Pollster.com Brendan Nyhan

Obama and the Reagan myth

bnyhan@yahoo.com (Brendan Nyhan) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:34:16 -0500

by Brendan NyhanAs I've repeatedly noted, journalists have a tendency to attribute electoral outcomes and poll ratings to political tactics rather than the underlying fundamentals (most notably, the state of the economy). That's why the current Obama blame game has been so painfully predictable.

The latest example comes from TNR's John Judis. To his credit, Judis has previously written about the central importance of the economy to presidential approval. Nonetheless, his most recent article suggests that Ronald Reagan's "thematic" communication strategy limited GOP losses in the 1982 elections and should therefore be instructive for the Obama administration:

[A] president's political acumen--his ability to put the best light on his and his party's accomplishments--can mitigate the effects of rising unemployment. That's what Ronald Reagan and the Republicans achieved in the 1982 midterm elections...
Using economic models, some political scientists predicted that Democrats would pick up as many as 50 House seats. The Democrats also hoped to win back the Senate, which they had lost in 1980. But when the votes were tallied, the Republicans lost 26 House seats and kept their 54 seats in the Senate. How did Reagan and the Republicans manage to contain their losses in this midterm election? That's a question not simply of historical interest, but of direct relevance to Obama and the Democrats who are likely to face a similar, although perhaps not as severe, economic situation in November 2010.
Reagan blamed the Democrats for leaving him with "the worst economic mess in half a century"... By cutting spending and taxes, Reagan claimed that he was showing the way toward a recovery...
Reagan stated this theme not once, but hundreds of times and in virtually the same words, and it was featured in national Republican ads....
Obama understood the importance of thematic politics in his presidential campaign, but he and his political advisors have yet to find a way to characterize what he has tried to do as president...

In general, I'm skeptical of claims that Reagan's communication style had large macro effects on politics. Here's what I wrote, for instance, about a similar claim by the New Yorker's George Packer:

Packer suggests the President needs to convey "a strong worldview" like Ronald Reagan, who supposedly succeeded despite the recession of 1981-1982 and political compromises with Democrats because he conveyed such a worldview: "Reagan could recover from battlefield setbacks because he was fighting a larger war."
In reality, Reagan "could recover" because the economy recovered. His supposedly clearer worldview didn't seem to change media coverage or his approval ratings in 1981-1982 when the economy was at its worst. There's no reason to think that speeches conveying a clearer worldview would have a significant effect on Obama's standing.

To see if this intuition held up, I asked Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University who is forecasting the 2010 election, if there's any evidence to support Judis's claim that the GOP overperformed in 1982 relative to what we would have otherwise expected. Here's what he wrote:

Interesting question. The model predicts a loss of 27 seats and the actual loss was 26 seats. That's using a model with separate dummy variables for first and second midterms. With a single dummy variable, the predicted seat loss is 32 or 33 seats. Still very close to the actual seat loss. But two of the predictors in the model are the generic ballot and net presidential approval in late August or early September, both of which could possibly be influenced by presidential actions. I'd have to go back and check whether either one showed any improvement for the GOP during the spring and summer of 82. My guess is that they did not, though, in which case the Reagan strategy argument would be undermined.

After checking, he reported back:

First, Reagan's approval rating sank during 1982. He started out in the upper 40s and ended up in the low 40s by the time of the election. Not exactly an indication that his strategy was working to help Republicans in the midterm election. You'd want a higher approval rating, not a lower approval rating.
Second, the Democratic lead in the generic ballot was large throughout the year and never diminished. The average lead was 12 points in January, 18 points in April, 20 points in May-July, 18 points in August, and 19 points in the last pre-election poll in late September. So no sign there that Reagan's strategy was working.

Abramowitz also verified that these results were not affected by the inclusion of the 1982 election by excluding it from the data used to forecast the outcome of that election:

The out of sample forecasts are a loss of 33 seats for the model with the simple midterm dummy variable and a loss of 27 seats for the model with separate first and second midterm dummy variables--82 was a first midterm of course, so a slightly smaller seat loss is predicted. Not bad.

Similarly, while Judis cites relatively old forecasts of House seat change in the 1982 election, a more recent model perfectly forecasts the net House seat change for 1982 out of sample (i.e., excluding data from that year).

In short, don't buy the hype. Reagan may have been an effective communicator, but we attribute his success to those skills in large part because the economy rebounded in time to create a landslide in his 1984 campaign against Walter Mondale. There's no convincing evidence that his "thematic" approach improved the GOP's performance in 1982. For the same reasons, while Obama's communications strategy could probably be improved, it's not clear that doing so would significantly change the outcome in November.

Update 3/19 10:00 AM: I passed on a commenter's request for comparable Senate projections for 1982 to Abramowitz. Here's what he wrote:

The models (they're identical to the House models) predict Republican losses of 2 or 3 seats. The actual result was a loss of 1 (or 0 if you factor in pickup of Byrd's seat in VA). The key here is that Republicans were only defending 13 seats vs. 19 Dem seats in 82.

