I would also be curious if the polling was equally different if they narrowed the "public" side of the poll to college graduates or somehow filtered out completely non-technical people.
I doubt it would change. Educated liberals are mostly making up the anti-vaccine crowd. I've seen STEM type guys all over the board with GMO and pesticides and such.
You'd get a bigger swing in how you phrased the questions because the problem isn't intellect (rare that I say that) but rather raw knowledge and we all know from political polling on the gun issue phrasing means a lot.
Let's take GMO crops for instance.
Q1: "Do you think genetically modified crops are safe?"
... You'll get answers of No a lot on that one from the general public. Because the question gives them very little information.
Q1A: "Do you think corn crops that have been sprayed with a natural organic pesticide that has never been known to cause harm to humans is safe?"
... You'll get a Yes out of most on that one.
Q2A: "Do you think corn that can make this organic pesticide on its own is safer to eat than crops treated with more traditional organophosphate insecticide, a chemical class created during WWII mostly intended to kill other human beings but was also adopted to kill insects?"
... You'll probably get a yes out of that one too. But the same person might object to GMOs if just ask them about GMOs.
People are stupid. I'm sorry. Oklahoma State University just came out with a study and a throw-away question was should food that contains DNA be labeled as such; 80% of the survey takers said yes.
You can't rationalize with the general public. You just deal with them.