Pollster.com

July 7, 2007

ARG and others on Impeachment

By Charles Franklin

American Research Group (ARG) asked 1100 respondents 7/3-5/07:

Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush?

The results found 45% in favor and 46% opposed, with 9% undecided.

Those are striking numbers, but deserve a bit of context.

First, as anyone would expect, there are sharp partisan divisions on this question, with 69% of Democrats, 50% of independents and 13% of Republicans support impeachment proceedings. One might wonder if 13% of Republicans supporting the impeachment of their president is really a credible estimate here. It seems large, given continued Republican support for President Bush in job approval in comparison to that of Democrats and independents.

Likewise, we might wonder if support for impeachment has risen in the immediate aftermath of the Libby sentence commutation.

ARG asked an impeachment question in a poll taken 3/13-15/06. Those results are shown in the top right panel of the plot. There the findings were 42% in favor and 49% opposed. (There was a slight difference in question wording as well.) In that March poll, 61% of Democrats, 47% of independents and 18% of Republicans favored impeachment. So this comparison suggests a small increase in support overall, and among Dems and independents, and a small DECREASE in support for impeachment among Republicans since the March survey. But these are modest changes, not large increases in impeachment sentiment.

One might also ask if the ARG survey results are typical of responses in other polls. There the answer is no, the ARG results show more support for impeachment than other polls do.

At the same time as the ARG March survey, Newsweek's poll taken 3/16-17/06, used a slightly different wording but found 26% in favor of impeachment, 69% opposed, well below the 42% ARG found at that time. Newsweek also found very low levels of support for impeachment among Republicans (5%) which seems more reasonable to me. Like ARG, the Newsweek survey found large partisan variation, though with less impeachment support in each partisan category than in the ARG survey (49% Dem, 23% Ind, 5% Rep.)

As for trend over time, the latest poll prior to the new ARG that asked about impeachment was a Time/SRBI poll taken 11/1-3/06, just before the election. That appears in the bottom right of the plot. Their results were 25% in favor, 70% opposed and 5% undecided, VERY similar to the March Newsweek results. Finally, the breakdowns by party in the Time/SRBI poll are also similar to the earlier Newsweek: 48% Dem, 22% Ind, and 4% Rep in favor of impeachment.

The conclusion is that there is little evidence for a substantial increase in support for impeachment, over the past 16 months, and the ARG results appear to be at the high end of support in comparison to other polling. It would be nice to have another new poll to compare with the current ARG results to see if this pattern has continued.

Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.

By Charles Franklin on July 7, 2007 1:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

July 6, 2007

Remainders

By Mark Blumenthal

• ABC's Gary Langer highlights methodological deficiencies in two widely reported studies on death rates in New Orleans and the availability of unused embryos for medical research.

• Both Gallup Guru Frank Newport and CBS pollster Kathy Frankovic speculate about the next turn in the Bush job rating. Newport teases that "new USA Today/Gallup poll data on Bush out at the beginning of next week."

• One we missed: Republican pollsters Fabrizio, McLaughlin and Associates released a survey of 2,000 self described Republican voters conducted about a month ago "via telephone and online." Their report divides Republicans into seven segments and updates a similar survey conducted by the firm in 1997 (link via Edsall by way of Kilgore, first reported by Ambinder).

By Mark Blumenthal on July 6, 2007 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pollster Powerball

By Mark Blumenthal

We have been watching with interest coverage of the lawsuit and countersuit involving Clinton pollster Mark Penn, his ex-partner and a former employee. The Nation’s Ari Berman reports:

A lawsuit filed in New York by a former employee of Penn's polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland, alleges that when the employee left the firm and started a rival consulting business, workers at PSB hacked into his BlackBerry and illegally monitored his email. The lawsuit, filed in mid-June and reported by the AP on Wednesday, claims that Penn approved of the surveillance.

The backstory is a complicated one. Penn originally sued his former partner Mike Berland and Mitchell Markel in Manhattan court for allegedly violating a non-compete clause with PSB. In response, Markel filed a countersuit detailing the supposed improper email monitoring.

Berman has more, but Politico’s Ben Smith noticed this mind-boggling number in the court filings (here and here) posted by the New York Observer:

In the original suit, PSB asserts that Berland received $15,519,492 in connection with the firm's sale to the WPP Group.

PSB's price has always been a closely-guarded secret; two of the partners, Schoen and Berland, departed at the beginning of this year, the date at which their contracts allowed them to "earn out" the full sale price. And given that Berland was the third-named partner, his payout offers a glimpse at how lucrative the polling business has been for the two founders, Penn and Doug Schoen.

As someone who earned a living in the political polling business, let me just say, that’s incredibly lucrative.

By Mark Blumenthal on July 6, 2007 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: Newsweek National Survey

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Newsweek national survey (story, results) of 1,002 adults (conducted 7/2 through 7/3 by Princeton Survey Research Associates) finds:

• 26% approve of the way George Bush is handling his job as president; 65% disapprove.

• 57% have a favorable opinion of Sen. Hillary Clinton; 36% have an unfavorable opinion. 54% have a favorable opinion of Sen. Barack Obama, 19% have an unfavorable opinion.

• Among registered voters who identify or lean Democratic asked to choose between two candidates, Clinton leads Obama 56% to 33% in a national primary match-up.

