tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70851951596610279712024-03-18T20:53:50.444-04:00Just the social facts, ma'amDavid Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.comBlogger876125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-33522756541189555652024-03-14T19:36:00.003-04:002024-03-14T19:36:37.410-04:00The road to Mar-a-Lago<p>Donald Trump now has enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination for the third time. How did we get here? One view is that it came out of the blue--Trump staged a "hostile takeover" of the Republican party by appealing to ordinary voters, and the Republican leadership has gone along because they can't stop it. Another view, which I think is the correct one, is that it's the culmination of a long development--that by 2016, the party was ready for someone like Trump. Of course, it's hard to identify a precise starting point for a long-term shift, but some popular choices are Nixon's "Southern strategy" and Reagan's election in 1980. I want to suggest another possibility-- the 1990 budget agreement, in combination with George H. W. Bush's 1988 "no new taxes" pledge at the Republican convention and his loss in the 1992 election. The obvious effect of this experience was to strengthen Republican opposition to raising income tax rates, but I think it had a larger effect.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3dS0j9tq0fBiOl57Q3xlhpd2auYnuQDWawOng9slh4J2AVj2M2a08ba9ozXKXNjxvKWurMKuklKo405caONZiPPeH4fuWFDuTcjTJIXNB14cmAiYSR-MmYU_gbGWxy7mgMGcR0m6Aai3l3mjh4gGeQCIvmjr9U0yJnqQPCC0DPG1j4hLfnsVfhETZ5Hg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3dS0j9tq0fBiOl57Q3xlhpd2auYnuQDWawOng9slh4J2AVj2M2a08ba9ozXKXNjxvKWurMKuklKo405caONZiPPeH4fuWFDuTcjTJIXNB14cmAiYSR-MmYU_gbGWxy7mgMGcR0m6Aai3l3mjh4gGeQCIvmjr9U0yJnqQPCC0DPG1j4hLfnsVfhETZ5Hg=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />The figure shows net public support (favorable minus unfavorable opinions) for the proposed budget agreement in October and November (the last Congressional vote was October 27, and Bush signed it on November 5). On the whole, public opinion was negative, but not all that negative--averaging across the ten surveys that asked, 36% were in favor and 41% opposed. The figures were more negative in the two final surveys, but they just asked about views of the budget agreement with no further detail, while all of the previous surveys said something about bipartisan agreement. People like bipartisanship, so it's likely that the difference in responses was because of the difference in questions rather than because of a real change in attitudes towards the agreement. Opinions were also getting more favorable over time until the last two questions, which suggests that people were happy that Congress seemed to be getting things done.* That is, people didn't like the idea of a tax increase, but liked the idea of parties working together on a plan to reduce the budget deficit. <p></p><p> The result of this episode was that the Republicans became less willing to cooperate with Democrats in being "responsible"--doing things which most knowledgeable people say are necessary but which the public is inclined to oppose. Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress set aside politics (Bush's "read my lips" pledge) to do the "responsible" thing, and it wound up hurting them. That started a move towards a strategy of uniform opposition--make the Democrats do it and don't give them the cover of bipartisanship. Of course, this isn't an absolute--there are some cases in which the "responsible" thing is in line with Republican ideology, but they have become less common as the party has increasingly turned against "elites" and experts. </p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p><p><br /></p><p>*There were two questions that had more detailed descriptions of what was in the agreement, which are indicated in the figure. The descriptions were different, and the second one sounds more favorable to me than the first, which may explain some of the difference between them. But the evidence for a time trend is still pretty strong if you set them aside. </p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-85139108749909951932024-03-09T11:16:00.001-05:002024-03-09T11:16:50.872-05:00Two part twos<p> 1. My last post observed that in 1970, people with higher incomes were less likely to say that people who are successful get ahead because of luck, but that in 2016 no relationship was visible. How about education? In 1970, there was no relationship between education and opinions after you controlled for income. In 2016, there was:</p><p> Luck<br />Not HS grad 19%<br />HS only 16%<br />Some college 10%<br />College grad 14%<br />Grad educ 16%</p><p>That is, the middle levels of education were least likely to say that luck was what mattered. This supports my general point about people at the top becoming less likely to assert their superiority (also see<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2020/04/who-believes-in-meritocracy.html"> this post</a>).</p><p>2. In January, I tried to understand the persistence of Republican support for Donald Trump by comparing it to views of Watergate. Views on whether Watergate was a "very serious matter" or "just politics" shifted towards "a very serious matter" during the earlier part of the Watergate investigation, but then stabilized. They were pretty evenly divided in the summer of 1974 (not long before Nixon resigned) and in several later surveys that asked people to look back. </p><p>In that post, I said "Of course, Nixon was ineligible to run for President, but no one said he should remain a major voice in the party and no one sought his endorsement when running for office." I later found some questions from 1979 that were prefaced "there has been some talk of President Nixon getting back into active political life" and then asked what they thought about several possible ways. (I don't remember whether there actually was such talk or whether the people doing the survey just thought it was an interesting question). The percent saying it would be a good idea for him to:</p><p> Republicans Independents Democrats</p><p>Run for office 18% 14% 7%<br />Be appointed to high post 14% 10% 5%<br />Speak out on issues 55% 33% 27%<br />Take active role in party 31% 19% 14%</p><p>About 8 or 9 percent said they weren't sure--that was pretty constant across all the party/question combinations. So a substantial number of Republicans supported the idea of Nixon taking "an active role in the workings of the Republican party," and some even thought he should run for office. </p><p> After Trump's loss, Republican elites seemed to expect their voters to spontaneously turn against him, and then be surprised that he retained substantial popular support (or interpreted it as evidence that he had a unique personal appeal). This example shows that they shouldn't have been surprised: Nixon had significant support from Republican voters even after he had acknowledged wrongdoing, resigned, and kept a low profile for several years. </p><p>Why was elite behavior different in the two cases? The most apparent factor is that in the 1970s there was a stronger core of leadership that could speak for the majority of the party in Congress. But I think that there's also another: there's now a stronger sense of "team spirit" among both politicians and opinion leaders. That is, Republicans were reluctant to make common cause with Democrats. As a result, even those who aren't Trump supporters have promoted the idea that he's being unfairly treated, that Democrats have done similar things in the past or are trying to do them now--e. g. Ross Douthat's indignation about efforts to remove Trump from the ballot ("<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/opinion/trump-super-tuesday.html">antidemocratic and incompetent at once, signifying ... a general elite fear of the voting public</a>"). That makes it easier for ordinary Republicans to conclude that it's all "just politics."</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p><p><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-29323484570462158732024-03-02T12:12:00.002-05:002024-03-02T12:12:46.728-05:00The secret of success<p> <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;">In 1939, the Gallup poll asked </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"Do you think people who are successful get ahead largely because of their luck or largely because of their ability?" They asked the question again in 1970, and CBS news asked it in March and September 2016. </span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> Luck Ability DK/NA</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">1939 16% 80% 4%</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">1970 8% 86% 6%</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">3/2016 14% 81% 6%<br />9/2016 11% 80% 6%</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;">At each time, overwhelming majorities said that ability was the major cause. That's important in itself, but differences by social standing are also of interest. The 1939 survey contained an interviewer rating of economic standing, and <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2023/11/judgment-and-opinion.html">people who ranked higher were more likely to say that ability was what mattered</a>. The 1970 and 2016 surveys didn't have the interviewer rating, so that can't be used for comparison, but both the 1939 and 1970 surveys asked about occupation, so you can compare occupational differences:</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhuhXQi8E18tHszUMDEofA_WgN_Ky8QSTTKv1PfCx-qqSvouTZP9UcmHc_FIg0XZ_roD3VjCC80dSn_28nf8sRMUURmV7hh3dwgxl_Pl85gSPqnuZ1rD9SaKbvUTYK9ponbWOBDV4bxykwVf431WxL2F3doBeL_AdYue7RYep-FA0Dy3LW076MuTUuIRnI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhuhXQi8E18tHszUMDEofA_WgN_Ky8QSTTKv1PfCx-qqSvouTZP9UcmHc_FIg0XZ_roD3VjCC80dSn_28nf8sRMUURmV7hh3dwgxl_Pl85gSPqnuZ1rD9SaKbvUTYK9ponbWOBDV4bxykwVf431WxL2F3doBeL_AdYue7RYep-FA0Dy3LW076MuTUuIRnI=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />The figure shows the log of the odds ratio of ability to luck answers by occupational group. I classified the occupations as higher to lower: business and professionals, then farmers and white collar workers, then skilled manual workers, with semi- and unskilled manual workers at the bottom. At both times, people in "higher" occupations were more likely to say ability, but the relationship seems weaker in 1970--the estimated slope is about 1/2 to 2/3 as large, and there is more scatter around the line. </span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;">The 2016 survey didn't ask about occupation, but it did ask about income, which can be used to compare it to 1970. Of course, the income categories were different, but there happened to be 11 each time, so to keep things simple I'll just number them as 1 through 11.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5_nsX3KRwHpqu6X4WTBrK6LqyjC8Y7VgqF5H2wrBroGGkjgC6OcMHdxbMVxdLA_cBFkQyzQFE7sMzKjoRMYsKZhpgfgA2Gl_DKeorKVWXA1v5N2l8fC5zx6l8MKFcxXCmpR7QvCWJyfU6mSUCRgcPuEjWmAFJ7nPAFQmSbgBWmiXlkv5nUZEUuEcyt2o" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5_nsX3KRwHpqu6X4WTBrK6LqyjC8Y7VgqF5H2wrBroGGkjgC6OcMHdxbMVxdLA_cBFkQyzQFE7sMzKjoRMYsKZhpgfgA2Gl_DKeorKVWXA1v5N2l8fC5zx6l8MKFcxXCmpR7QvCWJyfU6mSUCRgcPuEjWmAFJ7nPAFQmSbgBWmiXlkv5nUZEUuEcyt2o=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />There was a clear relationship in 1970--people with higher incomes are more likely to say that success depends on ability--but not in 2016. </span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;">Over the whole period, the relationship between social standing and opinions about the cause of success has become weaker, and maybe even disappeared. Rather than looking down on the working classes, as critiques of "meritocracy" claim, people in the upper and middle classes have become less likely to assert their superiority. I've<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2021/04/meritocratic-elites.html"> argued this before</a>, but didn't have such direct evidence. <br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px;">[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research--with special thanks for obtaining the 2016 survey]</span></span></div>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-35818590527879633952024-02-25T11:41:00.000-05:002024-02-25T11:41:40.926-05:00You never know<p> A few weeks ago, I <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2024/01/news-not-fit-to-link.html">wrote about</a> a claim that "only about four percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat." I gave some results from surveys that asked people how their spouses voted, but mentioned that in some cases people might be mistaken. There aren't many surveys that ask members of couples separately about their votes, but I found one from 1993 by Nancy Burns, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Sidney Verba (<a href="https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/index.html">data in ICPSR</a>). Among couples in which both members voted in the 1992 presidential election, 76% voted for the same candidate and 24% split their votes. Of course, that election was unusual because an independent candidate (Ross Perot) got a large number of votes. Limiting it to Bush and Clinton, 67% voted for the same candidate, and 7% split their votes. </p><p>The survey didn't ask people how they thought their spouse voted for President, but they did ask whether they disagreed on any race. In 47% of the couples, both said no, and in 22% both said yes. In the other 31%, one partner thought that they didn't disagree on any races and one thought they did. Breaking votes for president down by perceived disagreement:</p><p><b> Same Different</b></p><p>Both No 96% 4% [89%-0%]<br />Split 68% 32% [60%-15%]<br />Both yes 46% 54% [32%-12%]</p><p>The figures in brackets are limited to Bush and Clinton votes. Looking at it another way, almost half of the split votes, and more than half of the Bush/Clinton split votes, came from couples in which one member thought that they agreed on all the races (there were no clear gender differences in accuracy of perception). </p><p>Although the data are old, I think that the general point is still relevant--if there's ambiguity, people tend to assume that their friends and family vote the same way that they do. It's possible that increased political polarization has made people pay more attention to evidence about what their friends and family actually think, but it's also possible that it's made people more likely to avoid political discussions and more likely to assume that reasonable people agree with them. </p><p><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-46632528194395753752024-02-16T17:40:00.000-05:002024-02-16T17:40:25.491-05:00Two nations?