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March 23, 2007

Pew Report: Core Values and Attittudes

By Mark Blumenthal

Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released another one of their massive must-read reports. This one summarizes 20 years on "Political Values and Core Attitudes" (summary, full report), as updated with a survey conducted in late December and early January. While the report covers a lot of territory, the authors see in their various measures an improved "political landscape for Democrats" stemming from "increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies."

Regular readers of this blog will appreciate their summary of recent trends in party identification:

Even more striking than the changes in some core political and social values is the dramatic shift in party identification that has occurred during the past five years. In 2002, the country was equally divided along partisan lines: 43% identified with the Republican Party or leaned to the GOP, while an identical proportion said they were Democrats. Today, half of the public (50%) either identifies as a Democrat or says they lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 35% who align with the GOP.

The report also rolls together more than two years worth of Pew surveys to provide a helpful state-by-state analysis of the ideology of Democrats and Republicans in the various primary states. Their summary provides a hint of the differences found (full profiles are found on pp. 10-11):

[P]olitically conservative, white evangelical Christians make up 10% of all Republicans and Republican leaners in New Hampshire - currently the first state to hold its presidential primaries in 2008 - but 39% of all GOP partisans in South Carolina where primary voters go to the polls several days later. On the Democratic side, the proportion of Democrats who say they are politically liberal ranges from 38% in California to 25% in South Carolina.

The full report has much, much more, and is well worth the click.

By Mark Blumenthal on March 23, 2007 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: ARG Four Primary Surveys

By Eric Dienstfrey

Four new American Research Group statewide surveys of likely caucus/primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arkansas, and Texas (conducted 3/19 through 3/22) finds:

• Among 600 likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, Sen. Hillary Clinton receives 34%, former Sen. John Edwards 33%, and Sen. Barack Obama 16%.
• Among 600 likely Republican caucus-goes in Iowa, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani ties Sen. John McCain at 29%. Former Sen. Fred Thompson and former Gov. Mitt Romney trail at 12% and 10% respectively.
• Among 600 likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, McCain runs at 23%, Giuliani at 19%, Romney at 17%, former Speaker Newt Gingrich at 11%, and Thompson at 10%.

By Eric Dienstfrey on March 23, 2007 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: Rasmussen F. Thompson vs.

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Rasmussen Reports automated survey of 800 likely voters nationwide (conducted 3/21 through 3/22) finds former Sen. Fred Thompson (at 44%) edges out Sen. Hillary Clinton (43%) by one point in a general election match-up. A second match-up shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Thompson 49% to 37%.

By Eric Dienstfrey on March 23, 2007 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ANALYSIS: Gallup Democratic Primary

By Eric Dienstfrey

Additional analysis from recent Gallup national surveys of 1,495 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (conducted between January and March) finds:

• Among women Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Barack Obama (39% to 19%); former V.P. Al Gore and former Sen. John Edwards both trail at 13%
• Clinton performs best among woman 18 to 49, where she runs at 43% with a 22-point margin over Obama (21%).
• Obama performs best among men 18 to 49, where he runs at 24%, which is within the margin of sampling error of Clinton (27%).

By Eric Dienstfrey on March 23, 2007 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 22, 2007

SEIU's Early Primary Health Care Survey

By Mark Blumenthal

Thanks to MyDD, we know that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) released poll results yesterday based on samples of likely primary or caucus voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina (summary, state by state results, results by party). The MyDD post was, unfortunately, a bit confused about the meaning of some of the state-by-state results. Since MyDD (and political junkies everywhere) are appropriately focused on polling in the early primary states, let's try to help clear up the confusion.

The survey was conducted by the Democratic firm Lake Research Partners** and had a somewhat unique design: They interviewed 1,607 likely primary and caucus goers in each state, with roughly 400 per state, 200 likely voters from each party in each state. Also, the sampling procedure was different for most other public polls:

Telephone numbers for the sample were drawn randomly from a statewide voter file, with primary/caucus voters selected on their vote history.

Pollsters disagree on the merits of sampling from voter files , but for better or worse, samples of past primary voters make for a very different population of respondents than other public polls on the 2008 presidential primaries. As noted in my two recent posts on the subject, national polls on the party primaries tend to include all adults (or sometimes registered voters) that identify or lean to a given party. In this case, the pollsters interviewed only those with some past history of participation in primaries or caucuses, and then (see the questionnaire) screened all but those certain or probable to attend either the Democratic or Republican caucus or primary in their state.

Now all of this would make for an interesting test of methodologies, except that this survey did not include traditional vote preference questions. And that's where things apparently got confusing. MyDD diarist robiliberal initially reported what looked like horserace results for the Democrats in each state. On promoting the post to the front MyDD page, Chris Bowers updated with this comment:

OK, I just realized that this poll only included people who view health care as one of their top issues. That explains why Obama does so bad everywhere--young voters are one of his bases, and young people just don't usually include the cost or availability of health care as one of their top issues (I actually learned that at a union organizer training session with SEIU). This isn't about all Democrats, and so is thus less useful. But still interesting, and the kind of poll we could do of netroots types--Chris

Not exactly. The samples of Democrats included all those who qualified as likely primary or caucus attendees as per my description above. What was different is the text of the question:

Who do you think would be the BEST president on the issue of health care?

So all Democratic primary/caucus goers got the question, but it was a question about health care. Needless to say, that's not exactly, "for whom would you vote if the election were held today." Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton - who led the task force on Health Care reform during her husband's presidency - has a special advantage on that issue that results in a bigger "lead" over Obama than on pure vote preference measures.

**Interest disclosed: I worked for Celinda Lake for two years in the early 1990s.

Typo corrected

By Mark Blumenthal on March 22, 2007 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: Harris Interactive Iraq/Iran

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Harris Interactive online survey of 2,223 adults (conducted 3/6 through 3/14) finds:

• 26% of Americans think sending more troops to Iraq will "improve security and reduce killings;" 54% think it will not.
• 59% believe Iran is providing weapons to the Shiites in Iraq; 10% do not believe so.
• 32% favor bombing Iran "if it is proven that Iran is helping the Shiites in Iraq;" 50% oppose.

By Eric Dienstfrey on March 22, 2007 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bush Approval: ARG at 32%, Trend at 33.4%

By Charles Franklin

Approval of President Bush has slipped to an estimated 33.4%. The new estimate adds a new poll from American Research Group (ARG) taken 3/18-21/07 with approval at 32%, disapproval at 63%.

(For a full discussion of the plots and how to interpret them, see this post.)

The approval trend has fluctuated between 33.0% and 35.5% over the past 20 polls. Some of this variation is sensitive to whether the latest poll is above or below the current trend estimate. At the moment, the most recent polls have run below the trend, and that has pulled the estimate down. None of the recent polls qualifies as an outlier, so the current estimate is unlikely to be driven by a single exceptional case. However, the fluctuations in the estimate mean that we are safest saying that approval is currently in the 33%-35% range. The trend estimate's variation is considerably less than the range of polls, as the last plot below makes vividly clear. This is an example of what we can gain in precision by using estimators that combine data from many polls, rather than relying on any single poll.

Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.

By Charles Franklin on March 22, 2007 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: ARG Bush Approvals

By Eric Dienstfrey</