By Eric Dienstfrey on July 6, 2007 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

re: Cell Phones and Political Surveys: Part I

By Mark Blumenthal

An intriguing footnote to the first part of my post on the cell-phone-only problem (alas, a shortened yet crowded week has pushed Part II until next week). The bottom line is that even at 12% of adults, the cell-phone-only population appears neither large nor distinctive enough to throw off most political survey results by more than a point or two. And while that conclusion may not change drastically should the cell-phone only population double over the next year or two, all bets if "cell phone only" comes to describe the majority of U.S. households (a point reader Chris G made in the comments).

Could that happen? An article yesterday by The New York Times' technology writer, David Pogue, suggests a potential pathway. Last week, the cell-phone carrier T-Mobile announced a new service called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, something Pogue described as an "absolutely ingenious" and as potentially "game changing" to the technology world as Apple's iPhone. "It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year," he wrote, "and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time." How?

Here's the basic idea. If you're willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you're out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

But when it's in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always - you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features - but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch.

And what does this have to do with the cell-phone only problem? Read on...

O.K., but how often are you in a Wi-Fi hot spot? With this plan, about 14 hours a day. T-Mobile gives you a wireless router (transmitter) for your house - also free, after a $50 rebate. Connect it to your high-speed Internet modem, and in about a minute, you've got a wireless home network. Your computer can use it to surf the Web wirelessly - and now all of your home phone calls are free.

You know how people never seem to have good phone reception in their homes? How they have to huddle next to a window to make calls? That's all over now. The free router is like a little T-Mobile cell tower right in your house.

Pogue goes on to explain that HotSpot @Home will work with essentially any existing Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) router. What could this mean for the cell-phone-only problem? In outlining four ways this product can save consumers money, Pogue does everything but connect the dots:

SAVING NO. 4 T-Mobile's hope is that you'll cancel your home phone line altogether. You'll be all cellphone, all the time. And why not, since you'll now get great cell reception at home and have only one phone number and voicemail? Ka-ching: there's an additional $500 a year saved.

While the new Apple iPhone, which went on sale last week, does not aim to replace home phone service, it does provide a very similar hand-off from the AT&T wireless network to home or office Wi-Fi hotspots for its built in Internet connection. If these features prove popular with consumers, if HotSpot@Home "enriches" T-Mobile as Pogue speculates, then other cell-phone carriers (with the possible exception of Verizon) are sure to offer similar services.

And if that happens, pollsters may look back with great nostalgia on the days when the cell-phone-only population was just 12%.

UPDATE: A very alert survey researcher emails and notes that the Pogue column is "the #1 most e-mailed story on the New York Times web site today!"

By Mark Blumenthal on July 6, 2007 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ARG Poll on Libby Sentence Commuration

By Charles Franklin

American Research Group (ARG) has completed a poll taken 7/3-5/07 on President Bush's decision to commute the jail sentence of Scooter Libby. The results are similar to those of the "instant" poll by SurveyUSA taken the night the decision was announced.

ARG asked

Do you approve or disapprove of President George W. Bush commuting the 30-month prison sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby while leaving intact Mr. Libby's conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case?

The results are strongly structured by party identification, which is certainly no surprise. Only 13% of Democrats and 19% of Independents approved of the commutation, while 50% of Republicans approved. However, as with the SurveyUSA poll, a substantial fraction of Republicans disapproved-- 47% in the ARG poll. Unfortunately, we can't tell for sure how many of these disapproved because the wanted a full pardon compared to how many disapproved because they wanted Libby to serve out his sentence. The survey did ask if respondents favored a pardon, but the news release (so far at least) has not given the cross tab between these two questions which would let us know how these two different reasons for disapproval break out. Perhaps that will be released later.

The high levels of disapproval among Democrats and Independents is not surprising, but the high disapproval among Republicans is surprisingly high.

When asked if they favored a full pardon for Libby, 23% of Republicans said they did. If we make the extreme assumption that ALL of these said they disapproved of Bush's commutation, then 47%-23%=24% of Republicans disapproved the commutation AND did not want a pardon, implying they thought Libby should serve his jail sentence. This is certainly an underestimate since it is doubtful that the pro-pardon group were entirely in the disapprove of commutation category, but it at least sets a lower limit on support for jail among Republicans. As with the SurveyUSA poll, this suggests a significant fraction of Republicans thought Libby should serve time in jail.

The distribution of opinion on the pardon question (text: "Do you favor or oppose a complete presidential pardon for Mr. Libby?") is shown below:

Only 7% of Democrats and 2% of independents favored a pardon, compared to 23% of Republicans. A still large 70% of Republicans opposed a pardon, while 7% said they don't know. The independents in this sample are surprising for how overwhelmingly hey opposed a pardon, even more so than Democrats (82% Dem, 97% Ind.) That is puzzling enough that I'm not sure I believe the 97% number. It is NOT due to small sample size, because independents make up 33% of the ARG sample. The SurveyUSA poll didn't find Independents so much more extreme than Democrats on a pardon. Almost always we find independents between Dems and Reps on partisan questions like this, so I can't explain why independent opinion on this question would be so unanimous, when even Democrats are at least a bit more willing to see Libby pardoned. I'll hold out a possibility of a typo in the web page on this one. If correct, it is awfully huge opposition to a pardon among independents.

Compare these plots with those for the SurveyUSA poll here.

There will surely be some new polling data taken or reported over the weekend on this, so we should learn more on how opinion is shaping up on this issue by Tuesday.

Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.