<p> A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times had a<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/us/politics/biden-trump-presidential-election.html"> piece on the upcoming election</a> that said "Red and Blue Americas are moving farther and farther apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally." It went on to say "In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2020, that had grown to <a href="https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/32171-america-speaks-what-do-they-think-about-cross-part?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Flifestyle%2Farticles-reports%2F2020%2F09%2F24%2Famerica-speaks-what-do-they-think-about-cross-part">nearly four in 10</a>. Indeed, only about 4 percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat." I<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2024/01/news-not-fit-to-link.html"> already wrote about the last point</a>. I think it refers to <i>perceived</i> voting differences from one's spouse (there aren't many political surveys which interview both members of a couple): they are rare today, but were also rare in the previous years for which I had data (1944, 1960, and 1984). This post will consider the hypothetical question about a child marrying someone from the other party. This is a summary of all the relevant questions I could find:</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Year<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Positive<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Negative<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Survey<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1960<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>14%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>4%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Almond/Verba<br />
<b>2008<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>24%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b>YouGov<b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b><br />
2010<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>41%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>YouGov<br />
2014<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>28%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>17%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pew<br />
<b>2017<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>14%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>PRRI<br />
2018<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>69%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>35%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>PRRI<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><br />
<b>2020<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>38%<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b>YouGov<o:p></o:p></p>The three figures in boldface involve the same question: the others all had different questions and different response categories. Some of the surveys just asked one question about marrying someone from the other party, but others asked everyone two questions--one about marrying a Republican and one about marrying a Democrat. For the ones with two questions, I also show positive responses--people who say they would be pleased if the hypothetical child marries in the party (rather than saying it wouldn't matter to them). There's clearly been an increase in both positive and negative reactions, although the differences among the questions makes it hard to say much about its exact timing (I wish people had stuck with the 1960 question).<p></p><p>Why do we have stability with (perceived) party differences within actual marriages but increasingly negative reactions to party differences in a hypothetical marriage? People generally know something about their spouse's political views (although there's undoubtedly a tendency to exaggerate agreement). But with the hypothetical question, they have to come up with an idea of what an unspecified Democrat or Republican would be like. The most likely source for that would be prominent Democratic or Republican political leaders. In a time when ideological differences between parties were small and political leaders tried to show respect for the other side, that wouldn't seem so bad. But with larger differences and more conflict between the parties, it would. That is, increased objections to a hypothetical marriage to someone from the other party don't necessarily reflect increased social distance between Democrats and Republicans in the public--they could just reflect increased differences at the elite level.</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-32779710977169574632024-02-10T11:54:00.000-05:002024-02-10T11:54:27.446-05:00All together now?<p> A few days after the 2008 election, a USA Today/Gallup poll asked "In dealing with the problems facing the country, do you think Barack Obama will make a sincere effort to work with the Republicans in Congress to find solutions that are acceptable to both parties?" and parallel questions about whether the Republicans would make a sincere effort to work with the Democrats and Obama and whether the Democrats would make a sincere effort to work with the Republicans. In March and September 2009 they asked about whether the various parties had made a sincere effort to work with each other, and in February 2010 they asked about working together on health care reform. They also asked the forward-looking questions after the 2010, 2012, and 2016 elections. The figure shows the percent who said that Obama, the Democrats, the Republicans, or Trump would (or had) worked with the other party:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhPUNDT7Il-aH63BkouUCqx20iUAUUIszS25H73oczcLjcTk4ViCbWCPqFchaGENjusZxoqrCPtdflYsfFAfaUDxOeHUbAxSvBXJz0fe4kxiQz5CUAicAIznfo9g2aQwo4gCVG7RDz7s-3TfvuyljdHHBPhytpQtxa0c-zAy1_2QF364r_7eKtUc_p5BAg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhPUNDT7Il-aH63BkouUCqx20iUAUUIszS25H73oczcLjcTk4ViCbWCPqFchaGENjusZxoqrCPtdflYsfFAfaUDxOeHUbAxSvBXJz0fe4kxiQz5CUAicAIznfo9g2aQwo4gCVG7RDz7s-3TfvuyljdHHBPhytpQtxa0c-zAy1_2QF364r_7eKtUc_p5BAg=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />Obama consistently ran ahead of both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the Democrats were generally somewhat ahead of the Republicans, but they all rose and fell together. In principle, you might expect that they would move in opposite directions at least some of the time: that people would see one side as being obstructionist and give the other side credit for trying, but that didn't happen with any of these surveys. Rather, the public seemed to blame both sides about equally when there was disagreement (if anything, Obama's ratings might have fallen more than the Congressional parties). <p></p><p>I think this data helps to explain why Republicans turned against the Senate immigration deal. If it had passed, Biden would have gotten some of the credit from the public, and most Republicans are unwilling to do anything that will make Biden more popular (several of them said as much). A few years ago,<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2019/07/afterthoughts.html"> I suggested</a> that a strategy of uniform opposition had driven down Obama's popularity. Republicans have continued with that under Biden. Of course, there has been some important bipartisan legislation, like the American Rescue Plan Act, but they were mostly early in his term and my impression is that the Republicans have tried to avoid publicizing them. It used to be that when popular legislation was passed on a bipartisan basis, both parties would talk about it and try to claim some of the credit. But more recently, people seem to have realized that elections are more about the President than about Congress, so for an opposition party, denying credit to the President is more important than claiming credit for yourself. And blocking potentially popular legislation might make your side less popular, but it will probably make the other side less popular as well.</p><p>A few other observations:</p><p>1. The numbers expecting the parties to make a sincere effort to work with each other were higher than I expected. <br />2. Just after the 2016 election, 58% expected Trump to make an effort to work with the Democrats, which was somewhat ahead of the number who expected the Republicans in Congress to work with the Democrats. That might be because in 2016, many people saw Trump as a "dealmaker" rather than a traditional conservative, or it may be that there is a tendency to have hopes for a new president. <br />3. It's not possible to be sure, but it seems that the questions that asked about the future produced more positive responses than those that asked about the past. <br />4. Following from the previous points, it's unfortunate that this question hasn't been asked since 2016--I would like to see how expectations have changed.</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-44680468731178866972024-02-02T19:08:00.001-05:002024-02-14T06:59:48.915-05:00Republicans and reality<p> If you go by the standard statistics, the economy is doing very well--unemployment remains low, inflation and interest rates are coming down, the stock market is rising. Yet the public still isn't impressed, although ratings have been improving recently. Paul Krugman suggests that the reason is politics--that Republicans have rated the economy as bad ever since Joe Biden took office, and have continued to do so even as economic conditions have improved. He<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/opinion/trump-maga-fear.html"> says that Republican "beliefs are nearly impervious to reality." </a></p><p>The Michigan Consumer Surveys have a monthly "index of consumer sentiment" which goes back to the 1940s. Since April 2017, they have regularly asked people about their party identification. The figure shows consumer sentiment by party during the Trump administration:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizosDc1jxCxlCwb4auW2XMcA0NEg_hu2WAXdZjq_NQwD-qO8dZs-0iSxcToEnX_2Y24fhr11lBX17b89BESeiCmk_dfc7PHXULOnedVjXRbx94mVDky12Mba0ALus6jBqflfSrdClCsjK0CeAXnKO0TrM2SZusUJeBR12PnpGMBRQUbJwjx0tpJGIWOw0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizosDc1jxCxlCwb4auW2XMcA0NEg_hu2WAXdZjq_NQwD-qO8dZs-0iSxcToEnX_2Y24fhr11lBX17b89BESeiCmk_dfc7PHXULOnedVjXRbx94mVDky12Mba0ALus6jBqflfSrdClCsjK0CeAXnKO0TrM2SZusUJeBR12PnpGMBRQUbJwjx0tpJGIWOw0=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />There wasn't much variation among either Democrats or Republicans until Covid hit in early 2020 and ratings declined among both before rising a little in the fall. I count January 2021 as the beginning of the Biden administration, so changes in the last two months are probably a response to the election results. Through October 2020, the correlation between Democratic and Republican ratings is about 0.9. <p></p><p>During the Biden administration:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisqZlnCashYcsWI0lGDT1Xx0bT2XaEUGJ2PUwkiegyTTdhZtonIsJnhBbi52LVz93xDLD1IWuK7RB64H--iLpON6Lt4z8i6y3AcCuUXi3U9Eki-OOXhLCiK8fRWyTA9eJBFm5LiMcAZNYlxZDeiFfvSsEiyKpJ3dmR3YvU4KTMi4qEr-8-9JxqSqm4kY8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisqZlnCashYcsWI0lGDT1Xx0bT2XaEUGJ2PUwkiegyTTdhZtonIsJnhBbi52LVz93xDLD1IWuK7RB64H--iLpON6Lt4z8i6y3AcCuUXi3U9Eki-OOXhLCiK8fRWyTA9eJBFm5LiMcAZNYlxZDeiFfvSsEiyKpJ3dmR3YvU4KTMi4qEr-8-9JxqSqm4kY8=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div>Ratings diverged in the first few months and Democrats became more positive and Republicans became more negative--since the summer of 2021 they have tracked each other pretty closely. Over the course of the Biden administration, the correlation has been about 0.75. That is, Republicans and Democrats responded to reality in similar ways during both administrations (and to similar degrees--the standard deviations were about the same). Of course, politics make a difference--Democrats were more favorable under Biden and Republicans were more favorable under Trump. It's possible that the change of administration had more impact on Republicans--this seems to be the case for <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2023/10/criminal-tendencies-part-2.html">beliefs about crime rates</a> and the<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-difference-will-it-make.html"> prospects of the next generation</a>. But it's hard to say, because economic conditions also changed substantially between late 2020 and mid-2021: unemployment fell but inflation rose. <p></p><p>The general point is that negative perceptions aren't just Republican partisanship: something was making Democrats feel worse about the economy between mid-2021 and mid-2022. