Your intrepid reporter is doing field research in south-western Washington state and stumbled across a nice example of local reporters and newspapers doing serious reporting on polling.

The setting is Washington's Third congressional district, covering most of south-western Washington from Olympia in the north to Vancouver across the river from Portland OR. An open seat rated tossup by both The Cook Political Report and the Rothenberg Political Report, Dems have held the seat easily since 1998 but with the retirement of incumbent Democrat Brian Baird the seat is clearly up for grabs. Cook's Partisan Voting Index for the district is a flat zero. Obama won the district 53-45 while Bush edged Kerry 50-48. 

Two Dems and three Reps are on the August 17th primary ballot. On the GOP side, two-term State Representative Jaime Herrera faces ex-Marine David Hedrick who cites his Tea Party origins, and ex-Bush administration official David Castillo, who claims backing from Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. Neither Hedrick nor Castillo have prior electoral experience. (The Democratic candidates are not the focus of the polling article, but include five time state Representative Denny Heck and citizen activist Cheryl Crist. Independent Norma Jean Stevens also appears on the primary ballot.) Under Washington election law, all candidates appear on a single ballot with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general, regardless of party.

In an August 10 front-page story above the fold of The Columbian, reporter Kathie Durbin, reports on new poll results cited by the Hedrick campaign which show him neck-and-neck with Herrera (and both trailing Democrat Heck.) But then the story gets to the punch line:

But the source of Hedrick's information, The Washington State Political Polls, was unknown in the state until last month and has zero credibility with polling professionals.

The story goes on to trace the vague origins of the "poll", with clear and useful quotes from Seattle pollster Stuart Elway of the Elway Poll and University of Washington political science professor Matt Barreto. In the course of the lengthy 27 paragraph article, reporter Durbin manages to cover the role of random sampling and how internet polls of dubious origins fall far short of those standards. She also includes comments from the Hedrick campaign defending its use of the "poll". My favorite:  "...it's "not my job" to vet the poll."

While the WA-03 race is an important tossup, it is not at the center of national reporting. But this article is a model of local reporting on polling, vetting claims by candidates and checking polling methods with qualified professionals. And putting the story in a prominent place in the paper.

As we enter the frenzy of the fall campaign with a bevy of new pollsters appearing, using IVR and internet methods of data collection (some well, some not so well), it is especially important that reporters check the polling methods and report to readers what is at stake between scientific polling and junk. It was a pleasure to find this job done so well.

Today's GDP numbers provide little comfort to Democrats hoping a robust "recovery summer" will aid them in November. GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.4% in the second quarter, down from 3.7% in the first quarter and 5.0% in the 4th quarter of 2009.

The GOP will point to falling growth as proof of Democratic failure, and discouraged Dems who have had a hard time selling even real gains are unlikely to successfully use this latest report to their advantage.

But as always, let's take a moment for some perspective based on the data from the four recessions since 1980.

President Reagan benefitted from very large growth rates in the four quarters following the end of his recession. Like Obama, Reagan inherited a terrible economic situation, and suffered from it throughout his first two years in office. But beginning in the fourth quarter of 1982, GDP growth rebounded very strongly. Over the next four quarters, real GDP grew an average of 5.7%. If we leave out the fourth quarter of 1982, which had a tiny +0.3% growth though technically not part of the recession quarters, then Reagan enjoyed an astonishing average GDP growth of 7.8%, providing the foundation for his "Morning again in America" reelection campaign in 1984.

The two Bush presidencies did not enjoy recoveries of anything like that of Reagan. President G. H. W. Bush suffered from just a 2.6% average growth rate in the four quarters following the 1991 recession, though the rate bumped up to over 4% more than a year after the end of the recession. That sluggish initial recovery set the narrative President Clinton used in the 1992 campaign, even through growth in 1992 was a robust 4% or more.

President George W. Bush likewise faced slow growth following the 2001 recession, with average growth of only 2.3% in the four quarters after the recession. While 9/11 undoubtedly affected the fourth quarter of 2001 (1.4% growth), the next three quarters were 3.5%, 2.1% and 2.0%, followed with a fifth quarter of just +0.1% which is not included in the average. Excluding the post 9/11 quarter and including the later quarter would lower the average growth even more.

