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February 2, 2007

Super Bowl Round-up

By Eric Dienstfrey

Two recent Rasmussen Reports automated surveys find:

• 58% of football fans think the Indianapolis Colts will win this Sunday's Super Bowl while 39% think the Chicago Bears will win (conducted 1/22 through 1/24 of 555 "football fans").
• 60% of Americans plan to watch the Super Bowl and 25% of those "will place a bet, participate in a pool or wager money on the game in any fashion" (conducted 1/27 through 1/28 of 1000 adults).

A recent Gallup survey of 1008 adults (conducted 1/25 through 1/28) finds:

• 61% of football fans think the Indianapolis Colts will win this Sunday; 36% think the Chicago Bears will win.
• Female Super Bowl viewers (at 44%) are twice as likely as male viewers (22%) to prefer watching the commercials over the game itself.

A recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey of 900 registered voters (conducted 1/30 through 1/31) finds:

• 27% believe "God plays a role in determining which team wins a sporting event;" 66% do not.
• 14% think God wants the Chicago Bears to win the Super Bowl, while 11% think God wants the Indianapolis Colts to win.

By Eric Dienstfrey on February 2, 2007 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: SurveyUSA Kansas/Brownback

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new KWCH-TV/SurveyUSA automated survey of 500 adults in Kansas (conducted 2/1) finds that 50% think it's impossible "for someone to be both an effective US Senator and an effective candidate for President at the same time;" 48% think it is possible.

By Eric Dienstfrey on February 2, 2007 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Party ID in States Shifted in 2006

By Charles Franklin

Democrats gained an average of 3.4% and Republicans lost 3.0% in partisan identification between 2005 and 2006, according to a new Gallup estimate based on over 30,000 interviews conducted throughout 2006. Gallup aggregated polls throughout the year to create estimates of party identification at the state level, as they did in 2005 and previous years. Gallup's report of the results is here.

The plot above shows how uniform the shift in Democratic and Republican partisanship was across the states. The colors of the points reflect the Democratic minus Republican balance in 2005-- the darker the blue the more net-Democratic identifiers and the darker the red the more net-Republican identifiers. Light or pale points are closely balanced states, as of 2005. The size of the points is proportional to the size of the state.

There is no apparent pattern to the shifts in partisanship: regardless of partisanship or partisan balance in 2005, states shifted by about the same amount in 2006. Likewise, Republican losses shifted uniformly. The +3.4 percentage point shift for the Democrats, and the -3.0 point shift against the Republicans produced a net -6.4 point loss for the Republicans in the balance of partisanship. The lower left figure in the plot shows that independents shifted more or less randomly between 2005 and 2006.

These shifts could, in principle, represent a non-trivial gain for the Democratic party. Recall that after the 2004 election there was considerable talk in Republican circles of establishing an "enduring Republican majority", a goal that seemed within the party's grasp though certainly not assured. That hope is clearly out of reach at the moment.

Before Democrats go wild with joy, there remains a question about the electoral impact of these partisan shifts. Party identification is the strongest single predictor of vote choice at the individual level. But the shifts in partisanship in the Gallup data do not predict the shift in voting for the U.S. House in 2006.

The bottom right figure above shows that the Republican U.S. House vote shifted more or less uniformly across states as well. However, when we look at the relationship between party id shift and vote shift across states, there is no relationship at all, as seen in the figure below.

Controlling for both Democratic gains and Republican losses doesn't add to the relationship. So the conclusion here is that both partisanship and vote shifted against the Republican party in 2006, but the variation in shifts appears to have been essentially independent between partisanship and vote.

Democratic gains and Republican losses in partisanship may affect the 2008 prospects in the House (and other) elections. But in 2006, it appears both vote and partisanship responded to conditions in the country without a clear impact of changes in partisanship on changes in vote.

By Charles Franklin on February 2, 2007 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pres08: Fox Poll's Favorable/Unfavorable Ratings

By Charles Franklin

Fox News' new poll, completed 1/30-31/07, provides a new look at the favorable and unfavorable ratings of the leading presidential contenders. Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the pack in the balance of favorable to unfavorable ratings in the new Fox poll with 54% favorable to 24% unfavorable . John McCain enjoys a net-positive evaluation, though not as strongly positive as Giuliani, at 45%-29%. Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton strongly divides voters yet manages a 50%-44% net positive rating. Less well known John Edwards has an 8 point net positive (41%-33%) while Barack Obama has the best balance, 41%-20% but the largest number of voters unable to rate him (38%.)

Three political figures have net negative ratings in the Fox poll. Mitt Romney is the least well known among all the candidates and suffers a net negative rating of 11%-22%, but with 67% unable to rate. Newt Gingrich, who has adopted a wait-and-see approach to the presidential campaign, suffers a 22%-49% net negative, while Al Gore, who seems quite uninterested in the race, has a somewhat better but still net negative 39%-51%.