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgu4aVZK2dRlFzDy7dbzypBfy4xCob853o0QZstZFGU22shYcCsKy3UtOcEq6vda4lk1rMkPFC_LGUJQkjuy1GZTUrOg8IZ6gSGQBVOA3vXmyfsS-iHHMZjAE77ht_9KRqhVyNSDROqZdWkZZGcKwbSIU0O_eDVpFwXznB9TvH4rnGhXljCt7LRxKSIJI4" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgu4aVZK2dRlFzDy7dbzypBfy4xCob853o0QZstZFGU22shYcCsKy3UtOcEq6vda4lk1rMkPFC_LGUJQkjuy1GZTUrOg8IZ6gSGQBVOA3vXmyfsS-iHHMZjAE77ht_9KRqhVyNSDROqZdWkZZGcKwbSIU0O_eDVpFwXznB9TvH4rnGhXljCt7LRxKSIJI4=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>And something has made Republicans feel better since mid-2022:<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFhKKNBkQyjyF8QGv_ATtfKhyL1CUAN2sENdb0J6isJYjU5ryyEwl9nIrYJG2RT-dt1lO3HXSRm7nYJZeLQUMB2hNVnd6VqcagGnp8TfQ8bAtg8LA9hvIM0Ir_5DrOfUwcbVFGxKZG2nzW-_cpdUlFW9yZVQEu9pBjZprixWG9LR7mZm1npn6gRnrDtc8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFhKKNBkQyjyF8QGv_ATtfKhyL1CUAN2sENdb0J6isJYjU5ryyEwl9nIrYJG2RT-dt1lO3HXSRm7nYJZeLQUMB2hNVnd6VqcagGnp8TfQ8bAtg8LA9hvIM0Ir_5DrOfUwcbVFGxKZG2nzW-_cpdUlFW9yZVQEu9pBjZprixWG9LR7mZm1npn6gRnrDtc8=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /> That still leaves the question of why views were so negative in mid-2022, and are still pretty negative despite recent improvement. In August 2022, unemployment was 3.7%, annual inflation was 8.2%, and the index was 53.2. In November 1973, unemployment was worse (4.8%), inflation was essentially the same (8.3%), but the index was twenty points higher (76.5). I'd say that the two most plausible explanations are (a) a general shift towards more negative assessments, maybe because of more negative media coverage and (b) a stronger reaction to the inflation of the 2020s because it came suddenly and people weren't used to it. <p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /><br /><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-21095726136946112472024-01-29T20:10:00.003-05:002024-02-06T10:10:37.038-05:00News not fit to link<p><span style="font-family: times;"> <span style="font-size: medium;">A recent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/us/politics/biden-trump-presidential-election.html">piece in the New York Times</a> says</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">"<span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2020, that had grown to </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/32171-america-speaks-what-do-they-think-about-cross-part?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Flifestyle%2Farticles-reports%2F2020%2F09%2F24%2Famerica-speaks-what-do-they-think-about-cross-part" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">nearly four in 10</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">. Indeed, only about 4 percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat." That is, they included a link to the source of the second piece of information, but not the first and the third. But my standards of what's fit to link are lower, so I'll try to provide them.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The first is from <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691651682/the-civic-culture">The Civic Culture, by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba</a>, but the third was new to me. Ideally, you would have a survey that had separate interviews of both members of married couples, but there aren't many like that, so I looked for surveys that asked people about spouse's politics. I couldn't find any that asked about their spouse's party identification or registration, but there was one from 2016 (just after the election) that asked people about how they and their spouse had voted. There were also some earlier surveys that had parallel questions. The results:</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> Same Different Ratio <br />1944 72% 4% 18<br />1960 67% 5% 13.4<br />1984 64% 6% 10.7<br />2016 63% 4% 15.8<br />[2016 68% 10%] 6.8</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">Although I can't be sure, I'd guess that the 2016 survey was the source of the statement in the Times. In any case, it makes it possible to compare things to the past. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">In 1944, 1960, and 1984, almost all votes were for the Democratic or Republican candidate--the columns don't add to 100 because some people said that their spouse hadn't voted and others didn't know how they'd voted. But in 2016, about 6% of the vote went to other candidates, and the figures in brackets include those votes. If you don't count the 2016 "others," there's no clear pattern--the samples are only one or two thousand, so there's a good deal of sampling error. If you count the "others," there was <i>more</i> intra-marriage disagreement in 2016 than in earlier elections. But maybe at least some of those should be counted as intermediate (e. g., one for Trump, one a write-in) rather than disagreement? I won't get into that--I'll just observe that the surveys don't provide evidence that married couples are <i>more</i> likely to vote the same way now as they were in the middle of the 20th century. But what about the question about how you would feel if a child married someone from the other party, where there is evidence of change? I'll consider that in a future post. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">. </span></span></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-89309014610024581572024-01-26T10:10:00.000-05:002024-01-26T10:10:13.491-05:00Indictments<p> After the 2022 election, it looked like Donald Trump's support in the Republican Party was finally weakening. As Trump made a comeback in the middle of 2023, some people said that one reason for his resurgence was that Republicans were rallying around him because he had been indicted on various charges. Now this seems to have become conventional wisdom: a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/politics/desantis-drops-out.html">news story in the NY Times </a>says "But far from diminishing the former president’s standing with Republicans, the charges actually rallied the party around him."</p><p>A few months ago,<a href=" https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2023/10/strong-feelings.html"> I looked for relevant data</a>. Lots of surveys asked if you had a favorable or unfavorable view of Trump, but I wanted ones that asked for degree of favorability--my idea was that the indictments wouldn't convert people from unfavorable to favorable, but they might make people who were already favorable more strongly committed. Surveys that ask people for degree of favorability or unfavorability are less common, and I didn't find enough for an analysis. After the New Hampshire primary, I tried again and found a source I hadn't known about before: a company called <a href="https://echeloninsights.com/in-the-news/page/2/">Echelon Insights</a> has monthly polls that include a question about views of Trump (very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, and very unfavorable) and breaks them down by party identification. Very and somewhat favorable ratings of Trump among Republicans:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfqWKwXiHBnbgfx49K9JlxmPCpYB7_DWtxrizTRNRPvQOQK2DPe91LD2Nf1rz03K2sb-7g-KQ16OKjrj4u36-BamjL7Kpj2PtcTysy84KmSb21Sce5759hMyJb9KHhJemtVNqbs-WzqPyhLEoom0nar3_yBQ_nHQZBiZRJPxrckZb93R2XH_E3-mwnRys" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfqWKwXiHBnbgfx49K9JlxmPCpYB7_DWtxrizTRNRPvQOQK2DPe91LD2Nf1rz03K2sb-7g-KQ16OKjrj4u36-BamjL7Kpj2PtcTysy84KmSb21Sce5759hMyJb9KHhJemtVNqbs-WzqPyhLEoom0nar3_yBQ_nHQZBiZRJPxrckZb93R2XH_E3-mwnRys=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div>The first indictment came on March 30, after data collection for the March survey was complete. There was a lasting increase in very favorable ratings and decline in somewhat favorable ratings starting in April. Of course, in principle the pattern could be the result of something else that happened at around the same time, but I can't think of any other obvious candidate. There was no lasting change after the second and third indictments, but it seems reasonable that the first one would have more impact. <p></p><p>There also has been some polarization of ratings among independents, with both very favorable and very unfavorable ratings becoming more common, but this was a gradual change--there's no sign that the indictments had any special impact. The latest figures among independents are 17% very favorable and 46% very unfavorable. For Democrats, very unfavorable ratings have been steady at about 85 percent over the whole time period. <br /><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-752584974449335512024-01-17T13:37:00.001-05:002024-01-17T13:37:30.653-05:00You don't dislike me, you really don't dislike me<p> A few days ago, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/opinion/haley-trump-iowa-republicans.html">David Brooks wrote</a> that Donald Trump "has an advantage that Haley can't match. He is reviled by the coastal professional classes. That’s a sacred bond with working-class and rural voters who feel similarly slighted and unseen." Today, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/opinion/nikki-haley-primary-new-hampshire.html">Damon Linker offered a similar analysis</a>: "fundamental to Mr. Trump’s strength is populist anger at 'them' — the progressive-leaning elites who graduate from the country’s most selective universities, control the commanding heights of culture, run America’s leading public institutions and media outlets and sneer at him and his supporters, calling them racists, xenophobes, misogynists and fascists." I could go on piling up citations--<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/opinion/columnists/donald-trump-election.html">Bret Stephens wrote something similar a few days ago</a>--but this is a blog post, not a research paper, so I'll get to the data. In 2021, a Pew survey asked how people felt about various possible characteristics of political leaders, including "Has a degree from a prestigious university, such as Harvard or Stanford." Overall, 7% said they liked that a lot, 14% that they liked it a little, 5.6% that they disliked it a little, and 5.8% that they disliked it a lot. The majority (about 67%) said they neither liked nor disliked it. What if we break it down by groups? To make comparison easier, I show the percent who say they like it minus the percent who say they dislike it--e. g., among college graduates, 23% say like and 10% say disklike, for a net of +13.</p><p>College grad +13<br />Some college +8<br />No college +8</p><p>Metropolitan +12<br />Non-metro -3</p><p>Educational differences are small, and there are more likes than dislikes in all groups; the metro/non-metro difference (coded by the survey organization, not a self-report) is bigger, and people outside of metropolitan areas are more likely to see an elite degree as a minus than as a plus. </p><p>There are substantial partisan differences:</p><p>Democrats +18<br />Republicans 0<br />Neither +5</p><p>Turning to some other groups:</p><p>aged 18-29 +15<br /> 30-49 +15<br /> 50-64 +4<br /> 65+ +3<br /></p><p>White +7<br />Black +7<br />Hispanic +20<br />Asian +17</p><p>Men +8<br />Women +11</p><p>I was a bit surprised at the age differences: my impression is that anti-elite rhetoric has been growing in recent years, so younger people would be more attuned to it. (For example, Donald Trump seems to admire elite universities: he frequently boasts that he's not just a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, but of <i>the Wharton School</i>, and a secondary part of his "birther" campaign was a demand that Obama release his academic records to prove that he deserved to be admitted to Columbia and Harvard Law School). The Pew survey contains a question that has some bearing on this issue: who was the best president of the last 40 years.<br /></p><p>Reagan +4<br />GHW Bush +13<br />Clinton +14<br />GW Bush -0<br />Obama +20<br />Trump -5<br />Biden +8</p><p>As the differences by party identification suggest, people who name one of the Democratic presidents as the best have more favorable views of degrees from elite universities, but the people who name Trump are more negative than those who name Reagan or one of the Bushes.