Adam Zyglis via politicalcartoons.com
I've been a fan of polling since I have been following politics. Besides using data to validate our opinion of what the American public really thinks, there's a great deal to learn from the polls above and beyond the horse race numbers.
This isn't going to be a dissection of how many Democrats are in this poll or Republicans in that one. My view is that it's a waste of time to do that kind of analysis, something we learned two cycles ago, and which we are all a bit wiser about now. Party ID is a variable and not fixed, and it changes according to people's views of current circumstance.
I'd like to look at some of the underlying fundamentals and subgroups of demographics that might have been overlooked rather than whether Obama's numbers have slipped or not (for that, see Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: The mysterious disappearing Obama slide). Here are seven areas that are worth a second look.
(Continue reading below the fold)
How important are gas prices?
Tricky question. Of course, they are important. This
list of energy polls notes that 2/3 of the country feel the financial impact (63 percent in the latest ABC News/
Washington Post poll), but in terms of overall approval of the president, and how people will vote in November, it's not so clear what that means. From
ABC/Washington Post:
Obama’s approval, meanwhile, has taken a hit especially among Americans who are less financially secure, and therefore more likely to be affected by higher gas prices: Compared with last month his job rating is down by 17 points among whites with incomes less than $50,000, and by a similar 15 points among non-college-educated whites. His rating drops to 37 percent among people who report financial hardship from gas prices, vs. 60 percent of those who don’t.
Wikimedia
Even while most Americans criticize Obama’s handling of gas prices, the public divides on whether there’s anything he can actually do about it. That’s a shift from 2005-6, when six in 10 or more thought the Bush administration could do something to counter the problem.
From the
New York Times:
Republicans have seized on the issue to attack President Obama’s management of the economy. The president has responded with speeches defending his energy policies, including increased domestic oil production.
But there is surprisingly little evidence that gas prices deserve an outsize reputation for economic and political influence.
And from
National Journal, there's a good deal more nuance in the "gas price" question:
The poll showed 44 percent of respondents placing more trust in President Obama than congressional Republicans to make the right decisions to lower gasoline prices. The GOP was favored by 32 percent. How that answer broke down by subgroups—gender, age, race, and income—suggests some of the contours of the upcoming congressional and presidential elections. Nonwhite Hispanics backed Obama by a whopping 86 percent to 5 percent. Young people backed him too, 64 percent to 18 percent. But those margins decreased as the age cohort got older. A consistently difficult group for congressional Democrats and President Obama—white men with some college education or less—proved to be reliably thorny on this question as well. They trusted congressional Republicans more than President Obama on the fuel-cost issue, 43 percent to 31 percent. College-educated white women, a key demographic for both parties, broke better for Obama, with 44 percent of them trusting the president more to make the right decisions about lowering fuel prices. Congressional Republicans were favored by 35 percent of that group.
In that last poll, only 14 percent blame the president's energy policies directly, and in the
Bloomberg National Poll, 23 percent blame Obama more, while 66 percent blame oil companies and Middle Eastern nations. And as of now, at least, Obama's energy policy seems to be winning over the demographic groups he needs to have in his corner in November.
In any case, the idea that gas prices are the reason for the president's drop in the polls are belied by two things: 1) Obama gets more support than Republicans on his decision making, even though folks are unhappy about the high prices, and 2 ) Obama's poll numbers are not dropping. In fact, he's at 51 percent in the very latest poll out from National Journal (Stronger, but Not Secure). Not a lock, but not dropping.
There may well be a price (over $5.30 per gallon, says Gallup) where it starts to matter, but for now, every breathless media report about Obama's numbers dropping because of gas prices? Just flat-out wrong.
Exit polls and old, white Republicans
We make fun of the GOP for being the old white people's party, but as Ron Brownstein notes, there's a great deal of truth in that behind the numbers. The italics are mine.
This year’s tumultuous Republican presidential race has underscored the dominance of whites, especially older white voters, in the GOP. After Tuesday’s contests in Alabama and Mississippi, exit polls have been conducted in 16 states that have held Republican primaries or caucuses. In all but two, whites cast at least 90 percent of the ballots. Indeed, whites delivered at least 94 percent of the votes in all but five GOP contests this year. Whites represented only 74 percent of all voters in the 2008 general election.
Among those 16 states, only Michigan has seen its minority vote share increase by more than a trace (to 8 percent, from 4 percent in 2008). Whites are dominating the GOP electorate even in rapidly diversifying states. In Nevada, whites were just 69 percent of all voters in the 2008 general election, but they cast 90 percent of the votes in last month’s Republican caucus. Similar gaps are evident in GOP primaries from Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia, to Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma.
This year’s Republican electorate shades not only white but also gray. In 12 of the 16 states where exit polls have been conducted, voters over 50 cast at least 60 percent of the GOP primary votes; in the other four, they represented at least 55 percent of the vote. Just 43 percent of 2008 general-election voters were that old. Even compared with the 2008 GOP primaries, the gray tint is much more pronounced.
Those are pretty amazing statistics, but keep in mind Obama was only running 41 percent with white voters in the latest Allstate/
National Journal Heartland Monitor poll. Obama took 43 percent of the white vote
in 2008 (40 percent of whites 65 and older), and because of demographic shifts he could shave a few points off of that and still win.
