[Posted by Karl] This week’s screwy CNN poll was at least useful in encapsulating the establishment media’s conventional wisdom about the 2012 campaign: the gender gap and likeability are the keys to Pres. Obama’s reelection over likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Unsurprisingly, the reality is a bit more complex than the spin. Consider the gender gap, as Ramesh Ponnuru does: Of the eight presidential elections from 1980 to 2008, Republicans won five (four if you exclude 2000). Republicans carried women, albeit narrowly, three times ; Democrats carried men twice. Republicans can lose even while winning men, as in 1996. Democrats can lose while winning women, as in 2004. The evidence suggests that women are more inclined than men to vote for Democrats, but this gap doesn’t consistently help either party. It isn’t the case that the larger the gender gap, the worse Republicans do. Republicans did seven points better among men than women in 2004, when they won. They did five points better in 2008, when they lost. Obama barely won men in 2008. If this race is at all competitive, he will lose them this time. And that’s not all we can predict. Romney will win among large subgroups of women: those who are married, those who are white, those who go to church regularly. Gender isn’t the principal determinant of women’s votes any more than it is of men’s. Meanwhile, Doug Schoen compiles the arguments why Obama is unlikely to significantly improve his standing among male voters — and specifically among male independents and swing voters. Harry J. Enten not only dissects the gender gap, but also the race gap: The good news for Romney and the Republicans is that they don’t need to win in 2012 among minority groups. Latinos and African Americans combined will probably make up a little less than 25% of the 2012 electorate. Whites, on the other hand, will make up somewhere between 72-75%. If Romney and the Republicans continue to lose minorities by between 47 and 90 percentage points, as they did with Latinos and African Americans respectively in 2008 , they will have to win white voters by around 20 points, instead of their 12-point 2008 lead. It turns out that there is a precedent for this massive white swing in the face of a static minority support for the Democrats. Enten points to the midterm results from 2006 and 2010, which is a little risky, given the difference in the likely turnout demographics between midterms and general elections. However, he notes the GOP only needs to improve its margins with white voters by about 8%-10% rather than the 19% improvement the GOP saw from 2006 to 2010. As for likeability, there is actually little empirical study (afaik) of its effect on election outcomes. However, the WaPo’s Chris Cillizza notes that in elections with an incumbent since 1980, Mondale, Dole and Kerry all had high favorable ratings and lost, while Bill Clinton won with middling favorable ratings. I would add that the focus on Obama’s favorables tends to obscure the fact that he also tends to have high unfavorables, close to those of Romney, who has lower favorables, but a fair share of unknowns. Even the CNN poll had Romney’s favorables rebounding as the nasty phase of the GOP primaries ends; Obama, as a universally known quantity, is likely at his ceiling. As Brendan Nyhan puts it at CJR: In reality, presidential election outcomes can almost never be attributed to a shift in a single demographic group. Likewise, most campaigns are decided by the popular vote, not the details of the Electoral College. For both reasons, journalists should keep their eye on the big picture. While forecasting models are hardly perfect , they have persuasively shown that presidential elections are shaped by fundamental factors like incumbency and the economy, which tend to move demographic groups roughly in parallel. Obama appears to be overperforming among women now, but campaigns tend to move voters toward the outcomes we’d expect given the fundamentals. The implication is that Romney’s standing among women is likely to recover somewhat. As I recently noted , campaign shocks to candidates’ standing in general election trial heats are largely transitory at this stage of the campaign (link requires subscription). Though the gender gap will persist, Republican women and GOP-leaning independents are likely to find reasons to return home after contraception leaves the news, Romney’s rivals stop attacking him, and the conventions remind them of their partisan loyalties. Polling at this stage of the campaign does not tell us much, but the media coverage of them says a lot about how the establishment would like to shape the campaign environment. A cynic might observe the media seemingly clings to attacks on the GOP, identity politics and the cult of personality as Obama’s strengths in an anemic economy. Those are not even not even the Emperor’s New Clothes; they are the Emperor’s Old Clothes. –Karl
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The Emperor’s Old Clothes