</p><p>Some of the partisan division is undoubtedly created by the parties--Republican leaders denounce elite universities, so Republican voters follow them and Democratic voters react against them--but the substantial divisions by age, ethnicity, and metro status suggest that opinions have some independent basis. However, education itself doesn't make much difference, and only 13% of people who didn't attend college see having a degree from an elite university as a negative. </p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-9156358508209714972024-01-13T12:36:00.000-05:002024-01-13T12:36:03.415-05:00Can't quit you<p> In my last post, I said that Donald Trump's strong position in the race for the Republican nomination is not the result of his personal hold on Republican voters, but of support (or at least lack of opposition) from Republican elites. A Republican who doesn't pay much attention to politics is likely to recall that things went pretty well while Trump was in office (up until Covid, which wasn't his fault), and therefore will be inclined to give Trump another chance unless he's given a reason not to. The obvious reasons are Trump's weak performance in general elections and his campaign to overthrow the 2020 results, but leading Republicans haven't emphasized either one. </p><p>On the first point, here's a comparison of the 2012-2020 results:</p><p> Rep Dem Other<br />2012 47.2% 51% 1.8%<br />2016 45.9% 48% 6.1%<br />2020 46.8% 51.3% 1.9%<br /></p><p>In 2012, Mitt Romney was running against an incumbent president who was a skilled politician. In 2016, Trump was running against an opponent who was neither an incumbent nor a skilled politician. In 2020, Trump was an incumbent himself, and in addition to the normal advantage of incumbency, there's a tendency to rally round the leader in times of national emergency. Yet both times he fell short of Mitt Romney's share of the vote in 2012. Usually after a candidate loses an election, people in his party start talking about why he lost, what the party needs to do differently, what kind of leaders it needs moving forward, etc. That's never really happened with Trump. </p><p>On his campaign to overturn the election, for a few weeks after January 6, it seemed like many Republican leaders were ready to turn against him. But since then, the dominant tendency has been to downplay it by saying that even if the 2020 election wasn't "stolen," <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/07/johnson-election-denier-nonsense-biden-2020-election-00134184">there was something wrong with it</a>, or that the Democrats are engaged in "election interference" themselves. For example, when Maine's Secretary of State ruled that Trump shouldn't appear on the primary ballot, Susan Collins denounced the decision on Twitter. She didn't have to say anything--she could have waited until a reporter asked and then just said it was up to the courts. Or she could have said while Trump's conduct might not qualify as insurrection, it was a serious matter, and that was why she had voted to impeach Trump and would not be voting for him in the primary. <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2023/12/29/Donald-Trump-Maine-ballot-reaction/1441703848158/">Other Republicans went farther, saying</a> that there is or will be a Democratic push to get Trump taken off the ballot. </p><p>So why haven't Republican elites made the case against Trump? I think that some of it is that <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-conspiracy-so-vast.html">they thought his support would fade away</a> after he left office and didn't command as much media attention. A second is that the appearance of disunity usually hurts a party with voters. Right-wing Republicans have been willing to engage in intra-party fights in order to get what they want. Rather than fighting back, moderate and mainstream Republicans have tried to placate them in order to maintain as much party unity as they can. This is partly because of electoral considerations--moderate and mainstream Republicans are more likely to be from swing states or districts where they have to get some support from Democrats and independents. I think it may also because their long period of being in the minority in Congress gave Republicans a tradition of being concerned with sticking together. So someone like Collins, who is clearly not a fan of Trump, gives a generic Republican response rather than taking the opportunity to try to weaken him.</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-22596341176318711022024-01-07T15:34:00.004-05:002024-01-08T18:53:56.417-05:00I am their leader, I must follow them<p>Three years after the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, surveys find a large number of people continue to believe that Donald Trump didn't do anything wrong. Many observers say that this reflects the strong hold he has on his followers, or the power of social media and Fox News, or even a change in our relation to reality. Of course, you can't definitively prove or disprove any interpretation, but there is a historical example that sheds some light on the issue. </p><p> In April 1973, the Gallup Poll asked people which of these two statements came closer to their views on Watergate: "It is a very serious matter because it reveals corruption in the Nixon administration," or "It's just politics--the kind of thing that both parties engage in." The question was repeated a number of times up until late June 1974 (a couple of months before Nixon resigned). </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhVO1ltngm_Of4FNnFdsWZpXX4tVTwrpmEdC7mVL4UTKup7TBFQlpE0smI7CcuylL2bN5h_ns4DItfnYx3GRtnWXzITxctirqH48YhPQOXhjNjRG_FlkZbnvcbJOF7TMxr3k9pHNXKzQVXMRMdjkGj_iDlkuuWQT9bRHW5gLDuFJ9ZQpiIr65CCUe3rzk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhVO1ltngm_Of4FNnFdsWZpXX4tVTwrpmEdC7mVL4UTKup7TBFQlpE0smI7CcuylL2bN5h_ns4DItfnYx3GRtnWXzITxctirqH48YhPQOXhjNjRG_FlkZbnvcbJOF7TMxr3k9pHNXKzQVXMRMdjkGj_iDlkuuWQT9bRHW5gLDuFJ9ZQpiIr65CCUe3rzk=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>There was a substantial movement towards seeing it as very serious between April and June 1973, but not much change after that time. <p></p><p>Gallup asked the question again in 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2014, with slight changes in wording ("is" to "was" and an introduction mentioning how long ago it happened). The results (including the June 1974 survey for reference):</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyxG2tpx4dVVHGmAldjvnGhcNMI5G5fQQu_XL-5cUsaTObgB6Mk5DTHyCKFyTfVR_QQftNb6IVuSWFN9B4MlHk-feJou3HYDrdS0oOYirwYuX1-OOiEMli0ljc5vhtAVYsOw-SnX5yTWDigvuvRxufE2tfEuAm2OR5oLS3ZYQqhh7LN9XKy9fZL94Lp7w" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyxG2tpx4dVVHGmAldjvnGhcNMI5G5fQQu_XL-5cUsaTObgB6Mk5DTHyCKFyTfVR_QQftNb6IVuSWFN9B4MlHk-feJou3HYDrdS0oOYirwYuX1-OOiEMli0ljc5vhtAVYsOw-SnX5yTWDigvuvRxufE2tfEuAm2OR5oLS3ZYQqhh7LN9XKy9fZL94Lp7w=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />Again, not much change--between 42 and 46 percent said it was "just politics". <p></p><p>Nixon resigned after several leading Congressional Republicans told him that his support had collapsed and he was almost certain to be impeached and removed from office. Virtually all of the mainstream media agreed that it was time for Nixon to go, and there was no Fox News or conservative social media where holdouts could voice their opinion. That is, political and media elites united behind the position that Watergate was a very serious matter, and as later generations came along that presumably was what they were taught in school, but almost half the public continued to say that it was "just politics." </p><p>So the important difference between the two cases doesn't involve the public, but elites. Of course, Nixon was ineligible to run for President, but no one said he should remain a major voice in the party and no one sought his endorsement when running for office. In contrast, Trump has had a lot of support from Republican officeholders--according to Ballotpedia, he has 162 "noteworthy" endorsements, compared to 17 for DeSantis, 5 for Haley, and 1 for Ramaswamy (Doug Burgum and Tim Scott got a few before dropping out). That's considerably more lopsided than the distribution of support among likely Republican primary voters. </p><p>That leads to the question of why he continues to get so much support among Republican elites. I've had a few posts that touch on the issue (especially <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-devil-you-know.html">this one</a>), but will try a more systematic one in the near future. </p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-52987686824182511402024-01-01T11:48:00.002-05:002024-01-01T11:50:04.189-05:00Party images<p> A few weeks ago, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/opinion/biden-campaign-polls.html?searchResultPosition=3">Thomas Edsall mentioned</a> a survey question on which party was better at looking out for the middle class. The Democrats led, but only by 36% to 34%, which was the smallest in the 30-year history of the question. I followed the links and found that the question was <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23990905-230239-nbc-september-2023-poll_for-release-92623">part of a group</a>: which party was better at dealing with crime, immigration, education, health care, abortion, looking out for the middle class, and dealing with the economy. Not all questions were asked in all surveys, and there were substantial gaps for some of them, but they still provide information on how party images have or haven't changed. I show percent saying Republicans minus percent saying Democrats--that is, positive numbers mean the Republicans have an advantage on the issue. The color of the points indicates the party of the administration.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJJaH3DnxjmcIIuXymUn_ofcp9Dqfqvx62njI-HH0DOmhX2OOjiNYZpsMNv6S26MTekMfRNQ2nGNY5orduenB1GfHsGcO86beBSqbFvux0SbX-4Dc3NYgMoUqBSwF1OymBxF3S-Yq1gS2NHJV9SA1PM7KnX96H6tGtHAiVKGD36NavmM0k87QNrTkphB8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJJaH3DnxjmcIIuXymUn_ofcp9Dqfqvx62njI-HH0DOmhX2OOjiNYZpsMNv6S26MTekMfRNQ2nGNY5orduenB1GfHsGcO86beBSqbFvux0SbX-4Dc3NYgMoUqBSwF1OymBxF3S-Yq1gS2NHJV9SA1PM7KnX96H6tGtHAiVKGD36NavmM0k87QNrTkphB8=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />Republicans consistently had an advantage on dealing with crime, but it's been larger under Biden than it was in the 1990s or the one time it was asked during the Trump administration (October 2020).<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTQ-fYWh_IehQJQg85EPZMxv3SpXsJiHlflq7BpNKeFMz0x7PFmx2bDcKEMHWkig-a6Z6YCj7a_L1VEteIQBIL484ZbfyQGUAjHhY8BGOrV-Ub6lw7gif9CLlfr0bFpljbsUiSHZmkcwP_M4Ken0GbQDIqbj2cRw0NWJ7ZfOej8ovip7Sde9-VRgjqwo8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTQ-fYWh_IehQJQg85EPZMxv3SpXsJiHlflq7BpNKeFMz0x7PFmx2bDcKEMHWkig-a6Z6YCj7a_L1VEteIQBIL484ZbfyQGUAjHhY8BGOrV-Ub6lw7gif9CLlfr0bFpljbsUiSHZmkcwP_M4Ken0GbQDIqbj2cRw0NWJ7ZfOej8ovip7Sde9-VRgjqwo8=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />Neither party has a consistent advantage. The Democrats generally had an advantage during the Bush, and Trump administrations, but the Republicans have had a big advantage under Biden. Things were up and down under Obama--overall the parties were close. Thus, it seems that people react against the party in power, but the reaction has been especially strong under Biden. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhX1eu2zq7Sjdf5H3ReNyDDa4ln6AufjDhiJF_GVx851QpczpdX6O9XjhP_v8OprfP2shRLAkGc5DmF-QgUcNAiH64wdYCaikqr6rdapE4GtPiJ5gEe8_TwwJ9dF-7H-EfPTGVKQF_2p-i9L0fT5ardl-IYgOA5Z3BdbcCzzCpdloykcVLKnvBE3wGj7AU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhX1eu2zq7Sjdf5H3ReNyDDa4ln6AufjDhiJF_GVx851QpczpdX6O9XjhP_v8OprfP2shRLAkGc5DmF-QgUcNAiH64wdYCaikqr6rdapE4GtPiJ5gEe8_TwwJ9dF-7H-EfPTGVKQF_2p-i9L0fT5ardl-IYgOA5Z3BdbcCzzCpdloykcVLKnvBE3wGj7AU=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />Unfortunately, there is a long gap (1996-2011) on this question. But there is an interesting pattern beginning in 2011--the Republicans made steady gains under Obama and Trump. <p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3TlgtYBgDE7b42UUwOc7K-VxD4gkhiAUQjwdHT0joi4aDvq-SMhaE1StQUjJtmYM9ozTU1NTD8JKy5fu2xjQ-N_mZod5D6p8UobeEN5NUwL8ou_CNefmqTcH01JOBd3U0wp0EmXhtwl-vxX68XfcoUxBZe-g9vlyPnHZC2G2Snr27vBVs6XKJQpR1ESE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3TlgtYBgDE7b42UUwOc7K-VxD4gkhiAUQjwdHT0joi4aDvq-SMhaE1StQUjJtmYM9ozTU1NTD8JKy5fu2xjQ-N_mZod5D6p8UobeEN5NUwL8ou_CNefmqTcH01JOBd3U0wp0EmXhtwl-vxX68XfcoUxBZe-g9vlyPnHZC2G2Snr27vBVs6XKJQpR1ESE=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />On dealing with the economy, there's a similar pattern of steady Republican gains in recent years. There are also signs of the reaction against the incumbent party that was seen for immigration.<p></p><p> </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivna06tKwq76PVu0pzcl-U6-nkv95U-j42lOo-RHEeN7sMB89XBlhZeVlZJMLZ8-YC4NDo8sFnwwdD5un1Ec7Dfo4F1OwArhMOMSKWYIuMnS5v3EOrD6X64uTSbGXY4pqu_nC0LccLXahVe9vFrV_xfk0-M-JtL-HQbrDOyet95dPvBmB6GZcNFQZypEE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivna06tKwq76PVu0pzcl-U6-nkv95U-j42lOo-RHEeN7sMB89XBlhZeVlZJMLZ8-YC4NDo8sFnwwdD5un1Ec7Dfo4F1OwArhMOMSKWYIuMnS5v3EOrD6X64uTSbGXY4pqu_nC0LccLXahVe9vFrV_xfk0-M-JtL-HQbrDOyet95dPvBmB6GZcNFQZypEE=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />The Democrats consistently have an advantage on education, although there's a good deal of fluctuation in the size. Under Biden, the lead has been small by historical standards. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgsF-bkyZ1ORtAEBtMMRt46bHsFwURRhJZX3J9_q63po39mMhWgOhGOQBlAxN5A8JdGjWyqZZkIFanrLVjnmt-6ZMRPA2KCMFrsh7XAVjWQFmi9m1QCgZZMNvGK86KjFKZA11-9fBukfr_eGmCj48qaUGfsEBpXN6fVUDEL6PUJsRwHJgASv806lAPgSCg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgsF-bkyZ1ORtAEBtMMRt46bHsFwURRhJZX3J9_q63po39mMhWgOhGOQBlAxN5A8JdGjWyqZZkIFanrLVjnmt-6ZMRPA2KCMFrsh7XAVjWQFmi9m1QCgZZMNvGK86KjFKZA11-9fBukfr_eGmCj48qaUGfsEBpXN6fVUDEL6PUJsRwHJgASv806lAPgSCg=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div>The Democrats have consistently had an advantage on abortion, although the Republicans seemed to be closing the gap in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since the Dobbs decision, the Democratic lead has increased. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_fTRvbNahLzl48qkOE1Pg-stHh-fEgVJO3mV8z94Qsqn5FHRcQNPA9G66o0sD-5eaosnQejoj092VvIsfYsGeSEAhpobsn3MBWbaT4icBplQf1u35NCU7fzsxMC_dVywu5zmeAOy9vIi--zl-fvLMGMv9Jn0Vq7XReD-dqb1Z7-tEq-FsFDseeUuetQw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_fTRvbNahLzl48qkOE1Pg-stHh-fEgVJO3mV8z94Qsqn5FHRcQNPA9G66o0sD-5eaosnQejoj092VvIsfYsGeSEAhpobsn3MBWbaT4icBplQf1u35NCU7fzsxMC_dVywu5zmeAOy9vIi--zl-fvLMGMv9Jn0Vq7XReD-dqb1Z7-tEq-FsFDseeUuetQw=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>On health care, the Democrats have consistently had an advantage. It was smaller under Obama, but has grown under Trump and Biden. There seems to have been a reaction against Democratic attempts at reform under Clinton and Obama, but as people have experienced the Obama reform they have returned to the Democrats. </p><p>For me, the most surprising thing is that Republican gains on the economy and the middle class didn't start with Biden, but have been pretty steady since the early years of the Obama administration. Since these are important to voters, this is bad news for the Democrats. However, there is one case in which views about the middle class changed quickly---the Democratic advantage fell from 20 points to 9 between October 1993 and 1994, but then went back to 19 by December 1995. <br /><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-64772792631223411482023-12-23T14:05:00.002-05:002023-12-23T14:05:45.309-05:00Keep right<p> A few days ago, the New York Times published <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/opinion/trump-election-2024.html">an opinion piece </a> by Matthew Schmitz which said that Donald Trump "isn’t edging ahead of Mr. Biden in swing states because Americans are eager to submit to authoritarianism. . . . Mr. Trump enjoys enduring support because he is perceived by many voters — often with good reason — as a pragmatic if unpredictable kind of moderate." This was once true-- September 2016, a survey found that only 47% thought that Trump was a conservative, compared to about 60% for Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008. But a lot has happened since 2016--is it still true? In November 2023, a survey sponsored by Marquette Law School found that 78% thought Trump was conservative. That is, perceptions are very different today than they were in 2016. Comparing Trump with some Republican presidents and candidates from the past:</p><p> VL SL M SC VC DK mean</p><p>Reagan<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>04/1980 5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>15<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>33<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>30<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.21<br />Reagan<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>01/1981<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>15<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>38<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>24<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>15<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.87<br />Reagan<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>01/1983 <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>16<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>28<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>28<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>16<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.83<br />Reagan<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>02/1984 <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>31<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>26<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.51<br />Bush<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>06/1999<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>27<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>31<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.41<br />Bush<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>01/2000 <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>38<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.51<br />Bush<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>03/2000<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 6<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>13<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>22<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>31<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>17<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.45<br />Bush<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10/2000<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>18<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>39<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>20<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.64<br />Bush<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11/2003<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 6<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>39<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>22<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.65<br />Bush<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>07/2004<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>6<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>43<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>24<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.86<br />McCain<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12/2007<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>32<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>39<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>6<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.45<br />Romney<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12/2007<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>22<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>39<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>21<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.58<br />McCain<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>01/2008<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>27<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>35<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.43<br />McCain<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>03/2008<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>31<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>29<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>17<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.55<br />McCain<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>06/2008<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>34<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>29<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.60<br />McCain<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10/2008<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>26<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>17<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.68<br />Romney<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12/2011<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>53<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>22<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.25<br />Romney<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10/2012<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>21<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>40<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>16<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.58<br />Romney<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11/2012<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>26<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>37<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.68<br />Trump<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>09/2016<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>21<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>30<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>17<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>13<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0.41<br />Trump<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>07/2022<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 6<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>30<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>48<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1.11<br />Trump<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11/2023<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>13<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>30<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>48<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1.08</p><p>Unfortunately, the question doesn't seem to have been asked between 2016 and 2022, so we can't say just when perceptions changed, but they have definitely changed--Trump is now seen as more conservative than GW Bush, Romney, or even Reagan ever was. This isn't surprising, because he governed as a conservative Republican (as Alan Abramowitz, a professor of Political Science at Emory University, pointed out in a<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/opinion/letters/trump-no-moderate.html"> letter to the editor</a> today). As far as why Trump leads Biden in most recent polls, a more likely explanation is the tradition of the two-party system--if people don't think Biden is doing a good job, they turn to the Republicans. And Republican elites haven't made an effort to discredit Trump or push him aside, so ordinary voters treat him as a normal representative of the party. </p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p><div><br /></div>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-46222286856793072012023-12-21T16:23:00.001-05:002023-12-21T16:23:24.901-05:00Not what it seems<p> A day or two ago, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/opinion/october-7-jews-hamas.html">column by Bret Stephens s</a>aid a Harvard/Harris poll "finds that 44 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34, and a whopping 67 percent of those ages 18 to 24, agree with the proposition that 'Jews as a class are oppressors.' . . . . The same generation that received the most instruction in the virtues of tolerance is now the most antisemitic in recent memory." I've seen several other references to that poll since then. The full question is "Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?" Some people have observed tha<a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2023/12/17/dont-put-too-much-stock-in-survey-finding-that-67-of-18-24-year-olds-say-jews-are-oppressors/">t other recent surveys suggest much lower levels </a>of anti-Semitism. But then how do you explain the Harvard/Harris results? I think that the key is in <a href="https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/HHP_Dec23_KeyResults.pdf">a question that comes just before </a>"There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?" That's followed by a question on "Do you think this ideology is helpful or hurtful to our society?" and then the question about whether Jews are oppressors. Comparing the percent agreeing that white people and Jews are oppressors by age:</p><p> Whites Jews</p><p>18-24 79% 67%<br />25-34 49% 44%<br />35-44 39% 36%<br />45-54 33% 24%<br />55-64 26% 15%<br />65+ 19% 9%</p><p>Support for the statement that Jews are oppressors is consistently a little lower than support for the statement that white people are oppressors. So the most plausible interpretation of the results for that question is that most people who agreed that white people are oppressors regard Jews as white people rather than "nonwhite people and people of certain groups." In any case, if you accept the results for the question on Jews as evidence of widespread anti-Semitism among young people, you have to accept the results for the previous question as evidence of even more widespread "anti-whitism." My interpretation of the results on the first question is that people treated it as about general recognition of racial injustice and/or support for affirmative action, although it's so badly worded that it's hard to be sure. </p><p>A couple of other points on the Harvard/Harris survey:<br />1. The general direction of the age differences is reasonable, but they seem implausibly large for many questions. I suspect there's something wrong with either their sample (an online panel) or their weighting.<br />2. Many of the questions could serve as examples of things to avoid when writing survey questions. </p><p>And on anti-Semitism:<br />1. I think that, like other kinds of ethnic and religious prejudice, it is declining, and there's less of it in younger generations.<br />2. However, more than other kinds of prejudice, anti-Semitism tends to be elaborated into a comprehensive world-view. That makes it more harmful than the numbers alone would suggest.<br />3. There is an anti-Semitism of the left. People on the left used to be aware of this--"anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools" was a well-known expression in the early days of the German Social Democratic Party--but I think that recognition has faded, and leftists now often assume that anti-Semitism just involves people like Richard Spencer and isn't something they need to look out for on their side. </p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-32150545336607058522023-12-17T19:25:00.001-05:002023-12-17T19:30:11.668-05:00And the echo answered "fraud!"<p> I have an account on Truth Social, and I check it from time to time to see what Donald Trump is saying. He recently posted a <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/12/survey-more-than-1-in-5-mail-in-voters-admit-to-cheating-in-2020-election/">story from Breitbar</a>t about a survey by Rasmussen Reports. According to the story "more than 1-in-5 voters who submitted ballots by mail say they did so fraudulently." This isn't just some Twitter "poll"--Rasmussen has decent record of accuracy in predicting elections <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/rasmussen-reports-pulse-opinion-research/">(a B rating from 538)</a>--so it deserves a closer look. </p><p>The survey found the 30% of the sample said they voted by mail in the 2020 election. Those who said they did were asked "did a friend or family member fill out your ballot, in part or in full, on your behalf" (19% yes); "did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?" (21% yes); "did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident? (17% yes); "did you sign a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without his or her permission?" (17% yes). Everyone was asked three additional questions whether "a friend, family member, or organization, such as a political party, offer to pay or reward you for voting?" (8% yes); whether "you know a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted to you that he or she cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence?" (10% yes); and whether "you know a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted to you that he or she filled out a ballot on behalf of another person?" (11% yes). </p><p>Rasmussen didn't release the original data, but they <a href="https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/crosstabs_2_voters_fraud_heartland_december_2023">provided a detailed breakdown of responses</a>. In looking at that, I noticed something strange--people who said they voted for Trump were likely to say that they had done these things. For example, among people who voted by mail, 26% of Trump voters and 14% of Biden voters said that a friend or family member had filled in their ballot. A larger fraction of Biden voters voted by mail (36% vs. 23%), so overall, .23*.26=.060 or 6% of Trump voters and .36*.13=.050 or 5% of Biden voters said that someone else had filled in their ballot. The total percent of voters who answered yes on each question:</p><p> Trump Biden</p><p>Someone else filled in your ballot 6.0% 5.0%<br />You filled out someone else's 6.9% 4.7%<br />Signed someone else's 5.3% 4.0%<br /><br /></p><p>So if you accept the data, Trump voters were more likely to engage in "fraud" than Biden voters.