By the way, Obama won 67 percent of the Latino voters in 2008 compared to 31 percent for McCain. And now? Obama beats Romney 67 percent to 25 percent in the latest Univision/ABC News/Latino Decisions poll, which is from January 2012. There is some soft support for Obama there (only 55 percent are certain), but so far he's doing what he needs to do. Latinos were 9 percent of the voting population in 2008, and likely higher this year. How much higher remains to be seen.
This is not 2008
From Daily Kos—The effect of the Republican primary on Mitt Romney (it ain't pretty)—and from First Read we have this observation:
By March of 2008, both Obama and Clinton enjoyed net-positive favorability ratings among the public at large (Obama: 51 positive, 28 negative; Clinton: 45 positive, 43 negative according to the March 2008 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll).
Romney and Santorum haven’t fared as well with the general public, according to this month’s numbers, also taken from the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Romney has a 28 percent positive rating among U.S. adults, and a 39 percent negative rating. Santorum has a 26 percent positive rating, and a 39 percent negative rating. They each perform much better with Republican primary voters.
But even there, there's an enthusiasm gap, according to
Gallup (chart via
Jed Lewiston):
Anyone observing the excitement of seeing the first woman president or the first black president win their primary and comparing that to Romney versus Santorum must really enjoy
watching paint dry:
In fact, the only states that showed an uptick were "states that allowed independents or both independents and Democrats to vote in the GOP primaries in a year when there was no Democratic presidential contest."
Where are the moderates?
Chris Cillizza, using
Washington Post poll data, notes this absence of moderates in GOP primaries. The chart represents "the number of self-identified moderates/liberals in the major GOP contests this year":
Note that Republicans in IA and NV are more conservative than just about any Southern state (perhaps because they are closed caucus states). In any case, efforts to expand the Republican Party beyond its base don't seem to be working particularly well. For all the talk about how Romney can't seal the deal with conservatives, there isn't enough discussion about how Santorum—and Romney's forced rightward lurch—chases everyone else away.
Women think things are better for them than for their mothers
In the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll [link], two-thirds of women said they have greater opportunities to get ahead in society than their mothers did; only one in 14 said they have fewer. “My opportunities were a lot more,” Reading says. “My mother was a home-wife her whole life. She was very young when she had children.” Like Reading, a striking three-fourths of women say they believe they can now advance as far as their talents will take them, regardless of their gender, and nearly as many say they have not personally experienced discrimination in the workplace.
Optimism, wherever you find it, is good for the incumbent. Not only that, but trying to take things backwards (see the contraception debate) is not a good idea for Republicans.
Republicans have lost the contraception argument
Yes, the discussion is about contraception. No, it's not about religious freedom. So says, the public, as pointed out by the
Bloomberg poll this week, graphic provided by
Joan McCarter:
And from
TPM:
Another new poll out Thursday confirms Republicans are not persuading voters to see things their way. Fifty-six percent of respondents to an SSRS poll conducted for the Public Religion Research Institute “do not believe that the right of religious liberty is being threatened in America today.” (Thirty-nine percent do believe it is under threat.)
GOP message fail, at least nationally. The Republican efforts at state level remain more problematic, a residual of the 2010 blowout, which couldn't have happened at a worse time. That damage, including redistricting and local assaults on women's health and reproductive rights, will take a while to undo. But nationally this is not a message on which they are going to somehow, suddenly win.
That does not seem to be stopping them, any more than getting their clocks cleaned on the debt ceiling is stopping them from trying again in the House. Only an election will do that.
Republicans are losing independent women
The ABC/
Washington Post poll, had some bad numbers for Obama this week. Despite that,
check this out (.pdf):
While these are essentially unchanged since last measured in 2010, there’s one group worth noting: Women who are political independents. They’ve shifted from an 11-point margin in favor of the GOP as better representing their personal values in September 2010 to a narrow +5 margin for the Democratic Party now. They’ve also moved away from the GOP, albeit more slightly, on which party is more concerned with their needs, from +8 GOP to +2 Democrats. While other shifts counteracted these in overall results, the finding suggests that independent women will be a group to watch as the campaign progresses.
These days, independents are hard to gain but easy to lose. The Republicans are doing a terrific job of the latter.
-----
Taken together, the above areas of interest suggest some stronger fundamentals for the Obama campaign than one can see just looking at topline numbers. Until the campaign is joined by specific candidates, most likely Romney versus Obama, opinion polls will remain more of a snapshot than a predictor, and non-political junkies will not be focusing yet on the race. But with Santorum staying in and grinding on social issues, Romney has no room to maneuver to the center. Make no mistake, it's costing him nearly as much as his lack of a political philosophy and his fail on leadership (see him run from Rush Limbaugh).
“@EmilyABC: Romney on Rush: “I'll just say this which is it’s not the language I would have used."” Wow. Profiles in Courage.
— @davidaxelrod via Twitter for iPhone
When the race heats up over the summer, watch for trends in these areas as a thumbnail of which direction things are going, and why.