Which brings us to President Obama. In the four quarters since the end of the recession (as defined by the end of shrinking GDP in 2009Q2), real GDP has grown an average of 3.2% each quarter. So in fact, the current recovery is a bit stronger than either of the two under Presidents Bush, though well below the extremely strong rate under President Reagan.

Even the current disappointing quarter at 2.4% is better than the average of 2.3% in 2001-2.

So a rational perspective would be that we are recovering better than in the previous two recessions, which were much less dire than the Bush-Obama recession, but well short of the energy that propelled the Reagan recovery.

For November, this rate of growth does not bode well for changing the narrative from recession to recovery, as the White House had no doubt hoped and bet on. The trend of declining growth rates over the past three quarters adds to worry that recovery will be slow or even threaten to dip back into recession. Ironically, of course, a stimulus that might enhance the macro-economy is now politically untenable as even many Democrats have accepted Republican arguments that stimulus spending didn't and doesn't work. Decades of macro-economic evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls

Coming on the heels of recent arguments by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com that Strategic Vision faked their polling over several years, this is a new blow to the credibility of public polling.

Mark Blumenthal here at Pollster.com has lead a concerted effort over the last two years to increase the degree of disclosure expected from polling firms, an effort that paid off in new disclosure requirements from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) this spring. Some three dozen firms immediately signed on to the new disclosure requirements, but there are many firms that produce widely cited polls that have not yet agreed to disclose as much as required.

I've only had time for a single quick read of the Research2000 analysis by Mark Grebner, Michael Weissman, and Jonathan Weissman. It seems to be done seriously and it raises important doubts about Research2000's practices. But with my academic's hat on, I'd like to see it receive serious review by professional statisticians with polling experience. Academic journals typically reject 80-90% of articles submitted to them because on close inspection by experts, flaws are found in the theory or the analysis. These are serious charges, and they deserve to be vetted by professionals qualified to do such an evaluation. If flaws in the analysis are discovered, they can be fixed and the conclusions corrected. If the analysis is found to be sound, then the evidence is even more compelling and worrisome for its implications for the polling industry.

There is one element of disclosure that has not been pushed, but which could significantly and easily reduce the chance of "pollsters" making up their data. Every media firm, including DailyKos, should write into their contracts the requirement that the raw data and complete questionnaire be deposited within two months with the Roper Center Polling Archive at the University of Connecticut. Two months is long enough that there is little remaining news value, but rapid enough that meaningful vetting and analysis is possible. By forcing this disclosure, by contract, the sponsors of polling would gain credibility for their polls while insisting that their pollsters live up to the standards of disclosure by AAPOR as well as making the raw data available for subsequent scrutiny.

Most major media polls already deposit their raw data with the Roper Center (including, Gallup, ABC/Post, CBS/NYT, NBC/WSJ, Pew, Time, Newsweek), though not necessarily as quickly as two months. Their example should encourage others to also deposit their data.

But most importantly, it is in the interest of the sponsors of polling to protect their reputation by requiring full disclosure and deposit of the data. Such practice would enhance the value of their polls, not diminish it.

A bit of a parochial post but with a national figure at its center and reflecting the national midterm forces.

David Obey announced his retirement today. He has been in the House since 1969 and is currently chair of Appropriations. He was facing a challenger from Sean Duffy, a district attorney since 2002 in Ashland county (on Lake Superior). Obey has $1.4M COH while Duffy has $340K, but that is the lowest ratio of any WI Dem incumbent, at 4:1. Duffy as gotten a good bit of attention as a potential break-out challenger and recent endorsements from Palin and Pawlenty.

I'm not aware of any public polling in the 7th. We don't have any at Pollster.com and I don't know of any elsewhere either. No idea what parties or candidates may have.

