A Different Party

According to Marc Ambinder, new polls show that Republicans in Iowa think Rudy Giuliani is the most electable candidate, yet they're still not voting for him.  I have trouble imagining that same finding on the Democratic side.  I can't figure out if that's because the party out of power is simply more desperate to reenter it or because Republicans are genuinely more ideologically oriented than Democrats, but it's a fascinating finding.  Meanwhile, Dick Morris argues that though Rudy's national numbers are good, his numbers in the relevant primaries are very bad.  It's a convincing case, and I'm thrilled to hear it.  Mitt Romney not only seems less likely to win the general election, but also less likely to explode the earth.

Is The Surge Working?

Given all the domestic dispute over whether the Surge is working, and whether the measurements are honest, and what "working" really means anyway, it's interesting to actually find out what the Iraqis think. So the BBC and ABC News polled them:

So the overwhelming majority thought the surge made things worse. Then came those who thought it made no difference. And then, hovering around 10 percent, were those who thought they detected some improvements. Given that the Surge is in theory, about Iraqi security rather than American politics, these are disheartening numbers.

Also: Could someone please inform the BBC that blue should fill the bar for things going well and red should should be the color for all that's gone awry? I find this pleasing, powder-blue denoting increases in deadly violence to be a bit confusing.

The Kids Are Alright

According to a new New York Times/CBS poll, they're not only alright, they're downright Democratic. They disapprove of Bush's handling on, well, everything, would vote Democratic by a margin of 54%-32%, and 58% have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party while only 38% are positively inclined towards the Republicans. The one surprising result is their pessimism: 48% think their generation will be worse off than their parents' generation, while only 25% think they'll be better off.

Whether for that or another reason, they seem to have more trust in government than their parent's do:

So kids, it turns out, are much better than alright: They're collectivists! My hunch is coming of political age after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Reagan era will leave you much less skeptical of government than having endured through the period when "big government" meant a murderous and hegemonic regime we were in an undeclared war with, and the nation's dominant political party demonized the state in exactly those terms. As Ruy Teixeira and John Judis explain in the latest issue of TAP:

The Democratic majority in 2006 was also bolstered by support from voters ages 18 to 29. Almost all of these voters fall into the category that pollsters call "millennials" or "Generation Y" (those born after 1977). In contrast to the previous generation, dubbed "Generation X" (those born between 1965 and 1977), they prefer Democrats over Republicans and the center-left over the center-right. According to a 2006 Pew survey, 48 percent of 18- to 25-year-old millennials identify themselves as Democrats, and only 35 percent identify themselves as Republicans. In 2006, 18- to-29-year-olds voted for Democratic congressional candidates by 60 percent to 38 percent. By contrast, 55 percent of 18- to 25-year-old Generation Xers had identified themselves as Republicans in the early 1990s. Political generations don't often change their allegiance. The New Deal generation sustained a Democratic majority for decades; Generation X has remained a bulwark of the Republican vote; and the millennials can be expected to bolster a new Democratic majority.

Clearly, different political experiences have shaped these two generations. Generation X grew up during the Carter and Reagan years, which were marked by Democratic failure and Republican success. The millennials grew up in years of the Clinton boom and Bush's disastrous failure in Iraq. Their political outlook most clearly resembles that of postindustrial professionals: socially liberal, in favor of government regulation of business, more secular, and less inclined than any other generation to accept the Republican identification with the religious right. In a 2006 Pew survey, 20 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds reported they had no religion or were atheist or agnostic, compared with just 11 percent among those over 25.

If these trends endure -- and unlike other shifts in the past few years, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Democrats have achieved lock-in with millenials -- the Left is going to have a much stronger base from which to build over the next few years.

The Kids Are Alright

According to a new New York Times/CBS poll, they're not only alright, they're downright Democratic. They disapprove of Bush's handling on, well, everything, would vote Democratic by a margin of 54%-32%, and 58% have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party while only 38% are positively inclined towards the Republicans. The one surprising result is their pessimism: 48% think their generation will be worse off than their parent's generation, while only 25% think they'll be better off.

Whether for that or another reason, they seem to have more trust in government than their parent's do:

The kids are much better than alright: They're collectivists! My hunch is coming of political age after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Reagan era will leave you much less skeptical of government than having endured through the period when "big government" meant a murderous and hegemonic regime we were in an undeclared war with, and the nation's dominant political party demonized the state in exactly those terms. As Ruy Teixeira and John Judis explain in the latest issue of TAP:

The Democratic majority in 2006 was also bolstered by support from voters ages 18 to 29. Almost all of these voters fall into the category that pollsters call "millennials" or "Generation Y" (those born after 1977). In contrast to the previous generation, dubbed "Generation X" (those born between 1965 and 1977), they prefer Democrats over Republicans and the center-left over the center-right. According to a 2006 Pew survey, 48 percent of 18- to 25-year-old millennials identify themselves as Democrats, and only 35 percent identify themselves as Republicans. In 2006, 18- to-29-year-olds voted for Democratic congressional candidates by 60 percent to 38 percent. By contrast, 55 percent of 18- to 25-year-old Generation Xers had identified themselves as Republicans in the early 1990s. Political generations don't often change their allegiance. The New Deal generation sustained a Democratic majority for decades; Generation X has remained a bulwark of the Republican vote; and the millennials can be expected to bolster a new Democratic majority.