</p><p> For the questions asked of everyone:</p><p>Offer of reward 6% 9%<br />Know out-of-state voter 13% 8%<br />Know someone who filled out other's 12% 9%</p><p>There was also another odd pattern in the data. For all of the questions, people in the youngest age group (18-39) were more likely to answer yes--a lot more likely. For example, 33% of people aged 18-39, 9% of people aged 40-64, and 1% of people aged 65% said that they had signed someone else's ballot. Of course, there is sampling error, but these aren't tiny groups--there are roughly 100 absentee voters in each age group. Since people in the youngest age group were more likely to have voted for Biden, the tendency for Trump voters to be more likely to report irregularities would be even stronger after controlling for age. The age differences are also present in the questions asked of everyone--19% of 18-39 year olds, 7% of 40-64 year olds, and 3% of people over 65 said they knew someone who admitted casting a ballot in a state of which they weren't a resident. </p><p>How can you explain the age differences? I doubt that there has been a dramatic increase in propensity to violate the rules for mail in ballots (and to tell friends, family members, and acquaintances that you've violated the rules) across the generations. Rasmussen has<a href="https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/about_us/methodology"> a statement on their methodology</a> that might provide an answer. Their sample is mostly obtained by random-digit dialing of phone numbers, but "to reach those who have abandoned traditional landline telephones, Rasmussen Reports uses an online survey tool to interview randomly selected participants from a demographically diverse panel." Unlike most survey organizations, Rasmussen doesn't use live interviewers--there's a recorded voice and people answer by "press 1 for yes, 2 for no....." I suspect that people are more likely to give a false answer with this format than when speaking to a person, and because Trump has been saying that there was fraud in mail voting, Trump voters may have wanted to help give evidence of fraud.** This tendency is likely to be stronger in the panel--since they are regularly asked to do surveys (and probably are generally more online), they are likely to have a better sense of how the results will be used. People without landlines tend to be young, so the panel probably makes up a much larger share of the 18-39 group. So my hypothesis is that many of the "yes" answers are a result of Trump voters (especially in the panel) giving answers that they think will help to make Trump's case that there was a lot of fraud in the election. Another factor is that people in the online panel are presumably given some compensation for participating in the surveys, so they may rush through without paying much attention. Most organizations make some effort to identify people like this and remove them from the sample, but they are usually pretty crude and Rasmussen doesn't say anything about whether and how they do it. So some of the "yes" answers, especially in the youngest cohort, may be people who are essentially answering at random. </p><p><br /></p><p>*The "no longer a permanent resident" question was left out of the table. </p><p>**The question about who you voted for was asked before the questions on voting irregularities--that is, people answered it before they knew what the survey would be about. </p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-89489296833486748572023-12-12T15:06:00.002-05:002023-12-12T15:08:02.872-05:00Do you know what I mean?<p> There's been a lot of discussion of the evasive answers given by the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT to a question on whether a call for genocide against the Jewish people would violate their institution's code of conduct. But one point that has rarely been mentioned is that there's no evidence that anyone at those universities, or any other university, has called for genocide against the Jewish people. The premise of the <a href="https://stefanik.house.gov/2023/12/icymi-stefanik-demands-answers-from-harvard-president-claudine-gay-on-harvard-s-failure-to-condemn-antisemitism-and-anti-israel-attacks-on-campus">question was that certain slogans </a>, like "from the river to the sea," are equivalent to calls for genocide. </p><p>What do people who say "from the river to the sea" mean? I think that the great majority would say they want a secular state encompassing what is now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank in which Jews, Muslims, and people of other religions all are equal. It's easy to see why this vision would be appealing, especially for Americans. Of course, you could object that it's naive and unrealistic, but student politics (and let's face it, faculty politics too) often involves taking stands on principle with little regard to practicality. </p><p>There is a poll that bears on this issue--it has a question on whether Israel should "remain a Jewish state," "become a mixed state in which Palestinians have a major share of power," or "should no longer exist as an independent country." Unfortunately, it's from 2002, but it's the only one I could find that asks about general vision for the future. Overall, 42% said Israel should remain a Jewish state, 39% that it should become a mixed state, 6% that it should no longer exist, and 14% didn't know. Some factors that were related to opinions (from now on, the base for the percentages excludes don't knows):<br />1. Religion--there were only 19 Jews in the sample, and all 19 said Israel should remain a Jewish state. Among Protestants, 56% said it should remain a Jewish state, 37% that it should become a mixed state; Catholics favored a mixed state by 60%-34%. People with no religion were in between. <br />2. Race--blacks were more likely to say Israel should not exist (18%-6%). Support for a mixed state was highest among Hispanics (53%).<br />3. Education--more educated people were more likely to say Israel should become a mixed state and less likely to say it should not exist, but the differences were not very big (50%-39%-11% among people without a high school degree, 47%-49%-5% among college graduates). <br />4. Age--younger people were more likely to say that Israel should become a mixed state--support for that option fell from 54% among people aged 18-29 to 31% among people aged 65 and above. <br />5. Party--Republicans were somewhat more likely to say Israel should remain a Jewish state, and Democrats more likely to favor the other two options. But the highest support for a "mixed state" was among independents (57%, against 39% among both Democrats and Republicans). Independents tend to have less political knowledge and interest, so I think this shows that the mixed position has an intuitive appeal. <br /></p><p>These results raise a question of why political elites pretend the "mixed" position doesn't exist rather than trying to explain why it wouldn't work. Of course, part of the answer is just the search for political advantage--discrediting an opinion is often more appealing than engaging with it. Another is that it's a fringe position among political elites, so they don't realize that it's fairly popular among the public. And finally, there's the<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2019/05/they-said-you-was-high-class.html"> "anti-elitist" mood that I've remarked on before</a>: people who (rightly) say that we should try to understand working-class Trump voters rather than just condemning them as racist will go straight to condemning college students, especially Ivy Leaguers, as anti-Semitic. <br /></p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-74187075865988448102023-12-04T13:01:00.002-05:002023-12-04T13:01:53.205-05:00Changing views of Israel?In the last few months, strongly negative views of Israel have been more prominent than they have been in the past. Does this reflect a change in general public opinion? In 1956, 1966, and then frequently from the 1970s to the 1990s, there were questions asking people to rate Israel on a scale of -5 to +5. Since the 1980s, there have been frequent questions asking if you have very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable views of Israel. The figure shows the percent holding strongly negative views--"very unfavorable" or -4 and -5 on the -5 to +5 scale. (I started from the present and worked backwards, so "Form 1" is the newer question and "Form 2" is the older one).<br /><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1rzNzm-dOnfHysHUyLBoN6YOxUwLoXdHImAbi1xms98WjD-ZDJGBjpFOjtp1fk4yBi3Bti5pHhTbqk1XaSMBuDe4V6bAFDdbExa83KcI_yd0Jl070ZHzE90foIZCSNJwg6uT2loAvMP4jutQh2pwV9Mc132tATVvkiivjr0bTx6EUzrTuD5U3sITFqDw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1rzNzm-dOnfHysHUyLBoN6YOxUwLoXdHImAbi1xms98WjD-ZDJGBjpFOjtp1fk4yBi3Bti5pHhTbqk1XaSMBuDe4V6bAFDdbExa83KcI_yd0Jl070ZHzE90foIZCSNJwg6uT2loAvMP4jutQh2pwV9Mc132tATVvkiivjr0bTx6EUzrTuD5U3sITFqDw=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>Over the long term, there is no trend. Although there's a lot of short-term variation among surveys, it seems like there was an increase in the 1980s and then a decline in the 1990s, but since then it's been pretty steady (at least until the last survey in February 2023). I don't recall the history well enough to offer an explanation for the change in the 1980s-90s. </div><div><br /></div><div>So the change in political discourse apparently doesn't reflect a change in the overall distribution of views. But what about the social location of anti-Israel views? The General Social Survey regularly asked the -5 to +5 question from the 1970s to the 1990s, so I got breakdowns by some demographic groups and compared them to the average from the last four Gallup surveys (2020-23)</div><div><br /></div><div> Strongly Unfavorable Views of Israel</div><div> <br /> 1970s-90s 2020s<br />White 10% 5% <br />Non-white 13% 13%<br /><br />18-34 11% 10%<br />35-54 9% 8%<br />55-64 12% 6%<br /><br />Republican 9% 5%<br />Independent 10% 9%<br />Democrat 11% 10%</div><div><br />Conservative 9% 5%<br />Moderate 11% 9%<br />Liberal 10% 11%<br /><br />College grad 6% 6%<br />Not college grad 12% 9%</div><div><br /></div><div>The differences by race, age, party, and ideology were small in the GSS sample--strongly negative views of Israel were scattered about equally among all of those groups. In recent years, however, there is a pattern--strongly negative views are more common among younger people, non-whites, liberals, and Democrats. So they now have more of a definite social location. But education is different--the gap has become smaller. Despite the attention given to anti-Israel views in universities, particularly elite universities, strongly negative views of Israel remain more common among less educated people. How do you reconcile this with the apparent strength of anti-Israel views at universities, especially elite universities? It's possible that there's an interaction involving education and age--that anti-Israel views are common among college students or young college graduates. I can't check this, since I don't have access to the individual-level data for recent surveys, but I don't think that it's likely to be more than a secondary factor. I think this is a case where advocates of a minority view are unwilling to or don't feel the need to moderate their demands in order to appeal to the majority. This is somewhat unusual, but not remarkably so--for example, you also see it with abortion (on both sides), and the Freedom Caucus approach to government spending. I don't know of any attempts to explain when and why it happens, although it seems like an important issue. </div><div><br /></div><div>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-87961809620089350272023-11-29T11:26:00.000-05:002023-11-29T11:26:41.338-05:00Judgment and opinion<p> Exactly a year ago,<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2022/11/representation.html"> I had a post about</a> a survey question from 1993 on whether members of Congress should follow public opinion or their own judgment when voting on issues. I wasn't planning on marking the anniversary, but by coincidence I recently ran across other questions on the same issue, from 1939 and 1940. They aren't identical to the 1993 question, but seem similar enough to be compared. The overall distributions:</p><p> Own Public </p><p>1939 38 59 A<br />1940 32 64 A<br />1940 35 39 B<br />1993 23 70 C</p><p>The exact questions:<br />A. Should members of Congress vote according to their own best judgment or according to the way the people in their districts feel?<br />B. In cases when a Congressman's opinion is different from that of the majority of people in his district, do you think he should usually vote according to his own best judgment, or according to the way a majority of his district feels?