Obey last faced a real challenge in 1994, the year 2010 is increasingly being compared to. He got 54% that year, 57% in 1996 and hasn't been below 60% since. Now at 71, facing the prospect of a tough reelection like that 1994 race, he must have felt he just didn't have enough to gain by fighting another battle against the prospect of leaving office by defeat. He says he is "bone tired" and that may well be. But the electoral winds are blowing hard against Dems this year, and that is making a lot of them much more "tired" than they were two years ago.

Pure speculation on my part: Obey might win a tough reelection fight (I'm sure he thinks he would win) but find himself back in the minority in the House, not as Chair of Appropriations but as ranking minority member. It wasn't any fun for him as minority member prior to 2006, and it sure would be less fun to go back to the minority after being Chair. While no one knows if the Reps will take control of the House, that had to be a consideration for Obey, and he is in a good place to read the writing on the wall. Just saying.

While the district leans Dem (Obama got 56%) in competitive races it is more of a toss up. In the 2006 Attorney General race, VanHollen (R) lost by just 7,000 votes out of 250,000 cast while winning statewide. A little worse than his statewide performance, but it shows a competitive Rep can win the district. Obey simply hasn't had competitors strong enough since the 1990s to give any sense of how far the district might go for a Rep in an open House seat race.

Dems/pundits are throwing out the obvious names: state legislators with districts in the 7th: State Senators Kreitlow (23rd), Lassa (24th), Majority Leader Decker (29th), and State Assembly members Seidel (85th) and Vruwink (70th). (Vruwink was an Obey staffer a while back.) Obviously they are doing exactly what I did: look for every elected Dem from the district and mention them! <;-) Of these, those young enough are Kreitlow (46), Lassa (40) and Vruwink (35). Decker at 57 isn't out of it, but not comparable to Duffy's 37. But Kreitlow and Decker are both up for reelection this year, making it a harder decision to go for the Congressional seat especially in a tough year for Dems.

Consider this a case study, one example of many adding to the sense that this year is moving strongly in the GOPs favor. (And I say that as one who still forecasts Dems to retain the House. But I might be wrong.)

March unemployment rates for the states are out today. Some down slightly, some up or steady. Here is the lede from the BLS report:

Regional and state unemployment rates were little changed in March.
Twenty-four states recorded over-the-month unemployment rate increases,
17 states and the District of Columbia registered rate decreases, and 9
states had no rate change, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
today. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia recorded jobless
rate increases from a year earlier, 5 states had decreases, and 1 state
had no change.

The number of jobs rose in 33 states and declined in 17, consistent with the addition of jobs nationally in March. So while the balance of results are improving there remain a significant minority of states not yet enjoying an improved jobs situation.

The chart above shows the trends by state with national comparisons.

The chart below shows the change over the past 12 months, March 2009 to March 2010. The states are mostly above the black 45 degree line, showing the general rise in unemployment among 44 states, with only 6 decreases or no change. The blue line shows the linear relationship over the year, illustrating what we might expect in 2010 given where a state was in 2009 and the overall pattern of change in those 12 months.

Finally, we can look at which states are doing better than expected and which worse, compared to the blue linear fit line. The chart below shows the residuals for that fit against current state unemployment. Below zero means a state is doing better (has lower unemployment) than expected based on where they were a year ago. Above zero are states doing worse (higher unemployment) than expected.

The most interesting take-aways here are the two states in the top right corner: Nevada and Florida have both high current unemployment AND have higher than expected rates. And to make matters worse, both Nevada and Florida lost non-farm jobs from February to March. The electoral troubles Senator Reid and Governor Crist find themselves in might be somewhat less if their states were in happier circumstances. Not the whole story of course, but it certainly doesn't help.

Generic Ballot time. Mark has a piece at National Journal today that will soon be linked to here in his Monday post. Meanwhile here is a quick look at the underlying data.

Above, generic ballot trends since 1992. The contrast of 2010 to 2006 and 2008 is quite striking. No comment necessary.

Below, the linear trend over the last 200 days of the campaign, since 1946. See Mark's post for some discussion.

Off to teach! Have a good week.