Clearly, different political experiences have shaped these two generations. Generation X grew up during the Carter and Reagan years, which were marked by Democratic failure and Republican success. The millennials grew up in years of the Clinton boom and Bush's disastrous failure in Iraq. Their political outlook most clearly resembles that of postindustrial professionals: socially liberal, in favor of government regulation of business, more secular, and less inclined than any other generation to accept the Republican identification with the religious right. In a 2006 Pew survey, 20 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds reported they had no religion or were atheist or agnostic, compared with just 11 percent among those over 25.

If these trends endure -- and unlike other shifts in the past few years, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Democrats have achieved lock-in with millenials -- the Left is going to have a much stronger base from which to build over the next few years.

The ARG Poll

I don't think Michael Crowley's read of the ARG poll's trend lines is quite right. It's not so much that "Clinton's ARG lead over Obama in New Hampshire has also soared," it's that Obama's position in the poll has plummeted. Take December out of the the equation, as it's both the oldest month and, by far, the lowest for Clinton, suggesting it's a possible outlier. Over the past four months, she's held steady between 39% and 37%, a two percent swing. Obama has dropped from a high of 23% in March to 14% in April, a nine percent loss. And Edwards has risen from 13% in January to 26% now, a 13 percent improvement. So what you're seeing is an apparently durable lead for Clinton, significant downward motion for Clinton, and serious improvement for Edwards.

As The Poll Turns...

It's good, every once in awhile, to dig through a comprehensive poll and see where the country's at. For instance, I wasn't aware that only 20 out of every 100 people approved of George W. Bush's job performance. I thought he'd have at least, oh, four more supporters in there. And I am surprised that only 23% of the country thinks the country is on the right track. That matches the low from May 2006, and the two are lower than at any point in the past 25 years. Bush's foreign policy and Iraq ratings have cratered, of course, but support for his handling of terrorism has also drifted downward, hitting a new low of 40% (53% disapprove). And only 24% approve his handling of health care, despite the fact that he used much of the State of the union to announce a new initiative on the subject.

Indeed, health care appears to be rising in salience, as 55% name "health insurance for all" as more important than reducing taxes, strengthening immigration laws, or even promoting traditional values. Further, 62% say the Democrats are the likeliest to improve the health care system, while only 19% name the Republicans. As it is, 54% of the country wants fundamental changes to the system, while 36% want to completely rebuild it. That's the highest number since 1993 -- and it's notable that it's not coming amidst a recession. This is an enduring trend, not a temporary squeeze. Indeed, 57% are dissatisfied with the quality of health care in the country, even as 77% are generally satisfied with the quality of care they receive. The unhappiness manifests in the next question, wherein 60% are dissatisfied with the overall cost of care, 52% are upset about what they personally pay.

What surprised me is that 61% say providing care to the uninsured is more important than keeping costs down for average Americans. 95% think the uninsured are a serious problem, and 63% think the government should guarantee care for all Americans. This drops, however, to 48% if it means individual costs will rise. That said, 76% say access to insurance is more important than retaining Bush's tax cut,s suggesting that John Edwards' formulation of using the cuts to pay for care may resonate. Indeed, 60% are willing to pay more in taxes to guarantee care and 49% remained willing when the pollsters specified an extra $500 in taxes per year.

These anxieties may be part of the reason the Republican Party is in such an image crisis, with only 34% rating them favorably, as compared to 48% approving of the Democrats. That's a moderately low number for the Dems, but an atypical pit for the Republicans. All this suggests health reformers have a real opportunity. But these numbers that existed in early 90s -- and reformers failed. The difference, though, is that the early 90s was a serious recession. The current anxiety comes from enduring trends in the system, and so may prove a more stable base for change.

Also at Tapped.

