polls – Hank Kalet

We love smaller government — except when we don’t

ABC this morning discussed a poll that shows some difficulties facing Democrats as they head into the November elections. The numbers show a real anger at incumbents, meaning we could see some seats flip, though it still appears unlikely that either house will flip parties.

Something else caught my eye, however. It was this bit of information:

In another vulnerability for the president, Americans by 56-40 percent said they preferred smaller government with fewer services — almost exactly the average the past 26 years — but by a vast 77-15 percent thought Obama prefers the opposite, larger government with more services. That, plus concerns about the deficit, seem ripe for a 2010 campaign theme for the Republican Party.

People say they want/prefer smaller government. As ABC points out, the numbers have remained pretty consistent since the Reagan administration.

This is not news, nor is it particularly enlightening. Americans are inundated with anti-government rhetoric, and not just from Fox News. They get it from the mainstream stations, as well, it seems anticlimactic that Americans would say they dislike government. As always, the definition of small government is left unstated, as is the impact that shrinking government and cutting services would have on the lives they live.

People want smaller government, but what they really mean is they want it for others and not necessarily for themselves.

Middle class taxpayers want welfare curtailed but yell when their mortgage deductions are cut.

We hate regulations, but when the government fails to ensure that hte hamburger bought at the local store is tainted with e coli, we should loudly and demand action.

We want good schools, well-stocked libraries, police departments with enough manpower to keep us safe. We want roads without potholes, bridges that do not collapse, working traffic lights. We want a safety net when we fall on tough times (though we prefer that it not stretch too far or cover too many people we don’t like).

The Tea Party right now lives the contradiction. This motley collection of angry white folks has been protesting the alleged growth of government under the Obama administration, calling the president a socialist, a communist, a fascist, Stalin, Hitler (as if these terms were interchangeable). But think about what they also say: “Keep government out of my Medicare.”

Just as interestingly, we have the Arizona immigration law, which has support from the Tea Partiers (or most of them), even though it expands police power in the state — and they support harsh restrictions on the border, another expansion of police power.

But that expansion is OK, because the people at the target end of the expansion, are the dark ones, the ones who do not speak English.

As I said, Americans want smaller government — but only on our terms.

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Poll positions: A GOP firm issues its own numbers

OK, so we have another poll showing us something we already know — voters in New Jersey are not happy with the governor and, at least at the moment, ready to hand the reins off to his Republican challenger.

But the poll in question — conducted by Strategic Vision — may not be the best one to hang one’s hat on, primarily because of two things:

Strategic Visions has among its clients a bevy of conservative groups, including U.S. English and is run by a former campaign operative for Bob Dole’s presidential race.
The other issue with the poll results can be seen in this bit of info:

The results of the poll also showed that 50 percent of those polled approved of President Barack Obama’s overall job performance, with 40 percent disapproving; and 10 percent undecided. When asked if they approved of the President’s handling of the economy, 47 percent approved and 45 percent disapproved.

That means that Strategic Visions has Obama at about 10-12 percentage points below what other New Jersey polls have shown, and may explain why a race that most polls have at about a 7-or-so-point gap is at 15 points in this poll.

I have one other major question: Who commissioned this poll? Strategic Vision does not appear to function as the Gallup, Monmouth or Fairleigh Dickinson polls do. They seem, from their own literature, to be client-driven. So who’s the client in this case?

This description of the polling firm from a 2006 Media Matters piece may shed some light:

Far from being “independent,” Strategic Vision is a Republican polling firm. Johnson, the company’s founder and CEO, worked on former Sen. Bob Dole’s (R-KS) 1988 presidential campaign. Johnson’s personal website — which identifies Johnson at the top as a “Republican conservative” — further notes that while working “at Associated Industries of Florida, he assisted in the development of the association’s political operations department that played a pivotal role in Republicans capturing the State Senate in 1994 and State House in 1996.” Johnson was also involved in Republican Florida governor Jeb Bush’s first gubernatorial campaign. Most media outlets identify Strategic Vision as a “Republican polling company,” such as a March 13 Philadelphia Inquirer article. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted on March 12 that Strategic Vision “has a Republican history,” and the company’s hometown paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, noted in a March 13 article that the “polling firm lists to the GOP side.”