I've been pointing out the similarities between the circumstances of Presidents Obama and Reagan for a while now. See an earlier post on this here.

The short version is both come in with inherited economic troubles that don't turn around miraculously in the first 24 months. Both replace deeply unpopular predecessors, and suffer from high expectations in comparison. And both set out to dramatically change the direction of national policy. Reagan suffered substantial losses in the House in his first midterm (26 seats lost), and Obama looks headed to similar if not larger losses in 2010.

So how is the analogy holding up? In approval terms, still quite well. The two continue to track rather well. Obama has occasionally been slightly below and recently slightly above Reagan's trend, but the parallel movement remains striking. Likewise, their relative location compared to other first term post-war presidents continues to drive home the point that these have been (so far) among the lowest approval ratings in the first 24 months.

Despite the similarity, I don't think the two presidents are metaphysically linked by fate. Both suffer from the economy and their large policy goals. At the moment, the economy is looking to have turned up sooner for Obama than it did for Reagan (who suffered until the very month of the midterm before the economy bottomed out and started to recover.) Obama has a more hopeful looking GDP trend, though his unemployment trend has not yet started down. (Political science finds that GDP is consistently a better predictor of midterm outcomes than is unemployment, despite the vastly greater emphasis on unemployment in public commentary.)

So I don't think the 2010 results are yet set in stone, nor that the track of Obama's approval is necessarily going to continue following Reagan's. Rather it has been driven by similar circumstances, and those circumstances appear to be diverging on the economy at least. Whether Obama's approval responds, and with what effect on midterm outcomes, remains to be seen. The politics is yet to finish baking.

Bonus Chart: The first term presidents through midterm but in separate charts rather than overlaid. Data are Gallup polls only to provide comparability over the decades.

President Obama made 15 recess appointments over the weekend, the first of his presidency. The White House announced the appointments and made their case based on the long wait for Senate action in a press release here. The recess appointments have waited an "average of 214 days" according to the release (the mean in the data I analyzed is 213.6 with a median of 194 days.) The nominations and confirmations data I used is available at the White House website here. I've excluded 9 appointees who are holdovers from the Bush administration who do not require confirmation. The White House release says 217 nominees are pending though in these data I find only 207 pending, including the 15 recess appointees.

The figure above puts the delays in perspective by also showing the 550 confirmed appointees and all the wait times until final action. (At the moment, no nominee has been rejected, so the duration is days until confirmation vote or March 27 (the date of the recess appointments).

Among the confirmed nominees, the median wait time was 56 days, with 75% confirmed in 91 days and 90% confirmed in 129 days. In contrast, for the 15 recess appointees, the minimum wait was 144 days, with a median of 194 days, and a third have waited more than 249 days for a confirmation decision.

The key take-away is that 73% of nominees have been confirmed, while 27% are pending. Some of those pending are recent nominees, with 34% waiting less than the 56 day median for confirmed nominees. But there is also a considerable right tail to the distribution, with many pending nominees having waited well beyond the normal range for confirmed appointees. And the recess appointments are mostly from the right tail of the unconfirmed.

The top half of the figure shows the distribution of wait times for the confirmed and unconfirmed nominees. The red distribution for those waiting for confirmation has a much heavier right tail than the blue line for confirmed cases. The red dots show the 15 recess appointees, which are visibly to the right of the distribution of times. The lower half of the figure shows the individual wait times for the recess appointees by name and agency.

Finally, we can compare the wait times for confirmed, pending (excluding recess) and recess appointees.

The recess appointees are mostly outliers compared to those confirmed and have all waited longer than more than three-quarters of other pending nominees.

These data put the delays in confirmation in perspective. As the White House complains, the group of recess appointees have indeed waited considerably longer than is normal for eventual confirmations, and longer than a large majority of other pending appointments. But the White House also glosses over the relative speed of the 73% of nominees who have been confirmed, 90% of whom were confirmed in 129 days, or about 4 months, or less. The reason some nominees face long delays is political-- either due to the individual nominee's background or the agency to which they are nominated or holds placed by individual Senators. Those are normal political battles, and it is worth noting that the delay in decisions is not universal. That may be cold comfort to the 35 still-pending nominees who have been waiting for a vote for more than 150 days.