Testing The Exits

Given that Democrats had a very good night last night, it's worth taking another look at the exit polls to see how they fared, this time without the pressure of a vast and demoralizing reversal from earlier predictions.  Now, it's worth remembering that these polls are taken after voting, so the effects of suppression and intimidation (the garden variety methods used to tilt the table on election day) won't show up.  Further, this exit data came out around 5pm Eastern, so polls hadn't closed.  But just for kicks, I've matched the exit data with the final vote tallies to see how the polls performed:

POLLS V. POLLS

State	Exit Poll	Voting Results	Difference
Missouri	+2%	+3%	1%
Montana	+7%	+1%	6%
New Jersey	+8%	+8%	0%
Ohio	+14%	+12%	2%
Pennsylvania	+15%	+18%	+3%
Rhode Island	+7%	+6%	1%
Virginia	+7%	+0.7%	6.3%
Tennessee	-3%	-3%	0%

Bottom line?  The polls, early as they were, did staggeringly well.  Their largest misreads in Virginia and Montana, but the average margin of error was an astonishingly low 2.4%.  Whatever problems bedeviled the polls in 2004 -- cue the usual argument pitting error against theft -- was fixed for 2006.

Health Care Attitudes

Kaiser, ABC, and USA Today just released a pretty expansive poll documenting the country's opinions on health care. The nickel version is that your countrymen are mostly liberal, deeply confused, and more likely to loathe the status quo than clearly conceptualize potential alternatives. Respondents said it was the third most important issue in the country, behind Iraq and the economy, but before immigration, gas prices, or terrorism. That's probably because opinions towards the system are so overwhelmingly negative: 80 percent are dissatisfied with the cost of health care in the country, and 54 percent are dissatisfied with the quality. So the system starts out with few friends.

From there, things get more complicated. Nearly 90 percent are satisfied with the quality of care they received. Nearly 60 percent are satisfied with their costs. In other words, Americans believe everyone else's health care system costs too much and delivers too little. Their own system rocks. Meanwhile, a full 25 percent reported that they or someone in their household had problems paying for medical bill in the last 12 months, and 28 percent put off medical treatment due to cost. Of that 28 percent, 70 percent admitted that the delayed treatment was "serious." And remember, this is all in the last year.

Individual fears become more acute when asked about the future. 60 percent worry about affording insurance "over the next few years" and 56 percent fear losing their coverage if they lose their job. As for what's driving all these high costs, the reported culprits, in descending order, are excess profits of drug and insurance companies, medical malpractice lawsuits, fraud and waste, overpaid doctors, administrative costs, unnecessary treatments, unhealthy lifestyles, expensive new treatments, the aging population, and better medical care. That's depressing. In order to get an accurate view of what's driving health costs, you'd need to basically invert that list. To say the American people have it backwards is to be unusually precise.

How to fix it? Letting individuals shop around for the best prices they can get garners wide support, with 80 percent judging it some level of effective. Suggest far higher deductibles and low risk insulation, however, and watch that drop. 56 percent would prefer "a universal coverage program...like Medicare that is government run and financed by taxpayers" to the current system, but that number plummets if you ask about higher taxes, limited choice, or rationing. 70 percent support an employer mandate while a mere plurality support tax breaks for low-income workers (despite the fact that high income workers currently enjoy a massive tax break through employer deductions).

So, in sum: The health care system sucks, but nearly every American's health care is great. That would suggest the opportunities for reform are minor, unless directed at the loathed elements (like insurance or Pharma). Folks don't like the high costs and fear they'll soon be overtaken by bills, but they blame all manner of minor and moderate contributors for the problem, not their own health choices, overtreatment, or new technologies. Universal care is heavily desired, but only if it doesn't cost anything or demand any sacrifices. In other words, the appetite for reform outpaces the realism of would-be reformers. The tradeoffs of the current system seem poorly understood, and attitudes towards its desirability are contradictory. Not a whole lot of hope in here for anyone.

Geography Matters

It's old news that even while voters overwhelmingly loathe Congress, they tend to think their Congressman is doing a pretty good job. The new NYT/CBS poll sustains that fine tradition of voter confusion. Only 25 percent of voters approve of the job Congress is doing, but a full 53 percent approve of the job their representative is doing. That said, 48 percent think it's time to give someone new a chance in their district, while only 39 percent want to re-elect. Encouraging stuff.

Here's what's more surprising: This poll has trend lines stretching back to the 80's, so it's easy to compare and contrast. Turns out that in 94, year of the Republican Revolution, 56 percent of voters thought their representative was doing a good job, and the disapproval number, now at 29 percent, was at a mere 17 percent. Even weirder, in 98, 64 percent approved of their congressman. So going by those numbers, Democrats should win some 60 or so seats in November.

All of which is to say, this question may not matter very much. The swings in approval appear very minor (from the low 50's to the low 60's), and they don't seem to correspond to actual electoral outcomes. Which probably makes sense. After all, if 90 percent of voters think their congressman is doing just peachy, but the remaining 10 percent are clustered in a few dozen districts, you've got a landslide on your hands. In midterm elections, it's not the number of the disaffected, but their geographical concentrations that matters.