In other words, the Senate results, like those in the House, can largely be explained by the political fundamentals. There's no evidence that Reagan's message caused Republicans to perform unusually well in 1982.

[Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com]]]>

The Drudge-hyped CNN "shock poll"

bnyhan@yahoo.com (Brendan Nyhan) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:52:11 -0500

by Brendan NyhanMatt Drudge is currently blaring this headline about a new CNN poll (PDF):

CNN SHOCK POLL: MAJORITY SAY OBAMA DOESN'T DESERVE 2ND TERM

Actually, the poll isn't especially shocking. As The Hill points out, "52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012" -- a number that is almost identical to the proportion who disapprove of the job he's doing (50%).

For context, a Fox News poll in August 2001 asked the following question about George W. Bush:

Considering how President (George W.) Bush has performed so far, do you think he deserves to be reelected or would the country probably be better off with someone else as president?

The results? 36% said Bush deserved to be reelected, 42% said the country would be better off with someone else, and 22% said it depends or weren't sure. These numbers are actually worse than Obama's relative to the 55% approval/32% disapproval numbers the Fox poll showed for Bush.

[Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com]]]>

Blaming staff for structural problems

bnyhan@yahoo.com (Brendan Nyhan) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:10:58 -0500

by Brendan NyhanBack in January, I predicted a rash of process-based explanations of President Obama's declining political fortunes in 2010:

During the next eleven months, it will become increasingly obvious that Democrats face an unfavorable political environment and that President Obama's approval ratings are trending downward. Inside the Beltway, these outcomes will be interpreted as evidence that the Obama administration has made poor strategic choices or that the President isn't "connecting" with the American public. Hundreds of hours will be spent constructing elaborate narratives about how the character, personality, and tactics of the principals in the White House inevitably led them to their current predicament.

Within two weeks, the narratives about Obama not "connecting" arrived thanks to Scott Brown's victory in the special election for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts.

It's now been about a month since I wrote the original post. After tiring of the "not connecting" narrative, the press has now moved on to blaming Obama's advisors for his political problems. Congressional Democrats have quickly gotten on board, implausibly blaming Rahm Emanuel for not targeting more conservative Senate Republicans on health care.

Obama's staff certainly has made mistakes, but I doubt they are the principal cause of the administration's problems. As I've pointed out before, good fundamentals make political strategists look like geniuses and bad fundamentals make the same strategists look like idiots. In other words, staff performance is largely a reflection of the political fundamentals (in particular, the economy), not the cause of a president's success or failure.

Unfortunately for Obama's staff, they're under siege from all sides. The political press needs a dramatic narrative in which the President's problems are the result of failed political tactics; Democrats need a scapegoat; and Republicans want a scalp (particularly Emanuel's). If the year doesn't go well for Obama, it's likely that someone will be thrown overboard.

PS I predict Mickey Kaus is ahead of the curve on phase three, which will be to blame Obama himself for poor strategic choices.

Update 2/12 9:14 AM: See also Peggy Noonan's column today, which points in a similar direction as Kaus (i.e. blaming Obama himself).

[Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com]]]>

Obama's misguided spending freeze

bnyhan@yahoo.com (Brendan Nyhan) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:30:30 -0500

by Brendan NyhanSince the beginning of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and his advisers have repeatedly claimed that they don't listen to DC's conventional wisdom. But Obama's decision to propose a freeze of discretionary non-security spending suggests that the White House misunderstands the problem in the same way as most of the rest of Washington.

The problem, as I've argued, is that Obama's political fortunes are closely tied to the economy -- a variable over which he has relatively little control. With his first midterm election approaching and the economy in terrible shape, an anti-presidential backlash was a virtual certainty. Obama's approach to health care or the economy may have exacerbated this backlash -- the public tends to move in the opposite direction from public policy (though usually after some lag) -- but it's highly unlikely that Obama's policies or communication strategies were the primary cause of his declining approval ratings.

The decision to respond to this problem with a partial spending freeze is both bad politics and bad economics. From an economic perspective, Obama faces a serious risk of a long period of slow growth or even a double-dip recession. He has no politically feasible jobs agenda; his proposed tax credit is tiny relative to the scale of the problem. Imposing additional limits at government spending will only make the problem worse.

From a political perspective, Obama's gesture will have very little effect. The idea seems to be that it will appeal to independents and Republicans who are concerned about the deficit. However, most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents will not support Obama no matter what he does. They may say they are concerned about the deficit or government spending, but if those concerns are addressed they are likely to find other reasons to oppose the administration. (In addition, their perceptions are likely to be biased.) Deficits might hurt Obama on the margin, but in most cases I tend to think that they're a convenient reason to cite for opposing a president you wouldn't like anyway.

