When Mitch Daniels' implored his fellow Republicans to declare a truce on social values, he probably had access to polling similar to Gallup's May Morality poll. The poll asks Americans whether they find a variety of practices (e.g. polygamy, medical research) and things (e.g. pornography, fur coats) morally objectionable. The Gallup top-line finding is that the most controversial moral issue in America is physician assisted suicide.
More relevant for the Daniels camp (in which I'm lazily including all of the socially libertarian elements of the Republican party), is that Gallup breaks out their findings for the top-three issues by partisan self-identification:
It doesn't take rigorous statistical training to see what's going on here. Democrats and Independents generally are pretty similar groups to one another on social issues. Republicans as a group are "different" from the rest of Americans on social issues. As my statistics professor would say, use the intra-occular impact test:
As a group, Republicans differ sharply from mainstream Americans on social issues.
Kaiser Family Foundation has a new poll out on Ryan's Folly. Initial top-line numbers for Democrats suggest that the country is evenly divided between maintaining the current Medicare program or creating a voucher program that shifts decisions and costs onto Seniors. However, these top-line numbers are not particularly informative. Ryan's Folly will be the center of the 2012 campaign as Americans compare the two parties' visions of America. And they will vote after being exposed to the core arguments that both sides will make about Medicare.
Kaiser polls this scenario, taking each side, and exposing them to the opposing side's arguments. In a traditional fairness-rule media environment, you would expect both parties to be able to provide their argument the average voter about the same amount, so the exercise of exposing the "Voucherize-and-destroy" initial responders with the Democratic argument and the "Preserve-as-is" group with the Republican argument seems like a decent test of where the nation will come out on the Medicare issue after the arguments have been made.
As you can kind of make out, 50% of Americans initially respond "Keep Medicare" as Government provided health care while 46% begin with the "Change Medicare" to a government-subsidized insurance scheme. Of the "Keep Medicare" group who hear the Republican argument, 54% change their minds. On the other side, the Democratic argument persuades 68% to change their opinion of what is to be done. Back of the envelope math pegs the outcome of this two step process at 51% support for the "Keep Medicare" position, while the group that now believes we should "Change Medicare" to 38% of the sample.
You would expect that Paul Ryan's much heralded plan to cut taxes for the rich and pay for it by ending Medicare would poll well somewhere in the electorate. Let's look at where Republicans tend do perform best: voters 65 and older. Republicans won the 2010 elections largely on impressive turnout from Seniors, who split for Republicans by 21 points (59-38) in the 2010 midterm elections.. On the other hand, Republican strength in 2010 was largely built from the perception that the Affordable Care Act would diminish the opportunities available to Seniors receiving Medicare, hence the talking point "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Ryan's Folly promises to replace Medicare, where the government pays for medical care for Seniors, with a voucher system that will not cover the costs of health insurance. The Republican dominance in the Senior vote in 2010 essentially resulted in the realization of the fears that Republicans used to get elected.
Ryan's Folly has destroyed the Republican advantage among Seniors, according to today's Gallup poll on the nation's budget preferences. Only 48% of seniors prefer Ryan's Folly to the President's budget plan, which actually lowers the costs of health care. Ryan's plan to place that health care burden on the backs of individual Americans has cost the Republican party a 20 point lead among their most important demographic group. Meanwhile, Democrats maintain their 20 point advantage among voters aged 18-30, greatly expanding on their actual margin among the young in 2010.
Public Policy Polling ususally does a stand-up job at horse race and issue polling, designing good surveys that tend to get within an acceptable error range from actual election results. What they don't do well is pick candidates to poll. PPP released a poll of Florida voters in which they honest-to-god tested Rudy Giuliani as a potential Republican nominee. Not only is Giuliani not running in 2012, he hardly ran in 2008, choosing to skip the four early (i.e. crucial) states of IA, NH, SC, and NV and hoping that he could pull a rabbit from a hat in Florida's primary. Other (actual) candidates Huckabee, Palin, and Gingrich faired worse in hypothetical match-ups against Obama than the former mayor of New York City.
I understand the tendency to fight the last war given the knowledge gained on the battlefield. It's the most up-to-date test of your army's capability. I would however hope that public polling would be a little more forward-looking. After all, there's a wealth of information already out there about actual Republican politicians who are making an actual run. PPP did however discover that all of them are less popular than the man who finished an embarrassing third (with 14%) in the GOP primary in Florida in 2008.
The New York Times is out with a poll today from which they draw the conclusion that the demographic coalition that elected President Obama is splintering at the margins, turning Obama voters into Republican or non-voters. Certainly the data tell that story, but I think the more important story is the reason that voters give for abandoning the Democratic party after one of its most successful legislative sessions it has ever had.
The NYT article includes the anecdote gleaned from a post-survey interview of one voter:Judy Berg, an independent from Morton Grove, Ill., said she voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 because she was “looking for a change,” adding, “the change that ensued was not the change I was looking for but something totally out of left field.”
What was the largest gap between the Obama's campaign sloganeering and the reality of the legislation passed into law? The stimulus package was a campaign promise. TARP was well-publicized and generally acknowledged as a policy that Obama would continue. Financial regulation was a centerpiece of speeches after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in early October 2008. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a campaign promise, though honestly, nobody is talking about it. Similarly while President Obama has not made good on his pledge to end DADT or close the dubiously legal prison at Guantanamo Bay, most voters aren't driven primarily by these issues (not to mention the electoral alternative is demonstrably worse to anybody who is unhappy about the lack of progress).
A lot of very smart popular-opinion prognosticators (say that 5 times fast) predicted that the final passage of the PPACA this spring would bring about a "bump" in popularity of the bill and the democrats. When polls showed no improvement in the numbers of Americans who thought the PPACA would help them and no help to Democratic numbers on health care or approval scores in general, a lot of them--including Bill Clinton recently--started to eat their hats.
The Conventional Wisdom that emerged was that public perception of the health care bill was still dogged by various myths and outright lies which characterized the Republican strategy against its passage. Ten key provisions of the PPACA went into effect yesterday, and the effects are starting to show up. Howard Pollack posts the letter which he received from his employer today which outlines what the health care reform battle means to the actual citizens of this country. I humbly suggest that as this type of letter is disseminated by private employers across the country this week that we might finally see a turning point in the support of the PPACA, which as many commentators continue to note, is unpopular at large, but contains some extremely popular components.