Peak Pony

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Bush falls below 40% in the Rasmussen tracking poll. Cue Iran saber-rattling in five, four, three ...

Why You Should Never Believe Polls in June

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

While the rest of the country has only their municipal elections to worry about this year, Virginia and New Jersey. The New Jersey contest will be something of a walk, though Jon Corzine seems to be doing his best to make things interesting. It's Virginia that has the real action this cycle.

Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine (D) Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (R) are locked in a dead-heat in the race for governor. The funny thing is, it hasn't always been this way. If you look at polls taken over the last six months, you'll see Kaine steadily gaining on Kilgore. And if you had looked at the polls in April, you might have given up on Kaine alltogether.

This is all a way of saying that it's far, far too early to get excited about Bobby Casey's big lead over Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, fret about Sheldon Whitehouse not getting enough traction against Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, or wonder why Jon Tester hasn't taken Montana by storm. Most of the country has much better things to do in their lives than pay fastidious attention to many different levels of politics. Early polls represent a combination of name recognition, party identification, and a general sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the way things are going in the country and the state. Only in extreme cases -- Santorum, perhaps, and superstars like John McCain and Russ Feingold -- can a candidates issue profile sway voters one way or another this early in the election cycle.

You're Doing a Heck of a Job, George

Via Singer, the latest AP poll shows the American people waking up, grumpily rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and telling Bush to get the hell off their lawn:

Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President?

Strongly Approve 20 (23)
Somewhat Approve 11 (10)
Lean Toward Approval 8 (9)
Lean Toward Disapproval 14 (13)
Somewhat Disapprove 5 (5)
Strongly Disapprove 40 (38)

Wow. What's most amazing though is the strength of the feeling on the "strong disapproval" side compared to the tepidness of those with favorable opinions. Think about this for a sec: right now, more Americans strongly disapprove of the president than approve of his job in any capacity. Total rage at his actions is outpacing all degrees of support.

Heck of a job, George. Heck of a job.

Cult of Personality

Matt on the CBS poll:

58 percent disapprove of Bush's handling of the hurricane, and just 38 percent approve. But consider this -- only 20 percent say the federal government's handling of the disaster was adequate, while 77 percent say it wasn't. 24 percent say FEMA's response was adequate and 70 percent disagree. How is it, then, that Bush is rated so much better than the federal government he heads, and the disaster agency run by his appointee, the much-beloved "Brownie?" This is part-and-parcel of a very frightening cult of personality that's been erected around the person of George W. Bush ever since 9/11 with the effective complicity of the rightwing media.

He goes on to list a couple more instances where otherwise bright right-wingers seemed to lose their senses and rush to dump blame wherever Bush isn't in a desperate attempt to keep their honored leader morally pristine. The whole protocol reminds me of something a British Financial Times reporter said in "Journeys With George". When asked what's surprised him on the campaign trail he said, paraphrased, that:

I am simply shocked at how much Americans don't like politics. You walk into a room at 4am filled with screaming supporters and you ask them why they back this man and they don't give you a single policy, a single program, a single anything other than: "I like him. I think he's a great man."

That's reflected itself in polling in a rather interesting way. For the past couple of years, Americans have banished the Bush administration into the nether regions of public opinion on most every issue -- they don't like him on health care, on Iraq, on education, on the economy, on the environment, on much of anything. The only thing they do like him on is terrorism. Terrorism, of course, is the only policy initiative they've no effective way to evaluate. You can see how schools are doing, hear what teachers think, track your premiums, look up the number of uninsured, watch the news out of Iraq, and generally make judgments on what you see. Terrorism offers no similar benchmarks, the idea that a lack of domestic attacks matters is to say that we were doing great fighting terrorism on 9/10/2001. So, in the absence of any data that could make up their minds, they tend to assume Bush is doing a superb job on the most weighty issue of the day, even as they judge him a failure in every other aspect.

It is a cult of personality. Bush has managed to create a heuristic of himself that in no way accords to his policy performance, and what he's proven is that a good heuristic is significantly stronger than all but the most undeniable dose of reality. Americans know what they think of Bush on most issues, but till now, those judgments haven't infiltrated their general opinion of the man. Maybe that's changing. If the CBS Poll is to be believed, though, it's not changing that much.

The Incredible Shrinking President

Bush has fallen below 40% in the latest ARG poll, tumbling all the way down to the mid-30's. As Garance says, that likely means we've reached a sort of tipping point, with most everyone but hard Republicans fed up and finished with our hapless chief executive. Was it Sheehan? Was it Iraq? My guess, actually, is that it's his vacation. If the guy can't be bothered to remain at work while his various initiatives explode around us, he doesn't deserve our support. For comparison, it's interesting to note that Clinton's second-term approval ratings never dropped below 40%. Not once.