No one would be foolish enough to argue that Corzine is actually leading or that the race is particularly close. But the prevalence of polling in the coverage, especially when polls like this one get the headlines, tend to create a momentum of their own, making the election results seem a forgone conclusion.

As reporters, we need to be very careful to identify those polls that are most reliable and, should we opt to use polls from places like Strategic Vision, make sure we identify who the polling firm is and take as close a look as we can at the results and how they match up with other more reliable polls.

Drilling deeper into the polling

A Monmouth University survey of a five-state region issued today would appear to show support among Shore residents for oil and gas drilling off the coast, though the poll also found that residents want more to be done to protect the coastline.

The numbers are sowmehat contradictory, though not surprising, given the structure of the poll, the demographics of the counties included and the rise in awareness of gas prices over the last two years.

Consider the poll results on the drilling question:

Opinion is a more divided on the question of drilling for oil or gas off the Atlantic coast, although support for this option has increased in the past two years. Just under half of coastal residents (46%) would support drilling in the ocean for energy resources, compared to 37% who are opposed and 12% who have no opinion. Two years ago, coastal resident support for drilling in the Atlantic stood at 33%, opposition at 40%, and no opinion at 24%. It appears that the increased support found in the current survey has come from a decrease in those who were on the fence about the issue in 2007.

The increase in support has also come more from some regions than others. Only 37% of coastal New York residents support drilling for oil in the Atlantic, about the same as the 35% who favored this in 2007. However, a majority (51%) of New Jersey coastal residents now support ocean drilling, up from 30% two years ago. Support from Delmarva residents is also higher in the current survey than two years ago. However there are some differences within that region – a majority of residents in coastal Maryland (65%) and Delaware (52%) support ocean drilling, while fewer Virginia (42%) coastal residents share that view.

Gas prices have been fluctuating over the last two years, but no more than they have since the Gulf Coast region was hit by a pair of devastating hurricanes — Katrina and Rita — in 2005.

The difference, I think, has to do with public activism on the issue last spring following the second major spike in prices in a relatively short time and the role that gas prices and energy issues played in the 2008 presidential race. Remember “Drill, baby, drill” and the Clinton and McCain gas-tax holidays? Drilling was a major piece of the Republican energy plan during 2008 — a fact reflected in the political demographics of the counties surveyed. Just four of the 11 counties included backed then-candidate Barack Obama; seven backed John McCain.

Consider:

The two New York counties — Nassau and Suffolk — both backed President Barack Obama; only 37 percent of New Yorkers surveyed back drilling.
Three of the four New Jersey counties went for McCain; 51 percent of New Jerseyans backed drilling.
Sussex County in Delaware and Worcester County in Maryland both backed McCain; both also backed drilling in the survey.
Virginia is the anamoly. Two of the three counties backed McCain, but they continue to oppose drilling.

I am not disputing the polls results or questioning the methodology. What I am saying is that factors like political leanings may play a role in the results.

There is a danger that polls like this could be used to push the public toward what I believe would be a wasteful intrusion into the ocean ecosystem.

There is something else to consider, as well. There is a tendency for people to support things in theory, but when reality hits they change their minds. Ask them if they support drilling and they say yes; put a real plan on paper or start moving the trucks and ships in and it is likely that they will shout no. I base this on my years covering zoning fights in which residents gather together to fight warehouses or massive housing complexes on properties in their so-called backyard that had been zoned for those uses for years. We tend to be oblivious to these things until we realize that we might be staring at a busy loading dock — or that our sunny day at the beach or afternoon on the fishing boat might be affected by a massive derrick off shore.

The bubble deflates

It’s been nearly two weeks since John McCain accepted the Republican nomination and a full two weeks since Sarah Palin was officially made his running mate and it appears that the polls are starting to stabilize.