Just to underscore the magnitude of the political and economic problem Obama faces, the White House budget, which was released today, projects "8.9 percent unemployment at the end of 2011, and 7.9 unemployment percent by the end of 2012." While unemployment isn't as good a predictor of election outcomes as income growth, these figures underscores the difficult path to re-election that Obama currently faces. He can still win in 2012 -- seasonally adjusted unemployment in December 1983 was 8.3% and Reagan went on to beat Mondale in a landslide -- but he needs significant growth to do it (regression line excludes the outliers of 1952 and 1968):

Given the historical record, the downside risk of suboptimal economic policy vastly outweighs the symbolic appeal of spending freezes and other short-term deficit measures. Unfortunately for Obama, this is one issue where his administration appears to buy into the conventional wisdom.

Update 2/2 1:30 PM: Matthew Yglesias makes the point more eloquently in a post linking to this one:

Roughly speaking, people got it into their heads over the years that "deficits" are "bad" (which is usually true, but also pretty simplistic) and then the economic situation became very bad, so people have decided that large deficits must be the problem. This is a misunderstanding. An application of a crude, sorta-correct rule of thumb to an unusual situation. It also involves people confusing cause and effect. Steep economic downturns cause large deficits, which is bad. But the deficit is the symptom rather than the cause. Meanwhile, as Brendan Nyhan observes the Obama administration seems eager to pile bad political science on top of the mass public's bad economics. People are upset, and they say they want a smaller deficit. So Obama's proposing to give it to them, and seems to have no intention of doing anything about its own forecast of a years-long bleak economic situation.
In political terms, though, the actual performance of the economy in 2012 is going to be much more important to Obama's re-election than the budget deficit. In particular, by directing its policymaking more at the things that the public thinks are the cause of economic problems rather than the things that economists think are the cause of economic problems, the administration is making is running a huge risk of GOP takeover of the House in 2010. What's more, they've left themselves with almost no margin of error for their own re-election. And for double-irony, the very members of congress who are most endangered by poor short-term economic performance are the ones who are doing the most to urge the administration to adopt a fiscal retrenchment agenda. The faith in vox populi that this reflects ("the public will reward me for doing what they said they wanted me to do, even if it turns out not to work at all") is sort of touching, but really lacks any basis in the evidence. It's fascinating to me how few professional political operatives or reporters seem interested in systematic studies of US politics.

See also:
-Seth Masket on pundits misunderstanding Obama's problems
-John Sides on the overemphasis on process as the problem in the health care debate
-Jon Chait on Peter Wehner ridiculing "structural factors" as the primary reason for Obama's decline

[Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com]]]>

How much is health care hurting the Democrats?

bnyhan@yahoo.com (Brendan Nyhan) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:03:23 -0500

by Brendan NyhanVia John Sides, David W. Brady, Daniel P. Kessler, and Douglas Rivers have published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that is likely to fuel Democratic panic in Washington over health care:

The majority party normally loses seats in midterm elections, but the Republican resurgence of recent months is more than a conventional midterm rebound. How can a little known Republican run a competitive Senate campaign in Massachusetts? The culprit is the unpopularity of health reform, and it means that Democrats will face even worse problems later this year in less liberal places than Massachusetts.
We have polled voters in 11 states likely to have competitive Senate races in November on how they feel about health reform and how they might vote in November...
Health reform is more popular in some of these states than in others. Where it's popular, Democratic candidates don't have too much of a problem, but where it's unpopular--and that includes most states--the Democratic Senate candidates are fighting an uphill battle...
Support for the Republican Senate candidates in these races is closely related to voter opposition to the health-care Senate bill...
How do we know that it's the health-reform bill that's to blame for the low poll numbers for Democratic Senate candidates and not just that these are more conservative states?

First, we asked voters how their incumbent senator voted on the health-care bill that passed on Christmas Eve. About two-thirds answered correctly. Even now, long before Senate campaigns have intensified, voters know where the candidates stand on health care. And second, we asked voters about their preference for Democrat versus Republican candidates in a generic House race. As in the Senate, the higher the level of opposition to health reform, the greater the likelihood that the state's voters supported Republicans.

Brady and Rivers are highly respected political scientists (I'm not familiar with Kessler), but I'm not sure we can draw strong conclusions from these data. Since health care passed on a perfect party line vote in the Senate, it's relatively easy to know where an incumbent stands on the issue. And given the salience of the health care debate, the correlation between state opposition to health care reform and support for Republican senate candidates is (a) not surprising and (b) not necessarily causal (especially given that those are aggregate measures).

I tend to think that much of the health care fallout is an expression of economic discontent, but there's certainly an argument to be made that it has exacerbated the public's predictable turn away from liberalism. In either case, however, disentangling these factors is extremely difficult.

Update 1/21 8:25 PM: Matt Blackwell makes a similar argument at the Harvard Social Science Statistics blog.

[Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com]]]>