None of this, of course, matters very much electorally. George W. Bush will not be running for President in 2008, and those who fight to succeed him will, to varying degrees, attempt to distance themselves from his legacy in order to carve out an independent image. What does matter is that Bush's plummeting approval ratings will force his successors to flee very far indeed, which may either leave to a true conservative insurgency (Calling Newt Gingrich) or a swing towards moderate Republicanism. Moreover, the worse George polls, the lamer he gets, and the less likely his legislative initiatives become. That's an important shift because, with everything on the foreign front failing, expect tax reform to get rolled out sooner or later.

Dubya and the F-You Boys

Posted by Nick Beaudrot

Morning Folks, it's Nick from Electoral Math again. I'm on pager duty this weekend, which means I'm stuck inside while the Blue Angels buzz Lake Washington, the high speed boats zip along at frightening speeds, and downtown becomes a zoo. Yes, it's time again for SEAFAIR, Seattle's annual summer expression of civic pride and beer consumption. But I'll either be spending it at home or tucked in the corner of a coffee shop that has free wireless.

Anyway, this has to have the GOP worried:

Bush has lost support most dramatically ... among men with a high school education or less.

In The Two Americas, Stan Greenberg calls the white portion of this demographic the "F-You Boys". "They think President George W. Bush is their guy," he writes. "Everything about the Bush presidency seems to resonate with these voters. These white men, without college degrees, many blue collar, married, under fifty years of age, mainly with young families, like the style, values, substance, and prejudices of todays Republican politics." Post-9/11, and during the early stages of the Iraq War, the F-You Boys had higher support for Bush than all groups except "The Faithful" -- voters who go to church once a week or more. But now that the "Bring 'em on" foreign policy isn't working, it looks like they've ready to give Bush himself the big F-You.

Polling Plame

Via the Stakeholder, ABC News has started polling on the Rove affair, and, well, it's no wonder that Bush is trying to move his Supreme Court justice up to tomorrow's news cycle. 

Skepticism about the administration's cooperation has jumped. As the initial investigation began in September 2003, nearly half the public, 47 percent, believed the White House was fully cooperating. That fell to 39 percent a few weeks later, and it's lower still, 25 percent, in this new ABC News poll.

This view is highly partisan; barely over a tenth of Democrats and just a quarter of independents think the White House is fully cooperating. That grows to 47 percent of Republicans — much higher, but still under half in the president's own party. And doubt about the administration's cooperation has grown as much among Republicans — by 22 points since September 2003 — as it has among others.

Those are bad numbers for an administration that refuses to comment.  But then, they're nothing compared to the numbers for the guy they're refusing to comment on:

75 percent say Rove should lose his job if the investigation finds he leaked classified information. That includes sizable majorities of Republicans, independents and Democrats alike — 71, 74 and 83 percent, respectively.

Ouch.  The question is whether the Supreme Court pick can successfully silence the drumbeat and quiet, or at least distract, the press, because with Bush accelerating the search process, it seems clear that that's the Administration's first line of defense.  And it may work, at least for awhile.  On the other hand, it may not work at all, and his nominee may coexist on front pages with ever-increasing stories about the scandal, weakening the Administration at a time it can't afford to be hurt.  That's what happened to Clinton when Whitewater dripped out while he was fighting for health care.  Bush is no Clinton, he's much better at shutting down scandal, and the Democrats are no Republicans, they're much worse at exploiting weaknes but, on the bright side, Plame is no land deal -- she was a CIA agent involved in counterproliferation activities, and she should arouse much more popular interest.

No More Polls?

As Kevin notes, there are now more cell phone subscribers than landline subscribers in the US. My girlfriend and I are a good example -- two cells, no landline. The question, then, is how long before this starts violently skewing poll results. Pollsters are legally barred from calling cell phones. Cell phone users, to some degree or another, make up a different demographic profile than the rest of the country (skewed young and economically mobile), and may have different political opinions than the land users. This got a lot of attention in 2004 but, in the end, the polls turned out almost exactly right (indeed, those who harp on the exit polling forget that nearly every poll in the country got the results within the margin of error). As the country switches to cell phones, though, that won't last forever. So when's the tipping point?

Zogby Weighs In

Bad news in the new Zogby poll, at least if your name is Bush. Not only was there no bounce in Bush's speech, but the red states have turned against him and 42% of voters say they'd want congress to begin impeachment proceedings if only they knew about the Downing Street Memos. That's not going to happen, of course, not with a Republican majority. But if the media was serious about pushing the story in the way they pressed Whitewater, it'd prove a real danger to the administration.

The very fact, however, that Zogby is polling questions of impeachment shows that the memos are gaining traction. This is the sort of thing the media loves to report: numbers, information, artifacts that make their stories look driven by news rather than editors. And 42%, for that matter, is a very high number. How many media organizations pick up on it and how hard they push it will say a lot about how constant media coverage is between administrations.

