments are not based in fact."

Reaching different voters

Sragow noted that "the audiences for these two polls were different." In the Edison-funded poll, the people reached appear to have been more optimistic than those contacted by the Friends of the Earth survey, he said.

Both polls early on asked a variation on the question of whether, on an overall basis, things in California are on the right direction or the wrong track. Of those reached by the Edison poll, 41 percent replied "right track," versus 53 percent who answered "wrong track." Out of those called in the Friends of the Earth survey, 29 percent said right track, compared with 61 percent who said wrong track.

"That is a huge difference," Sragow said. "You're going to get very different result."

People with higher incomes might be more positive about the future, he said. Those people could be reached by calling numbers in more affluent ZIP codes, he added.