Addendum: University of Kansas political scientist Michael Lynch sent me and The Monkey Cage an email summarizing the results of his (and colleagues) analysis of recess appointments since 1987. The key finding is that length of delay alone is not the key determinant of who receives a recess appointment and who does not. Not too shockingly, presidents use recess appointments to further their political goals and especially so with regulatory commissions, such as NLRB and EEOC appointments among Obama's 15. The Monkey Cage has Lynch's summary of his research here. Of course, before going to a temporary recess appointment, nominees must normally have waited longer than those most easily confirmed, as my analysis above shows. Among those waiting, who gets a recess appointment and who does not certainly is a political and policy choice, as Lynch's research demonstrates. --Charles

Today's unemployment rate was announced as 9.7%. But some articles mention a "true" unemployment rate of 16.8%. How can both numbers coexist, and which is "really true"?

This is a lengthy, technical post, so here is the conclusion:

As a matter of compassion for people who would like to work more, U6 may be a more inclusive measure, but as a matter of statistical information, as a matter of understanding the economic (and political) implications of unemployment, there is no advantage in choosing anything other than the official unemployment rate, U3. Calling U6 the "true" or "real" unemployment is misleading and a disservice to readers and listeners. It is a claim of added value when in fact there is none. 

Now the details:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces an official unemployment statistic each month, known as U3. The BLS also produces five alternative measures of unemployment, U1, U2, U4, U5 and U6. U1 and U2 are narrower measures of long-term (over 15 weeks) and new job losses. U4-U6 are alternative measures including discouraged, marginally attached to the labor force and part-time workers who would prefer more hours. (See the BLS data here.)

As unemployment rises, the rates for marginal and part time workers also increases, and runs considerably above the official unemployment rate. The key difference is that discouraged and marginal workers are both not working and not looking for work but have looked in the last 12 months and say they would like to work. (Discouraged is a subset of marginal, with the addition that they cite a job-market related reason for not seeking work.) The part-time worker category includes currently employed people who want and are available for full time work but who have had to settle for part time employment.

Some news sources refer to U6, which includes both marginal and part-time workers as the "true" or "real" unemployment level. NPR has done so here and here and here and here. And the Washington Post's Frank Ahrens' Economy Watch Blog has had quite a bit to say about this including, here and here.

But in what sense is U6 more "true" than U5 or the official U3? One can certainly make a case that discouraged workers are unemployed, would like to work, but so disheartened they've given up. A slightly weaker case can be made for the marginal workers. But those two together only add modestly to the official unemployment rate, as you can see in the chart above. Where the big jump comes is among part-time employees, who are added to the mix in U6.

So is U6 a better measure? It certainly matters that 16.8% of potential workers would like more hours (or a job of any kind) compared to the 9.7% who are without jobs and actively looking. But if you are going to adopt U6 as your standard, you need to realize that even during the "full employment" of the late 1990s to 2000, when unemployment (i.e. U3) fell to just 3.8%, U6 still stood at 6.9%, 1.8 times higher. Of course a booming economy provides more full time job opportunities, but even the hottest economy of recent decades did not bring U6 below the 7-8 point range.

Since 1994 (when current unemployment measures were adopted) U6 has averaged 1.76 times the U3 rate. Today's ratio stands at 1.73, essentially the same as the historical average.

Today's Frank Ahren's Economy Watch entry points to the gap between U6 and U3, and links to an earlier post on that gap. Let's look at that gap, but also compare it to the ratio of U6 to U3:

Here you see the rise of unemployment nationally as you read the columns right-to-left. What was a small cluster of low unemployment in the lower left corner of the 2005 column has become a wide spread throughout the plot in the 2009 column. Both U3 and each of the alternative unemployment measures have increased, which is obvious. But the relationship between the measures have remained quite stable, with correlations between .86 and .99.