All Around the World, People Stop and They Say...

Survey USA has released a 50-state poll of Bush's approval ratings. So if you were wondering what, say, Hawaii thinks of the Commander-in-Chief, now you'll know. I'm not quite woken up yet, so serious number crunching will have to be done by others. Suffice to say that Bush only hits the magic 50% mark in 12 of the 50 states, even Texas isn't willing to give him the much-loved 51%.

Closer to (my) home, Arnold, too, is probably in trouble. Bush is right there in the high-30's with him, a dismal rating that screams target practice to any Dem hopeful willing to take a shot. If the Governator doesn't stop sticking right in his agenda, he's going to get tied to the President, and if he gets tied to the President, he's finished.

You Like Us, You Really Like Us!

Interesting numbers in this Survey USA poll of ever Senator in the country.  Of the top 10 most popular, a full eight are Democrats.  Of the 10 least popular, eight are Republicans.  If you restrict it to only Senators up for reelection next year, seven of the 10 most popular are Democrats (I'm counting Jeffords as a Democrat here) and, again, seven of the 10 least popular are Republicans.  Odd synchronicities, really. 

That's a party without many heroes.  More to the point, the most popular members of the Republican caucus are the non-Republicans: Collins, Snowe and McCain.  Democrats, conversely, have full-fledged partisans up there: Obama, Conrad, Leahy, Dorgan, Inouye, Rockefeller, and Reed.  If you compare the party leaders, Reid is 46th in popularity, with a 57% approval rating, while Frist is all the way down at #74, with an anemic 51% approval rating.   Rick Santorum and Ohio's Mark DeWine are the nation's least-liked incumbents up for reelection while Frank Lautenberg and John Cornyn are the most disliked senators period. 

The question, I guess, is whether we're seeing a crop of Republican senators that nobody likes, or the diffused affects of a Republican party Americans are losing patience with.  In any case, the numbers looks good, both for our senators facing reelection and the vulnerability of theirs.  Incidentally, Bill Frist is probably smart to retire this term.  In the last month his ratings have dropped 7%, from 58% to 51%.  Looks like Tennessee is tired of watching him run for president from the Senate floor.

King of the Playground

The new Washington Post poll bears so much bad news for Bush that you'd think he was the Republican Congress (thanks folks, I'll be here all week).  58% of those interviewed said Bush was focusing on partisan squabbles and issues that weren't important to them.  Much of that comes from Bush's obsessive focus on radical judicial nominees, an issue the average American follows with the same urgency he brings to tracking developments in cheese-grating technology.  More to the electoral point, 68% of independents said they disagreed with the president's priorities, meaning Bush needs to either really rework his public image or keep his head down during the midterm elections.  After all, presidents with a 52% disapproval rating should be neither seen nor heard, at least if they want their party to win any seats.

Bottom line here is that the judicial fight made Bush look small.  Folks didn't understand why it got so much attention, why it aroused so much passion, and how it could possibly be more important than health care.  Social Security privatization, after Bush admitted it wouldn't help the program's solvency, seemed similarly out of touch.  Worse, as all these issues enter the cable show ring and become fodder for midlevel partisan flacks to land blows on each other, the issues themselves begin to seem smaller, less worthy, unimportant.  They take on the playground scuffle character of the programs debating them and, eventually, that filters up to the president demanding that all these fights by the slide take place, making him look small and artisan as well.  Which he is.

Bad Timing

Writing in the LA Times, Michael Hitzlick makes a great point:

when corporations are shedding their responsibilities, it's the wrong time for the government to do so. When the president, who never seems to think about the difficulty most people face in holding on to what they do own, proposes to cut the Social Security benefits of the majority of workers by 30% or more, how does he account for abrogations of promises made by companies such as United? Some workers spent their careers at the airline working toward pensions they were told would be worth $100,000 a year or more. Instead, they'll receive $45,000 or less.

As he argues, the most effective rejoinder to Bush's plan has been the time period in which he proposed it. To tell workers to trust the stock market post-Enron, to take a benefits cut post-United, and to accept transition costs post-deficit has been nonsensical. Bush's determination to push his plan through while every single real world indicator rips open its flaws has been impressive but, thankfully, it's been futile.

Indeed, Bush is lucky he didn't try this in his first term because the initiative is turning him into his father. The latest ARG poll has him at 51% disapproval, 43% approval, and all because of economic issues. 59% think the econom'ys getting worse (19% think better), 57% disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy, and 64% rate the current economy at bad, very bad, or terrible. And in the middle of it all, there's George Bush instructing America to give up their guaranteed government pensions for a lower sum that may, if the stock market cooperates, grow. Sounds to me like someone needs a terror alert...