On Friday, candidates for US Senate in Texas squared off in a debate. I have made clear my view that Ted Cruz is the only candidate with a proven commitment to conservatism and that he is the guy to beat David DewCrist, the candidate everyone knows to be a squish but who deftly continues to hide behind the conservatism of Governor Perry and the people of Texas. Last week I asked whether DewCrist would defend his record and demonstrate that he is conservative. The answer is as it always is — that first, it’s almost impossible to glean anything meaningful from a Dewhurst speech or debate performance, and second, that there’s no actual conservative record to defend that wasn’t written or fought for by someone else. There’s no wonder Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewcrist has skipped 30 candidate debates or forums in this Senate race. He was yet again widely panned for a rather lackluster debate performance. One observer noted , “Dewhurst came across as stiff, very aloof and really blah… He had no charisma, to say the least. And it explains why he hasn’t showed up at the other forums and debates.” Cruz was criticized by the punditry as well, to be fair. But the criticism as best as I can tell was that Cruz was too pointed or that he was attacking too hard. The same article as above said pointed out that, “[f]rom the outset, Cruz turned every question into a criticism of Dewhurst, trying to paint him as a moderate lieutenant governor who had allowed state spending to increase.” Seriously? Apparently it is arrogant to attack DewCrist’s lackluster record and penchant for spending. Cruz said, “I don’t consider a $72 billion increase a cut,” referring to how much DewCrist has increased spending since 2003, when he took the reins as Lt. Governor. The worst part about it is that Dewhurst has been a thorn in the side of conservatives in Texas for a long time – often leading the legislature to bigger spending and fighting Governor Perry’s record of cutting back the size and scope of government. For example, a 2003 Dallas Morning News Article noted: “The tussle between the governor and Mr. Dewhurst underscores a widening budgetary rift. Mr. Perry and House GOP leaders want more dramatic spending reductions than do Mr. Dewhurst, many Senate Republicans and most Democrats in both chambers.” (Robert T. Garrett, “Perry-Dewhurst Rift Over Budget Grows,” Dallas Morning News, 3/26/03) We have too much fuzzy math in DC already. It’s imperative that we elect Ted Cruz to join Senators Jim DeMint, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Pat Toomey, and Tom Coburn – they need support and can count on Cruz to help them fight the establishment rather than joining the club on day one. This debate confirmed that the battle for Texas’s open U.S. Senate seat is a two-man race between Cruz and DewCrist. Cruz gave a detailed accounting of why DewCrist cannot be trusted to be a real conservative in the U.S. Senate – spending increases, accounting tricks used to ‘balance’ the budget, questionable health care statements, and dismissal of grassroots conservatives. DewCrist’s response? To fumble around and obfuscate. We should not lose sight of the importance of this race – electing a U.S. Senator from Texas. Think about it. Conservatives need to support Ted .
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We Need Ted Cruz
[Posted by Karl] Jonathan Chait disagrees. He’s wrong, as he is about many things. But he’s wrong in ways worth discussing. Chait’s target is the recent Third Way poll of independent voters, which he doesn’t like because “Third Way is an intra-party lobbying group that urges Democrats to adopt moderate, pro-business policies” and its poll tends to support its positions. He notes that if you frame poll questions differently you can get findings like those from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (taken for the Center for American Progress), such as 81% agreeing that “[r]egular people work harder and harder for less and less, while Wall Street CEOs enjoy bigger bonuses than ever.” To be sure, the wording of poll questions matters. However, Chait does not bother to quote the questions in the Third Way poll. It appears he does not like questions such as: I’m going to name some topics that have angered some people in America. For each one, please tell me if it makes you very angry, somewhat angry, not too angry, or not angry at all. The poll then asks about: Congressional gridlock; the national debt; Wall Street bailouts; America falling behind its global competitors; the wealthy not paying enough in taxes; the next generation’s ability to achieve the American Dream; corporate profits; and China’s economic rise. Another question that seems to bother Chait is: “What do you think would be the most effective way to strengthen our economy?”, giving reducing the deficit, reducing taxes and regulations, and reducing income inequality as options. Had Chait actually quoted the poll’s questions, it might have occurred to his readers that those questions sound much more neutral than the GQR questions he did quote. Indeed, the basic Third Way findings on economic opportunity vs. economic fairness are not much different from those of Gallup and Pew . However, the issue of question neutrality goes to a larger problem with Chait’s general concept of “real” public opinion polling: Pollsters understand that very slight differences in the wording of a question, or even in the ordering of questions, can produce dramatically different results. Polls that are actually designed to measure public opinion take great precautions to avoid tilting answers one way or another. They try to frame questions in as neutral fashion as possible, and when they do ask questions that gauge people’s ideological views, they measure it by looking at changes. So, for instance, a poll might ask if you prefer a larger government with more services, or a smaller government with fewer services. That is a classic polling question. It’s not an accurate snapshot of public opinion, though, because even though it’s posed in a completely neutral way, in frames the question in abstract terms rather than specific terms. Its value as a measuring tool is simply that polls as the same question in the same way every year, and the changes in response to the same question can help tell you how public opinion is changing. This is a wildly reductive view of public opinion polling, and especially reductive of political polling. The information gathered from the sorts of polling Chait describes is valuable — even if the polls generated for the establishment media and by entities like Gallup and Pew often fall short of the ideal. However, it does not logically follow that “advocacy” polls are not “real” polls. The issue is the