<br />C. When your representative in Congress votes on an issue, which should be more important: the way that voters in your district feel about the issue, or the Representative's own principles and judgment about what is best for the country?</p><p>The percent choosing the "own judgment" option is substantially lower in the 1993 question than in all three of the 1939-40 questions. It seems to me that the addition of "what is best for the country" in the 1993 question made the "own judgment" side sound more favorable, so if the differences in question wording mattered they probably understated the change. In looking at the 1993 question, I had found that education didn't make much difference. The 1939 and 1940 surveys didn't ask about education, but they had variables for occupation and interviewer's rating of social standing. People of "higher" position were a bit more likely to say that representatives should follow their own judgement, but it was only a small difference. I tried a few other demographic variables, which didn't make much difference. So the major story is simply the difference in the overall distributions. Of course, 1993 was 30 years ago, so we don't know what's happened since then. It seems strange that no one has asked about the issue since then, so I'll make another attempt to find questions.</p><p>The 1939 survey also asked about a question I've written about before "Do people who are successful get ahead largely because of their luck or largely because of their ability?" The same question was also asked in 1970 and then in 2016. My<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-return-to-facts.html"> previous post on this question r</a>eported the distribution (16% said luck in 1939, 8% in 1970, and 13% in 2016), but didn't look at group differences. In 1939, there were large differences by economic standing: </p><p> Luck Ability<br />Wealthy 3% 97%<br />Average + 7% 93%<br />Average 11% 89%<br />Poor+ 17% 83%<br />Poor 23% 77%<br />On relief 30% 70%</p><p>Unfortunately, the individual data for the 2016 survey is not available in the Roper Center or ICPSR--I will try to track it down, although I think the odds are against me.</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-44587150457389332142023-11-18T11:02:00.004-05:002023-11-18T11:02:33.264-05:00It's all over now?, part 2<p> I wasn't going to have another post on this topic, but then I read an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/us/politics/biden-trump-election-presidents-polling.html">article in the New York Times</a> that drew parallels between Biden's position today and Obama's and George W. Bush's positions when they were running for re-election. It suggested that discouraging early polls had led Obama and Bush to "retool" and "recast" their campaigns. But the figures in my last post shows that both led in the polls at the corresponding point in the campaign, and that their performance in the election was very close to what would have been predicted from the polls a year before. Of course, this doesn't mean that the campaign efforts didn't matter--holding onto a narrow lead is an accomplishment, but it's a different accomplishment from "turning around a struggling campaign."</p><p>The story contrasted GW Bush and Obama to "George H.W. Bush in 1992, [who] failed to heed polls showing voters distressed about the economy and ready for a change after 12 years of Republicans in the White House." I hadn't included that race in my post because there were no surveys about Bush vs. Clinton in November 1991. But there were surveys in October and December, and then more starting in January 1992. In the October 1991 survey, Bush had a big lead: 58% said they would vote for Bush and 22% for Clinton. Bush's lead in the surveys through early April 1992:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgYIpK6joK6R4IYYlyrzavEIjRb33ouMMmYnpS9Gs_vvQLgMGFTRGd1TfDPAYM5T2NhdZVcc39wtabl8Zf-UIRqI1L_jRlmtSEz1WEIvGFWKvPTFLC27Nn3BR4rJ78BXwkAp2Z7B6Kyor26FTHCZ-Cx79aG1X5zOb7RX1ZzGBZdIAXa9TpZ3znyJYZ1ndY" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgYIpK6joK6R4IYYlyrzavEIjRb33ouMMmYnpS9Gs_vvQLgMGFTRGd1TfDPAYM5T2NhdZVcc39wtabl8Zf-UIRqI1L_jRlmtSEz1WEIvGFWKvPTFLC27Nn3BR4rJ78BXwkAp2Z7B6Kyor26FTHCZ-Cx79aG1X5zOb7RX1ZzGBZdIAXa9TpZ3znyJYZ1ndY=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div>His lead diminished pretty steadily, with maybe an upturn in late March, but he was consistently ahead: out of 25 surveys, 24 had Bush in the lead, and one had them tied. So the early polls weren't showing warning signs. <p></p><p>I had forgotten that Bush was far ahead for so much of the campaign, and not just against Clinton--he led by similar margins in matchups with other potential Democratic candidates. I remembered that he had been very popular after the end of the Gulf War, but thought that faded pretty quickly and that the presidential race was competitive from the beginning. It looks like the New York Times writers made the same mistake. </p><p>The growth of partisan polarization means that a swing of this size couldn't happen today. But the 1992 election may be relevant in another way. Going by basic economic statistics, things weren't great, but weren't that bad either, but popular perceptions of the economy were very negative. As far as I know, there's no generally accepted explanation for the gap. Either the Bush campaign didn't make enough effort to turn the perceptions around, or their efforts weren't successful. Either way, the experience may have some lessons for today.</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]<br /><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-53898080436223329012023-11-14T12:33:00.001-05:002023-11-14T14:46:34.624-05:00It's all over now?<p>Donald Trump has generally been leading Joe Biden in recent polls of how you would vote if an election were held today. How much does this tell us about their prospects for the actual election? Questions about how you would vote in a hypothetical election go back to the early days of survey research, so we have a pretty long historical record to go on. I collected questions from the November one year before the election that involved the eventual nominees. I found them for most elections starting in 1944. In 1952, 1968, 1976, 1988, and 1992, there were no surveys that asked about the actual matchup. I also excluded 1972, when all surveys that asked about Nixon and McGovern also included George Wallace as a third party candidate, and 1964, when a survey taken just a few days after the Kennedy assassination showed Johnson with a 79%-15% lead over Goldwater. That left thirteen elections. The figure shows the Democratic lead in the election and in polls taken the previous November:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgE0VhRL0EFjzFkwhp2TX7NwjzEXLhGsLvT3QN3uyMfsN918ZufMfFbdUzSuJhJaibMPKgQgK4uHzpGvOhutVivjtolLRSQ7smWvrF8yGe5O9U2IZUQjMXeRivE__Cg9tba2VaA_V_M9xG01FntFTYtg6lIeh03poj6aw8Efn1iVBNEK_CdHgWFDvU2Flc" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="679" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgE0VhRL0EFjzFkwhp2TX7NwjzEXLhGsLvT3QN3uyMfsN918ZufMfFbdUzSuJhJaibMPKgQgK4uHzpGvOhutVivjtolLRSQ7smWvrF8yGe5O9U2IZUQjMXeRivE__Cg9tba2VaA_V_M9xG01FntFTYtg6lIeh03poj6aw8Efn1iVBNEK_CdHgWFDvU2Flc=w400-h312" width="400" /></a></div><br />There is clearly a relationship: if you regress the election lead on the poll lead, the estimate is about 0.5, and the estimate for the intercept is near zero. So for the purposes of prediction, you should cut the current lead in half. The standard error is about 6. So while it's obviously better to be ahead than to be behind, a small lead at this point doesn't tell you much. <p></p><p>The largest residual is for 1980, when Jimmy Carter had a 10-point lead in a November 1979 poll, but lost badly in the election. The major reason for this was probably that 1980 was a bad year in terms of both the domestic economy and foreign affairs. Another factor is that John Anderson entered the race as an independent candidate, and probably took more votes from Carter than from Reagan. The next biggest residual is in 1984, when Reagan led Mondale by 53%-36% in November 1983 (an average of three surveys), and won by an even bigger margin in 1984. The economy was improving in 1984, and relations with the Soviet Union improved after Gorbachev came to power. These two cases are obviously relevant to the current situation, although given increased partisanship the potential for change might be smaller.</p><p> The third largest residual is 2000--George W. Bush had a 14-point lead (54-40) in November 1999--and there were five surveys, which all were pretty consistent. There were no dramatic developments in the economy or foreign affairs, so what happened to eliminate Bush's lead? This is just speculation, but as I recall, Bush had very good press early on. This was partly because reporters seemed to like him and admire his efficient campaign, but also because they seemed to think that "compassionate conservatism" was an idea whose time had come. I don't mean that they supported it--most reporters were liberals--but they believed that Bush was in tune with voters. So my thought is that Bush's early lead reflected favorable media coverage, and that as people got to know him better, they didn't like him as much. This isn't directly relevant to 2024, since voters already know both Trump and Biden. But Trump was barred from Twitter in January 2021, and Truth Social doesn't have nearly as large an audience, so to some extent voters will be rediscovering him as they start paying attention to the campaign. My impression based on perusal of Truth Social is that Trump has become less effective as a communicator: he goes on at length about he's being unfairly persecuted and how people love him (e. g., a series of posts about his rapturous reception at a UFC event). On any other topic, even attacking the other Republican candidates, it seems like he's just going through the motions. So it's possible that he'll lose ground as voters get more exposure to the new Trump.</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-7529054582065202492023-11-08T11:47:00.000-05:002023-11-08T11:47:31.704-05:00Predistribution and redistribution<p> The change in the connection between education and party--a shift of educated voters towards the Democrats and less educated voters towards the Republicans--has received a lot of attention. One popular view is that working class voters have moved away from the Democrats because the party no longer pays attention to their economic interests. Writing in the New York Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/opinion/democrats-elite-judis-teixeira.html">Pamela Paul says</a> "When it comes to economics, the authors say, Democrats have too often pursued the interests of their own elites and donors. Since the 1990s, the party has pursued policies that worsen the economic plight of Americans who are not well off." However, although you can find examples that arguably support this analysis, if you look at spending on a range of social programs, the idea that the Democrats have stopped trying to help people with low and moderate incomes doesn't hold up: see <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-neoliberal-period-part-1.html">this post</a>. A new <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w31794">paper by Ilyana Kuziemko, Nicolas Longuet Marx & Suresh Naidu</a> offers a more promising idea: that education affects relative support for "predistribution"--policies designed to affect jobs and wages--versus "redistribution." Less educated people tend to favor predistribution, while more educated people favor redistribution, so as educated people have come to have more influence in the Democratic party, policies have shifted towards redistribution. Thus, although they are still trying to help the working class, they're doing it in a way that has less appeal to the working class. </p><p>As an example of the effect of education on different kinds of opinions, here is the percent of college graduates and others who take the liberal position on some questions from a 2015 CBS News/NY Times survey:</p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Not grad<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>grad<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Difference</span></p><p>Tax stock transactions<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>35<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>39<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 4<br />Tax million incomes<span style="white-space: pre;"> <span> </span></span>69<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>69 <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0<br />sick leave<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>86<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>85<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> -1<br />caregiver leave<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>83<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>79<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> -4<br />Union power<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 45<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>40 <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>-5<br />trade restrictions<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 69<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>64<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> -5<br />Minimum wage $15<span> </span><span> </span><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>40<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>35<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> -5<br />Minimum wage $10<span style="white-space: pre;"> <span> </span></span>75<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>69 <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>-6<br />limit CEO pay<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 56<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> -11<br />schedule notice<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>78<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>66<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> -12<br />Distribution fair<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>75<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>63<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> -12</p><p>Positive numbers in the "difference" column mean that college graduates are more liberal than less educated people; negative numbers mean they're more conservative. Most of the figures are negative, but if you look more closely there's a pattern--more educated people are equally or more liberal when it comes to raising taxes on people with high incomes, but more conservative on things that involve direct regulation. The biggest difference ("schedule notice") is for a question about whether hourly workers should be given two weeks notice of any change in hours worked or compensated with overtime pay.