Polls

Via Atrios, it looks like Arnold ain't doing so well:

Swept into office in an unprecedented recall election in 2003, the Republican's approval rating fell to 43 percent from 59 percent in January, according to a Survey and Policy Research Institute poll released on Thursday.

That's a bad approval rating for a Republican in a Democratic state, and it's coming at a bad time for Arnold. The past few weeks have seen challengers enter the race for governor, public employees mount an almost-armed uprising against him, and forced him to cave to the pressure and eliminate "pension reform" from the agenda. Arnold looks -- dare I say it? -- vulnerable.

Speaking of polls, the WSJ/NBC released one (warning: PDF) that asked whether the Democrats should help Bush pass his proposals in bipartisan fashion or oppose the right to keep them from going too far. The answer? Oppose the right, 63%-30%.

Winning Without Gains

So back to the Democracy Corps poll (no Josh Marshall-esque, never-ending cliffhangers here!). Let me go through the relevant results and then get to thoughts. The Republican party rates about 4% higher than we do, while Bill Clinton rates a smidge higher than the Republican party and George W clocks in at .4% above him (yes, I know we're leaving statistical significance here). Weirdly, when asked who they'll vote for in the 06 midterms, a Democrat or a Republican, respondents chose the good guys over the not-so-good, 46%-45%. When thinking about the presidential, Hillary beats Jeb, 50%-47%, and the hypothetical Bill v. George match-up gives Clinton the easy edge, 51%-46%.

When asked what direction the country should be heading in, Bush's or something totally different, totally different won effortlessly, 52%-45%. From there we go to comparative polls, the graphs of which I posted here. They show, basically, that the Democrats win on specific domestic issues, but Republicans win on general attributes ("know what they stand for", etc). Foreign policy wasn't a major focus of the poll.

So what we've got is a party whose individuals do just fine (remember kids, we've won the popular vote in three of the last four presidentials, and we would've made congressional gains in 2004 save for a bout of illegal redistricting in Texas) but the party itself, as a standalone structure, may well be more hurt than help to those carrying its flag. That is, of course, a problem. In some ways it returns to the argument I was having with Matt a few days ago. Democrats, right now, are doing an excellent job of foiling Bush's legislative strategy and thus protecting Americans from privatization. But that success is not conferring benefits on the party itself. Maybe that's just because few Americans are tuned in, and when we run against privatization in 2006 we'll see the gains. In fact, I'd bet there's an element of that in the mix. But when total success is doing you no good whatsoever, you know there's a problem.

So what's the answer? Blah blah party-building blah blah blah. But in the specific, we really have to be more overt about tying our opposition to our party, which is to say embracing what we oppose and what we support as characteristics of Democrats rather than the battle lines of a particular congressional battle. That's why we need some general Democratic media representatives like Dean really pounding away at the connection between this fight and the Democratic/Republican philosophies. Beyond that, that's why we really need to increase the coherence between the Democratic thinkers (like the national security experts at Democracy Arsenal, which has now been recommended by everyone but me) and ordinary Democrats. Beyond that, it's back to Bill Bradley's pleas to build a stable pyramid of our own and create an institution where our party is stronger than its candidates.

Yeah, I know, this is all standard. And I hate to be a Cassandra about all this, but I fear we're getting so excited about defeating Bush's Social Security plan that we're not noticing how little good it's doing our party. What we've got, thus far, is just a good first step. We've put the President on the defensive and found a ripe issue for the election. But you know what? We've had good first steps before. It's all part of our inverted pyramid: rather than building a solid foundation for the next election, we just hope that whatever's going on at the moment will be enough to take down the right. It rarely is. What's going on at the moment has to also boost us. Gingrich understood that, and used the defeat of health care as a starting point to nationalize and sell a Republican message about limited government and establishment hubris. We're being presented with the same opportunity, and we need to approach it with the same vision. This poll should be plenty of evidence for that.

Apologies for Ruining Your Morning

The new Democracy Corps memo just popped into my inbox and, despite the spin, it strikes me as bad news. It's not that Republicans are doing well so much as Democrats are doing really, really badly. And that's not individual Democrats -- Hillary easily beats Jeb (and 11% of Republicans cross lines for her) and Bill stomps all over George. But the party's image stinks. It's past midnight and I lack the energy to work up a full analysis now, but I'll leave you with these two graphs to noodle over; my comments to follow in the morning:

National Security Numbers

Brad and Matt are arguing over what the poll numbers mean for Democratic chances to pull even on national security. As Brad notices, Americans disapprove of the president's foreign policy, 44%-48%. But that's basically the same result as the poll got before election day, which was 45%-49%. More importantly, these same voters are loving Bush on terrorism, 61%-33%. And while these numbers are a tad contradictory, but I wouldn't read too much into that. They don't really reflect how much voters like Bush's foreign policy. They're more about how capable voters judge Bush on foreign policy. It's a heuristics thing. The president has gone to great lengths to paint himself a rough, tough, brash, and simple cowboy. Foreign policy, which evokes images of subtle diplomatic maneuvering and sly manipulation of international bodies, is antithetical to the Bush image. So he gets bad marks on that because poll respondents, who really have no idea how well our foreign policy is working, or even how to judge how well our foreign policy is working, figure Bush is probably mucking it up.

