Republicans and 2012

There's a new New York Times poll out today that more or less suggests that when it comes to what people know (or feel) about the likely GOP presidential candidates remains fairly thin and uninspiring.  It's early yet, to be sure, but the numbers do not bode well for early party challengers to President Barack Obama.

Only Mike Huckabee, and to some degree Mitt Romney, do pretty well.  Huckabee scores well in having very low negatives, meaning fewer Republicans dislike him than, say, Sarah Palin.

Here's a nice graphical display.

What's also telling is the "undecided, don't know enough to tell" numbers, which suggest a lack of knowledge or interest or, maybe, passion the public, especially the GOP public, has for these potential candidates.  Among Republican adults, the biggest "never heard of him" goes to Jon Huntsman, and the most recognized of the bunch is Sarah Palin.  Donald Trump gets about one-third favorable, one-third unfavorable, and a lucky one third who have managed to avoid all information about him.  To that one third, I envy you.

The American public is mad as hell -- at both political parties, at least that's the news from a new CNN poll.

But the survey also indicates the public continues to blame the GOP more than the Democrats for the country's current economic woes even though the Democrats have controlled both the White House and Congress for a year and a half.

Which I find interesting given Obama's having to wrestle with a major environmental disaster, a sputtering economy, an indeterminate pair of wars, and the frothing at the mouth by TV and radio talkmeisters of the Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh persuasion who continue to pound the administration.


You can read a full pdf of the report here, but it's rather slim.

Republicans Smarter than Democrats?

Republicans outscore Democrats in political knowledge, according to this Pew report.  However, this comes with some caveats:

Republicans, on average, answered one more question correctly than Democrats (5.9 vs. 4.9 correct). These differences are partly a reflection of the demographics of the two groups; Republicans tend to be older, well educated and male, which are characteristics associated with political and economic knowledge. 

Okay, so maybe if you control for age, education, and sex, then all will be equal?  Not necessarily, the Pew folks say:

Still, even when these factors are held constant, Republicans do somewhat better than Democrats on the knowledge quiz.

In other words, Republicans are smarter even if you hold age, education, and sex constant.  But what if you hold constant, statistically, a host of other factors that may also explain what people know?  There are some socio-demographic factors you can toss in the model (race being one politically incorrect one, income being another) that will also explain some of the variance, probably enough to even out partisan differences.  But you have to ask, what's the point?  If these political and social differences are what make up partisan alignment, then controlling for those very same factors to "even out" the differences doesn't make a lot of sense.  Let's just agree that the people who consider themselves Republicans score higher on tests of political knowledge than those who consider themselves Democrats.

Below is one table from the Pew report.  Go to the link above to see the entire report.

Census Redux

I discussed a few days ago a "census" document I received in the mail from the Republican Party.  Below is how the envelope looked:

Obviously misleading, suggesting that it was a Census document when really it is a mailing to people who have voted in the past for Republican candidates (yes, I have).  The survey itself is pretty much what you'd expect.  Below are small images of the four-page survey.  You can click on any page and see a better, but not great, image. 

In terms of quality -- setting aside the ethically-questionable and legally-tricky matter of posing as a real "census" in a Census year, the survey is okay.  I blogged before about Question 7 and how it collapses media and asks about "Internet Blogs" as if there are blogs other than on the Internet.  There are no questions that strike me as terribly loaded given the source of the survey.  You'd expect this point of view from one party about the other.  And of course the final page includes all the ways I can give money, if I so choose (er, I don't, thank you very much, given six days of furloughs by the State of Georgia).

Is it illegal to pose as a Census document?  Yes.  Does this violate the law?  Nah, probably not.  Sleazy, perhaps, but not illegal.

The entire questionnaire, for your enjoyment:

Wow

So I blogged a week or so ago about this semi-bogus "census" mailing I received that was really a survey by the Republican Party (yeah, I vote GOP sometimes, Democrat sometimes, I'm basically a radical moderate).