* None of the differences are especially large, but they are consistent, so they can contribute to a general image of the parties. </p><p>I think that their analysis explains at least part of the shift in party support, and I've made a similar but less systematic account in<a href="https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/18970_6.html"> this paper</a>, although I think that the effect of education on economic opinions has <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2023/07/whats-matter-with-college-graduates.html">also shifted in a liberal direction</a>--definitely on redistribution, but probably on predistribution as well. Finally, there's a question of whether the shift led to a change in overall support for the parties? A New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/opinion/democratic-party-inequality-biden.html">article by Peter Coy</a> on the Kuziemko et al. paper says it does--the title is "How Democrats Lost Voters With a ‘Compensate Losers’ Strategy." But the paper doesn't actually discuss this issue, and in principle it could go in either direction--the gains among educated voters could be bigger, smaller, or equal to the losses among less educated voters. I'll discuss this point more in a future post, but at this point I'll just observe that the assumption that this shift is bad for the Democrats is revealing in itself--there is now a general idea that it's better to appeal to the "working class" than to "elites." So Democrats worry about the shift, while Republicans are proud of it.</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p><p><br /></p><p>* I take support for trade restrictions as the liberal position. In addition to the policy questions, I also show the results for a question on whether the overall distribution of income is fair. </p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-57587957003783411392023-10-30T18:58:00.004-04:002023-10-30T18:58:57.922-04:00From ignorance to knowledge and back again<p> I didn't intend to post again this soon, but I read<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/world/europe/businesses-civics-education.html"> a story in the New York Times</a> and saw this passage: "In the United States, surveys point to <a href="https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-civics-knowledge-drops-on-first-amendment-and-branches-of-government/">declining civics understanding among adults</a> [which leads] to weaker social discourse and faith in public institutions." I <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2017/11/make-america-well-informed-again.html">don't think that there has been a general decline</a> in civics understanding, or that lack of civics understanding in the public is a major source of the problems with our political culture, so I wanted to check their evidence. </p><p>On clicking the link, I found it led to a legitimate survey sponsored by the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and the report was called "Americans’ Civics Knowledge Drops on First Amendment and Branches of Government." So far, that seems to support the statement in the Times. On reading further, I saw that the drop was relative to the previous year (2021), and it was dramatic--e. g., when asked what rights were guaranteed by the First Amendment, 20% named freedom of the press, down from 50% in 2021. Going back further, 42% mentioned freedom of the press in 2020, and 14% in 2017. So either we've had a big decline or a small increase in knowledge, depending on your starting year. Something is wrong--you might get a large increase in knowledge on issues that suddenly come into the news (e. g., knowing where Ukraine is located), but this is something that people learn in school, if they learn it. So you're not going to get large changes from year to year--you could get large changes over a long period of time, but they would involve the accumulation of small changes in the same direction. </p><p>What explains the differences between the years? With open-ended questions, the number who give responses is affected by the amount of encouragement they get from the interviewer--e. g., if someone says "I don't know," whether the interviewer says something like "just your best guess is OK." This is particularly relevant to the First Amendment question, since multiple answers are possible. Suppose someone answers "freedom of speech" and then pauses: the interviewer could move to the next question, or could ask "anything else?" So my guess is that the exact instructions given to the interviewers changed over the years (or possibly the way they were paid in a way that changed their incentives--like hourly rate versus completed interviews). The site has a report on sampling and weighting, but nothing on the exact instructions, so I can't check. </p><p>You would think that someone involved in the project would realize that the numbers looked strange, and checked to see if the apparent changes in knowledge actually reflected some change in the survey procedures. But they just presented them as straightforward changes in knowledge: for example, the 2020 survey report was titled "<a href="https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/pandemic-protests-2020-civics-survey-americans-know-much-more-about-their-rights/">Amid Pandemic and Protests, Civics Survey Finds Americans Know More of Their Rights.</a>" I'm not saying that it's <i>impossible</i> that there were large year-to-year increases and declines in knowledge--just that it would be unusual enough to deserve close examination before saying that it happened. </p><p><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-58146484737304789012023-10-29T13:13:00.003-04:002023-10-29T13:13:33.964-04:00Criminal tendencies, part 2<p> In my last post, I said that perceptions of change in crime rates responded to actual conditions. This post looks as party differences. The proportion of Democrats and Republicans who think that crime is increasing in their area (independents are in between--I leave them out to make the figure more readable):</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpN_mohA4l_5ZCjGAYXVQ-gSX6WKoT3UERduLlgIMNUia9kS2-Ej1nF3esVL8bGoyldIk5Jho2De1-BtmKaDBxX7T20EU2OV1NxxNHHvlRThx6ZsNOhuJgMOiTiYhdKWyCEuj4kH2gaDS6TB9uDoB55kJ97ZJFH4ad_d1Dp8_YROzgQaqJsD_E7dU8LPI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpN_mohA4l_5ZCjGAYXVQ-gSX6WKoT3UERduLlgIMNUia9kS2-Ej1nF3esVL8bGoyldIk5Jho2De1-BtmKaDBxX7T20EU2OV1NxxNHHvlRThx6ZsNOhuJgMOiTiYhdKWyCEuj4kH2gaDS6TB9uDoB55kJ97ZJFH4ad_d1Dp8_YROzgQaqJsD_E7dU8LPI" width="320" /></a></div><br />Under Biden, there's been a large partisan gap, with Republicans more likely to believe that crime has increased. But a partisan difference existed before then--the average perception of an increase by administration:<p></p><p> Dem Rep Difference</p><p>GHW Bush 54% 46% -8%<br />Clinton 38% 41% +3%<br />GW Bush 45% 36% -9%<br />Obama 42% 53% +11%<br />Trump 40% 37% -3%<br />Biden 41% 70% +29%</p><p>The party difference was positive (meaning Republicans were more likely to see an increase) under all three Republican administrations and negative under all three Democratic administrations. That is, people see things as better when their party is in power. But the effect seems to be bigger for Republicans. This is clear when you look at years when party control changed*:</p><p> Dem Rep Ind</p><p>2000-2001 -2% -17% -5%<br />2008-9 -1% +13% +7%<br />2016-7 +4% -18% -3%<br />2020-21 +3 +29% +9%</p><p>In previous posts, I found that with <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-difference-will-it-make.html"> views about the future of the next generation</a> Republicans were more affected by party control than Democrats were, but that with <a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2021/07/you-must-hate-trump-part-2.html"> ratings of current economic conditio</a>ns Democrats and Republicans were about equally affected. </p><p>If views are affected by both partisanship and actual conditions, that raises the question of whether the affect of conditions differs by party. I couldn't get any definite results on that point. </p><p>*There was no survey in 1993, 1994, or 1995, so it's not possible to judge the Bush-Clinton transition. </p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7085195159661027971.post-47017785472131591862023-10-27T12:00:00.000-04:002023-10-27T12:00:09.571-04:00Criminal tendencies<p> People sometimes say that we are moving into a "post-truth" world where facts have less influence on what people think than they used to. Paul Krugman had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/opinion/crime-public-opinion.html">a column</a> on perceptions of crime which didn't explicitly endorse this analysis, but seemed to lean in that direction. He concluded "The good news is that . . . we seem to be heading back to the prepandemic normal of fairly low crime. The bad news is that the politics of fear can work, even if there isn’t much basis for those fears." The column referred to a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/404048/record-high-perceive-local-crime-increased.aspx">Gallup poll from October 2022</a> that found 56% of people thought that crime had increased in their area in the last year, which was the highest figure since they started asking the question in the early 1970s, even though the actual crime rate is substantially lower than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMQGEzoXn5HhD7008hH0I26uUTAMjddAkvKKzTumyrn8IfCw-m22yMx678MT4N23-34HhUexepRIKbvESnIxXnEawlE9kbgAzU2LNc4KP92HCCE_2qS_30wtD2cZsLXSCnpOrYXNmP1WFFE4APIoQk1w9t0nsSw27HAnLxCkxziJ09d29HX7aWuOyChXE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="968" data-original-width="1420" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMQGEzoXn5HhD7008hH0I26uUTAMjddAkvKKzTumyrn8IfCw-m22yMx678MT4N23-34HhUexepRIKbvESnIxXnEawlE9kbgAzU2LNc4KP92HCCE_2qS_30wtD2cZsLXSCnpOrYXNmP1WFFE4APIoQk1w9t0nsSw27HAnLxCkxziJ09d29HX7aWuOyChXE=w400-h272" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>However, although the Gallup question speaks of more or less, some people volunteer that it's about the same. In 1981, 54% said there was more crime in their area, 29% the same, and 8% less; in 2022, it was 56%, 14%, and 28%. In general, the percent of "same" answers has been declining, so looking at changes in the average gives a different impression than looking at the "more" answers.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOKWQesmavteS_MktLE1YPvg8KZXqsxjhKE1vNca0Qds0o6N4AI8e87DWQX-_1P-fziO-XRtpDHCHvuHsn897Z2byRh5qaIkjFK3cle5ojl0lDn-fGbI85NUtr-bw1zIeWLLRCATJukvuwVSSth59EUGqJ5PF5sIBrwr-ANupB27QZ0v3_eP3FRoCdSvA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="864" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOKWQesmavteS_MktLE1YPvg8KZXqsxjhKE1vNca0Qds0o6N4AI8e87DWQX-_1P-fziO-XRtpDHCHvuHsn897Z2byRh5qaIkjFK3cle5ojl0lDn-fGbI85NUtr-bw1zIeWLLRCATJukvuwVSSth59EUGqJ5PF5sIBrwr-ANupB27QZ0v3_eP3FRoCdSvA" width="320" /></a></div>The figure shows the average, counting more as 1, less as -1, and same as 0. There was a jump from 2020 to 2022, but the 2022 figure is still lower than the values for most of the 1970s and 1980s. Also, perceptions seem to have responded to the decline in crime in the 1990s and early 2000s. So if you consider the "same" answers, perceptions seem to have a better match to actual conditions.<p></p><p>I estimated a model in which perceptions depend on perceptions the last time the survey was taken and the change in the homicide rate over the last three years.* The estimates are:</p><p>.029+(.90^gap)*LY+.053*X, where LY is perceptions in the previous survey, X is the change in the homicide rates and gap is the gap in years between the current survey and the previous one. The estimated coefficient for X has a t-ratio of about 3. </p><p>This is a pretty crude model, but it suggests that if we are returning to a period of lower crime, that perceptions can be expected to follow--or to put it another way, the "politics of fear" have less effect when there's less to fear. However, Krugman also pointed to Gallup results indicating that Democratic and Republican perceptions of changes in crime rates have diverged recently. I'll consider that issue in my next post. </p><p>*I'm following the analysis in a<a href="https://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2014/05/crime-and-perception.html"> post from 2014</a>, in which I said I "used the last three years rather than the last year because I figured people probably didn't take the time frame all that literally." That is, I just picked it because it seemed reasonable to me, not because I found it fit better than other possibilities.</p><p>[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>David Weakliemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336229317604663975noreply@blogger.com0