Terrorism, on the other hand, fits perfectly with his image. After all, if the judgment on foreign policy isn't particularly logical, how much less coherent is the verdict on terrorism? What exactly is Bush doing about terrorism that voters like so much? In fact, what is Bush doing about terrorism at all? This is an under-the-radar fight and very, very few of us have any accurate idea about how it's progressing. So here too voters aren't judging Bush's policy on terrorism, but his persona on it. As a media-created entity, Bush is supremely capable to handle terrorism, indeed, it's the only thing he's able to take on. Voters stilldon't like his Iraq policy, economic policy, or foreign policy, but so long as he seems tough enough to personally punch bin-Laden in the face, he's going to get high marks on terrorism. And Democrats aren't going to make gains by advocating this or that plan, but by creating an image of toughness, something I'm convinced can only be done by a presidential candidate. Our great mistake with Kerry was to forget that the guy did not come off like his resume, and thus he did nothing to make us seem tougher on terrorism. Nominating someone like Clark would have. In any case, we're going to be trailing on that issue until we have an opportunity to recreate our image, which probably means the next terrorist attack or presidential campaign, whichever comes first.

See also my earlier post on the CBS/NYT poll.

Silly Santorum -- Social Security is for Democrats!

Poor Rick, he can't even hide on his own website. Screenshot below the jump, look at the poll:

Loads O' Polling

To say Bush's priorities aren't polling well would be to understate the remarkable reverse-Midas touch he's been demonstrating. I'm convinced that every time he utters the words "Social Security", Americans decide it's 2% less important than it was before they heard him. I't's the boomerang of his own tactics. By consciously making himself such a polarizing figure, everything he does or wants to do is viewed as partisan warfare. As such, voters aren't evaluating his case for Social Security privatization but instead categorizing it as another left-right battle and, all things considered, they'd rather not see their pension plan made into a political football. And so this is what we've come to -- Republican manipulation of objective reporting has managed to delegitimize any and every domestic priority as just another handful of mashed potatoes in the ongoing partisan foodfight, and the more politicians speak about crises, the less Americans believe there actually is one. Ranking their domestic priorities, Americans give jobs an effortless lead with 32%, health care an easy second with 29%, and Social Security trails in the background with a paltry 19%. This despite the fact that Americans don't think Social Security will be able to pay out their benefits (49%-34%). But even with their pessimism, they'd prefer the Democratic party handled the issue, 48%-31%. Personal accounts are judged a bad idea, 51% to 43%, which is a perfect switch from four years ago, when they were thought a good plan 51% to 45%.

Elsewhere in the polls, 53% of Americans favor either gay marriage or civil unions, while 42% oppose legal recognition. 75% support some level of abortion rights, and they favor the Democratic party on choice, 45%-35%. Not only that, but they favor the Democratic party on gays, 44%-36%. The tax cuts aren't particularly popular with 43% hoping they become permanent and 40% hoping they expire. 90%(!) think the budget deficit is "very" or "somewhat" serious, and only 10% think Bush's new budget will make it smaller. 95% are "very" or "somewhat" concerned about health care, 59% think the system needs "fundamental" changes, and 29% think we need to rebuild it from scratch.

The whole poll -- and it's huge -- is fascinating, and you can download it here. In sum, though, bad news for Bush. Where Americans agree with him, they don't want him doing anything about it. Where they disagree with him, they don't want him touching anything. They trust neither his instincts nor competence, and despite feeling that the country faces some real problems, the ones they're really scared of aren't the ones Bush is addressing. Moreover, Bush has actually screwed himself -- the deficit he's created has not only destroyed support for costly Social Security reform (when voters are told privatization busts the deficit, the already minority supports becomes microscopic) but has eroded support for cementing the tax cuts. That his own fiscal profligacy may deny him his policy legacies is fine and fitting. It's the revenge of the reality-based community.

Vote George

This is a very, very stupid poll. If George Washington came back from the dead and tried to capture the presidency, I'd vote for Bush as well! Why? Because he knows who Osama bin Laden is. And he has likely heard of the internet, not to mention Medicare. And his context isn't centuries old.

The poll's only interesting feature was that Bush won among Republicans and Washington won among Democrats and Independents, proving that we've reached the level of polarization needed to make an Encino Man candidacy viable.