(For comparison, see my similar analysis of an early January CBS News poll here. That post also discusses the plots and how to read them in greater detail.)

The extent to which partisans divide over the candidates is clear above. Hillary Clinton remains the most polarizing figure with strongly net negative views among Republicans, strongly positive views among Democrats, and a near balance yet net negative among independents. (The purple dot is independents, the black dot is the population as a whole, with the now conventional red for Republican and blue for Democrats.)

McCain and Giuliani do well among independents and even with Democrats. Gore and Gingrich in contrast both divide the electorate and manage net positives only among their own partisans. Edwards splits partisan camps, though not as strongly as Clinton and roughly balances the sides and among independents. Obama does quite well among independents, but is developing a Republican opposition. Romney remains a mystery to all partisan groups, which cluster and don't know him.

There has been some movement in the Fox ratings, but the most recent prior poll varies a great deal in how old it is. Clinton's most recent poll was just last October, and little seems to have changed. Several other candidates were measured in May 2006. But Edwards' last reading was in October 2004 (during his run for the Vice-Presidency) and Gingrich's dates back to 1998! So look at change with due caution.

Finally, the balance of not knowing the candidate versus knowing but not enough to rate them can be instructive. In the earlier CBS News poll, there was a clear differentiation between the better known and the lesser known candidates. The new Fox poll lacks almost all of the lesser known figures, so that pattern is less pronounced here than in the CBS data (here) Still, among these candidates, it is interesting the Obama now more closely resembles the better known candidates, while only Romney remains in the space occupied by the least known in the CBS poll.

By Charles Franklin on February 2, 2007 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 1, 2007

POLL: Fox National Survey

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Fox News/Opinion Dynamics national survey (story, Bush results, '08 results) of 900 registered voters (conducted 1/30 to 1/31) finds:

• 38% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president; 54% disapprove.
• 35% support "sending additional U.S. troops to Iraq to help stabilize the country;" 57% oppose.
• Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (at 34%) leads Sen. John McCain (22%) and former Speaker New Gingrich (15%) in a national Republican primary.
• Sen. Hillary Clinton (at 43%) leads Sen. Barack Obama (15%), former Sen. John Edwards (12%), and former Vive President Al Gore (11%) in a national Democratic primary.

By Eric Dienstfrey on February 1, 2007 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Two Sides of the Giuliani Coin

By Mark Blumenthal

Should he formally enter the race for president, Rudy Giuliani begins as a very popular figure among Republicans, according to the Gallup poll released earlier today. The perceived advantages of the former New York City Mayor over Senator John McCain on being "better in a crisis" (68% to 28%) and doing a better job on crime (78% to 17%) suggest an appeal is rooted in his identity as a "hero of 9/11 [and] a crime busting federal prosecutor," to quote today's article by Susan Page in USA Today. However, the far more important finding from that survey comes from this "money quote" from Page's story (thanks to Charles Franklin):

As fondly remembered as Giuliani is for responding to Sept. 11, however, most Americans don't know much else about him. Barely one in five Republicans knew that he supports abortion rights and civil unions for same-sex couples, the USA TODAY poll found. Nearly as many thought he was "pro-life" as said he was "pro-choice."

When they were told about his stance on those issues, his star dimmed. One in five Republicans said his views would "rule him out as a candidate" they could support. That included one-third of those who attend church every week, an important base of the GOP that makes up a third of party loyalists.

Another 25% of Republicans said his views made them less likely to support him, nearly double the proportion who said they made them more likely to support him.

For what it's worth, these are the sorts of questions that campaign pollsters tend to ask on internal surveys conducted early in the race. Campaign pollsters are less interested in early horse race numbers than in understanding how new information can change perceptions and support. Page's article did not include a link to those specific results, but Gallup typically releases results in separate results, so perhaps we will have more details later.

Consider the results Page discusses against these findings from the ABC News analysis of the most recent ABC/Washington Post poll:

McCain had his own difficulties with conservatives in 2000, and Giuliani leads McCain among conservative Republicans by 33 to 21 percent. It's among moderates that they're closer, 37-32 percent.

Giuliani and McCain also run about evenly among evangelical white Protestants, a core Republican group with whom McCain's had strained relations.

Most important, though, is Giuliani's advantage among committed Republicans, who, like their Democratic counterparts, are more apt to vote in primaries. Giuliani holds a 10-point advantage over McCain among this group; McCain, by contrast, runs quite competitively among independents who lean Republican. That was the case in 2000; his problem was that, outside of New Hampshire, not enough of them showed up to vote.

Given sample sizes, Giuliani's overall seven-point advantage over McCain among leaned Republicans is not significant at the customary 95 percent confidence level. Instead it's 82 percent likely that Giuliani has a real lead in the contest.

Collectively, these results support an intriguing possibility: Both Republican frontrunners may end up with problems with conservative, religious and/or committed Republicans, leaving a huge opening for a third candidate in the early primaries.

By Mark Blumenthal on February 1, 2007 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)