quality of a given poll for its purpose. For example, another poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner — this time for Democracy Corps — looks at several of the messages Pres. Obama and Democrats have been putting out and tests them against hypothetical GOP messages (which are debatable, but beyond my scope today). It is not remotely neutral, but highly informative about public opinion for those actually conducting campaigns. It is advocacy polling like this (which the White House or the DNC surely conducts internally) that explains why Obama is mostly attacking the GOP instead of leading with claims that America is back or has made progress on job creation. Election campaigns are not waged solely in the editorial bullpens of the New York Times and Washington Post, or the offices of Gallup. Rather, beyond the fundamentals of peace and prosperity, they are driven by candidates and their messages. The candidates, their supporters and their messages are not neutral. In short, to suggest that advocacy polling is not “real” is in some senses exactly backwards. And to compare the recent Third Way poll to the Center for American Progress poll is laughable. Indeed, Third Way’s “advocacy” here rests primarily on the general, neutral approach of its poll. –Karl
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Advocacy polls are real polls
[Posted by Karl] As usual, you are positively encouraged to engage in sockpuppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply. Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself. Sockpuppet comments about the Republican primary race are strictly prohibited . If you wish to use sockpuppets for that purpose, confine your comments to this thread . Same goes for any discussion that is not funny where people want to get angry at each other. Offending comments will be summarily deleted and the violators flogged. And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not being funny. — Pres. Obama is a Chevy Volt… or possibly a Yugo. Those are the partial results from a focus group of Independent voters in Denver, CO and Richmond, VA sponsored by Resurgent Republic : Participants in all four focus groups were asked, “If President Obama was a car, what kind of car would he be and why?” Voters who still approve of President Obama do not perceive him as a risky choice, but on the other spectrum, voters who disapprove believe he hasn’t delivered and question whether he can change course moving forward. Positive responses liken Obama to practical cars: a minivan (family friendly), an Accord or Camry (not flashy or ostentatious), or a Jeep (navigates hurdles). Those who hold a more negative opinion of the President compare him to cars with persistent problems: an old luxury sports car (looks good on the outside, but what’s under the hood?), Chevy Volt (good idea, but no infrastructure to support it), or a Yugo (all flash, no dash). That’s the spicy blog fodder in these results, but the second bullet-point is probably more significant: President Obama’s strength with these voters is based upon his personal appeal not policy approval. These Independents like the President, and they praise his “family focus” and view him as more authentic than the average politician. However, participants’ personal regard for President Obama does not transfer to his policies. When asked what they like most about the President, participants refer almost solely to personal traits like his character and speaking skills. At best, they credit President Obama for trying, but offer minimal support for his policies, including the economic stimulus or health care reform. Compared to four years ago, these voters are not where they thought they’d be today, so as a result, they are not convinced President Obama is leading in the right direction. Focus groups do not produce scientific results, but the responses here track the results of the latest Third Way poll of independents and “swing independents,” which shows Indies closer to Mitt Romney on the issues, but giving Obama higher favorables than Romney. [ Note: Obama's unfavorables are equal to Romney's -- and more strongly unfavorable -- in this poll. ] Resurgent Republic suggests the overall economic picture may ultimately weigh on Obama. Are they right? As it turns out, they may well be right. As political scientist John Sides notes at the NYT, voters’ perceptions of candidates as people are not necessarily consequential to presidential election outcomes, in part because perceptions of candidates are more a consequence than a cause of voting, in part because there are many potential trait dimensions on which voters could evaluate candidates. Sides tends to emphasize the role of partisanship is shaping these perceptions, but there is some evidence the same is true of independents (although I am unaware of data for true independents). For example, in the days before the 2008 election, the Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll showed a big shift among Indies on whether issues or qualities rate as the more important factor in their vote. At the same time, McCain’s edge among those more concerned with personal qualities shrank by five percent. In a terrible economic environment for the GOP, those numbers look like rationalization. Four years later, the establishment’s hope that Obama’s personal qualities will carry him to victory in a weak economy may end up looking like a rationalization also. –Karl
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Sockpuppet Friday: Pres. Obama is a Chevy Volt
Partly in response to my piece about movement conservatives generally losing the Republican presidential nomination, the Atlantic ‘s Conor Friedersdorf lists five reasons why this is the case. I agree with much of what he has to say, but here I’ll focus on my disagreements. Conservatives aren’t very good at gauging the conservatism of GOP candidates.
