By a wide margin, more Americans think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have inflated the national debt than the percentage who blame domestic spending or the tax cuts enacted in the past decade for doing the same, according to a Pew poll released Tuesday.

Those beliefs actually run counter to data recently released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which showed that the Bush-era tax cuts have been the single biggest factor in ballooning the federal deficit. While the wars have also contributed greatly to the deficit, Pew's findings illuminate how Americans more readily perceive the visceral aspects of federal budgetary policy.