Consider the poll released today by The New York Times:

Polls taken after the Republican convention suggested that Mr. McCain had enjoyed a surge of support — particularly among white women after his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate — but the latest poll indicates “the Palin effect” was, at least so far, a limited burst of interest. The contest appeared to be roughly where it was before the two conventions and before the vice-presidential selections: Mr. Obama had the support of 48 percent of registered voters, compared with 43 percent for Mr. McCain, a difference within the poll’s margin of sampling error, and statistically unchanged from the tally in the last New York Times/CBS News Poll in mid-August.

Other polls show a similar shift. Gallup, Hotline and Reuters/Zogby show Barack Obama with a narrow lead after a couple of weeks when McCain was leading. Rasmussen still shows a narrow McCain lead.

I am not a huge believer in polls — it is too easy to game them and so much depends on the sample, the questions and the sequence of the questions. Plus, as Les Payne and Brooke Gladstone pointed out on Bill Moyers’ Journal last week, the polls tend to oversimplify the electorate.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Right. Well, and, you know, there’s always going to be a number of, a large section of the public that feels that way. But as you know, if we want to talk about something that’s happening in this campaign that bears heavily on the media, it’s the role of polls. And the fact of the matter is because every poll asks the question “Who would you vote for if the election were today?” instead of “Who are you going to vote for in November?” the number of genuine undecideds is hugely reduced.

Because if there were 30 percent undecided as there may well be even in the electorate today, nobody would be interested in the polls. So they ask this other question, forcing them to present their slight lean as a decision, so, therefore, the undecideds go into the single digits because the question is “Who would you vote for now?” instead of “Who will you be voting for in November?”

There are a lot of people out there that can be affected by this information.

LES PAYNE:I think that media, and I use that term advisedly, too often go to ask the polling question as opposed to doing the reporting. We have to inform our readers first, as opposed to asking them what they think about something we have not told them about. So, to the question of if the election was held today, I mean, the answer is, ‘I would be very surprised because I thought it was in November.’

I would add that I have some questions about how the samples are developed: Are the pollsters taking into account the huge influx of newly registered Democrats? Are they balancing the two parties in their samples?

Thurman Hart, on Blue Jersey, offers some interesting insight into the polling process by putting into black and white numbers that indicate that early polling downplays the extent to which the New Jersey electorate breaks for Democrats. In nearly every statewide election since 2004, the 3-4 percent lead held by the poll leader became a 7-9 point win for the Democrats. That’s a remarkable number that, I think, pretty much encapsulates the flaws with polling.

A return to normalcy

The poll results released today from the Polling Institute at Monmouth University should not really be a surprise to anyone. No one really knows who Rob Andrews or any of the Republicans are in the U.S. Senate race and Gov. Jon Corzine remains mired in Bush-like approval ratings.

New Jersey voters also — and this is a bit of a surprise — now seem to favor Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, almost three months after backing Clinton in the primary. According to the poll, more 45 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents say they would like to see Obama get the nomination, compared with 38 percent for Clinton.

“It appears that less than three months after giving Hillary Clinton a 10 point victory in the state’s primary, some New Jersey voters feel buyer’s remorse,” said poll director Patrick Murray. “Many state Democrats are concerned that the prolonged battle could hobble their party’s eventual nominee in November.”

Obama received 44 percent of the vote on Feb. 5, so his support appears to have held steady. It is the Clinton supporters who appear to be moving to the undecided column. Of course, it is possible that the inclusion of “Democrat-leaning independents” is skewing the results.

Of more importance, the normal course of things has been restored. Several months ago, Sen. John McCain appeared to be closing on the Democrats in New Jersey, making a reliably blue state far more competitive than the Democrats would have liked.

But the latest numbers indicate that New Jersey is likely to back the Democrat, regardless of who it is: 57 percent say they plan to vote for the Democrat, 25 percent for the Republican and the rest either will back a third-party candidate, don’t know or plan to stay home.

An Obama-McCain race would likely produce a 56-32 win for Obama, while a Clinton McCain race would go 52-38 for Clinton.

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