Someone on AAPORNet mentioned Friday a similar mailing and I posted the image of the one I received on the blog and pointed to it on the listserv.  Wow.  I just checked the Google Analytics for Friday and my number of hits for a given day increased 20-fold.  Freaked my analytics out.  Here's a map that shows where all the hits originated for that page.
Again, wow.  Too bad I didn't have Google Adsense turned on.  Might have made some money.

This is a good demonstration of the power of interconnectedness and networks.  If I'd put it on my Facebook and Twitter accounts as well, I might have generated even more traffic.

Census Mail -- Sorta

In my mail yesterday was a white envelope with black letters on the right side that said

DO NOT DESTROY
OFFICIAL DOCUMENT

Holy crap?  What official document?  Through a piece of cheap clear plastic I can read:

Census Document Registered To:


Mr. Barry Hollander
blah blah address blah

Holy crap?  The Census has already started?  Yeah, it's 2010, but no way they're far enough long to be sending me mail.

Look harder:

SPECIAL NOTICE: You have been selected to represent Republican voters in Georgia's 10th Congressional District.  Enclosed Please find documents registered in your name.

And larger:

DELIVER EXCLUSIVELY TO Mr. Barry Hollander

In other words, a Republican survey because, yes, I occasionally vote Republican so I'm on their list.  The survey asks how often I vote, what party I prefer, my age, and "from what media source do you regularly receive your political news?"  Bunch of choices here, but how they're grouped is fascinating.

• NBC/CBS/ABC are grouped together.  Okay, I can buy that.  The differences are subtle, but it's a perfectly good way to collapse your data.
  
• But CNN/MSNBC together?  That's just dumb, unless of course you believe on the part of CNN that a lack of a conservative bias equals a liberal bias.  The two are very unlike.
• Fox News.  Gets it's own special category.  Gee, wonder why?
• And a bunch of online stuff, like Facebook/MySpace (never mind how different they are), and Twitter, and Internet Blogs (as opposed to non-Internet blogs?).  
• And of course there are magazines and radio and other stuff, but NOT talk radio.  Interesting.

The rest of the survey is straightforward political stuff and the wording is not so skewed as to make the results unreliable.  But best of all, at the end, it asks for money.  Unmarked bills are acceptable, best I can tell, as long as they are between $25 and $500.

Plus I have to certify that the answers are my own.  Oh, please.

Tea Anyone?

Running as a Tea Party candidate is better in congressional races than running as a Republican, according to this poll.  As the report says:

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided. 

As the survey report adds near the bottom, this is fairly meaningless given how the rules of elections are structured and the likelihood of a serious party challenge from the Tea Baggers.  Still, kinda interesting.

Knowing the Parties

It's tough to be a Democrat right now.

The CNN poll that asks people to rate the parties has the Dems right now at 53 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable.  Not great numbers.  Truly, a bit ugly.

But what's uglier? 

The Republicans.

Same poll, worse numbers -- 36 percent favorable and 54 percent unfavorable.

The Dems were at 60 percent favorable in December and have been slipping, which must make GOPers happy.  Too bad the Republicans have been slipping in the minds of folks as well, down from 48 percent favorable a year or so ago.  A pox on both houses, it seems.

Do these impressions matter?

Not so much right now, unless you consider them political capital to be spent on the hot policy issue of the day (health care comes to mind), or if you see them as some guidance on the two big upcoming elections thought to be barometers of the political winds (New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races).  Otherwise they're mere numbers to watch, info to fill a blog with, or something for political junkies to argue about.

But they do get, at least a little, at what people know or think about the two major parties.  It will be bad if both parties suffer from equally dismal numbers.  Why?  Effective governing relies on a reservoir of good will, something a party (or politician) can draw down on as needed to get policies approved.  Given the fragmented nature of the news audience, especially the cult of cable television, I suspect both parties are in for a tough 2010.  We need one party to be waxing if the other is waning, if for no other reason than someone has to have the political capital to get necessary things accomplished.