Romney, Social Conservatives, and the Ocean ad

July 18, 2007 – 10:28 am

Earlier in the week, Mitt Romney released his "Ocean" ad. Jonathan Martin, typically exuberant in his praise of Romney, had this to say:

Second, it seems as though this ad is yet more evidence of Romney trying to "close the deal" with social conservatives.  The campaign increasingly views Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani as their main threats and wants to get to their right.  So this is part and parcel of the "three-legged stool" message in which Mitt emphasizes the need for a candidate who is economically, fiscally and socially conservative.

I don’t buy this "close the deal" language. For the last several weeks, Romney has been attacked by social conservative leaders for making money off the peddling of porn. Romney is not trying to "close the deal." He is asking for a phone call or coffee to introduce himself. Let’s actually talk about facts here. A recent AP-Ipsos poll found:

None of the top candidates has a clear lead among Christian evangelicals, a critical part of the GOP base that has had considerable sway in past Republican primaries. Giuliani, a thrice-married backer of abortion rights and gay rights, had 20 percent support — roughly even with Thompson and McCain who have one divorce each in their pasts. Romney, a Mormon who has been married for three decades, was in the single digits.

The hope for Romney is that this is a name-id problem, not a substance problem. I don’t think it is for two reasons. Thompson’s name ID is consistently lower than Romney’s but Thompson is consistently beating Romney in these groups.  People know things about Mitt Romney and don’t like him because of it. Any review of his polling numbers will tell you that.

Now, Justin Hart, who is on Romney’s Faith and Values Steering Committee addresses the ad, and the porn dustup-like this:

Instead, I knew something that Gary didn’t… Governor Romney is the only major candidate willing to publically take action on this issue. I also knew that behind the scenes the Romney camp was going to spend actual dollars addressing this issue with a new TV ad. … In my opinion, Romney’s record shows that he could very well effect that change to happen. The fact that he included a serious anti-pornography group on his Faith and Values committee suggests this as well.

His answer seems to be "at least Romney is talking about my issue." Which is an important point. I should note that Justin is misrepresenting Romney here.  Romney did not include an "anti-pornography group" so much as a person. In fact the release clearly states that the groups are not endorsing, only the individuals. Justin, whose email address is ldsblogger@…..com was a Romney supporter long before he was working at the Lighted Candle Society. If Romney’s "actions" are (1) a misrepresentation, (2) meaningless, and (3) merely words, than there is a real question. After all, isn’t the concern for him that it is all just words, smoke and mirrors? Liz Mair captured this point:

Of course, that’s one of the criticisms I have of Romney and his entire campaign anyway. It’s all about figuring out what makes you look ideal to the largest number of diligent voters and then saying it, no matter how asinine, meaningless, or factually incorrect it is. The image, and getting votes, is literally 100% of what matters. At this stage in the game, nothing else seems to count at all. Real commitment to concrete, discernible principles or ideas certainly takes a back step to what’s popular with "The Base"

Romney’s campaign is that the same strategies that sell canned tomatoes (new packaging, smiling faces, perfect hair, etc.) will work for candidates. We shall see. Our primary electorate might just fall for it, but I can’t see how his guy gets through the general election.

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More than one kind of swing voter

July 11, 2007 – 2:39 pm

After writing about Virginia and West Virginia polling yesterday, I got thinking about one of the discussions that is not taking place on the internet right now. The question is pretty simple: who will be the swing voters of 2008? Several possible answers. But let me start with some facts, provided by Democrats:

In 2000, Gore lost white working class (defined as whites with less than a four year college degree) voters by 17 points; this year, Kerry lost them by 23 points, a swing of 6 points against the Democrats. In contrast, Gore lost college-educated whites by 9 points and Kerry lost them by 10 points–not much change.

Therefore, white working class voters were responsible for almost all of Bush’s increased margin among whites as a whole (which went from 12 to 17 points). And Bush’s increased margin among whites, of course, was primarily responsible for his re-election.

Now, if I were to imagine a state that was "white working class" writ-large, I would probably be talking about places like West Virginia. If GOP margins fall in this subgroup from 2004 levels, then we need to make up the difference in the suburbs.

So let’s speculate for a second why the white working class voters — Reagan Democrats and their children — would be voting GOP. There are probably two answers: security and cultural issues.  Economic issues aren’t like to be among them. These are natural Democratic voters on economic issues and Republicans on other issues. Things like gay marriage, abortion-on-demand, hanging out with hollywood, etc. allow GOPers to create real cultural distance between the liberal elite (latte-drinking, etc.) of the Democratic party and this group of swing voters. And it probably isn’t so much any one issue as the cultural distance in general.

Now, what’s going to happen to these voters in this election? Bill Clinton is going to go in and say, "Did 8 years of Bush really work for you? Try coming home to the Democratic Party and give me and Hillary a chance. Remember how good you had it in the 90s? We can do that again." That is going to be a compelling message to significant numbers. Oh yeah, and Iraq probably isn’t helping us. (Incidentally, I don’t think that Obama could do this credibly, for a bunch of reasons)

So the strategic problem for the GOP is going to be how to stop the bleeding there and reach out to the suburban voters. Each of our candidates is going to have a different general election strategy for keeping working class voters. Rudy Giuliani’s 9/11 narrative, the general persona, and his working class roots will help. Mitt Romney’s universal healthcare will help, although I wonder if the zillionnaire thing plus his religion will get in the way. I can see Thompson doing well with these voters.

Then we are going to need a strategy to get the suburbs back.

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Red states going blue?

July 9, 2007 – 12:57 pm

I missed these because I was in Florida at the Young Republican convention. Two stories about the GOP in light red states.

First, Marc Ambinder references an old poll that has Hillary up substantially in West Virginia:

A survey of 400 likely voters completed in May by the political consulting firm of Fabrizio, McLaughlin and Associates finds that if the election were held now 46 percent would be more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate, 24 percent for the Republican candidate while 29 percent are unsure.

…

The research also shows that if the election were held now Clinton would carry West Virginia in a head to head match-up with McCain or Giuliani. Clinton beats McCain 41 percent to 34 percent with 25 percent undecided and beats Giuliani 42 percent to 36 percent with 22 percent undecided.

I knocked on a bunch of doors in Martinsburg, WV in 2004. The Bush appeal in WV was very simple: God, guns, and abortion. Voters told me that they supported George W. Bush because, for example, "He’s a good man and a good Christian." I have trouble seeing that same kind of feeling in West Virginia for any of the leading GOP candidates except, maybe, Fred Thompson.

On Saturday, WaPo ran a story about Virginia:

Slightly more than half of Virginia residents said they have an unfavorable view of the national Republican Party, including 60 percent of independents, according to the poll.

By comparison, 55 percent of residents, including half of independents, said they have a favorable impression of national Democrats.

These are bad, bad news for the GOP.

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The GOP and ideology: Can’t win elections without moderates

July 5, 2007 – 8:51 am

So, Pollster.com , from Survey USA, has some interesting data about the Libby Sentence Commutation. I am not actually interested at all in writing about the results of the poll regarding Libby. (although it was fascinating how disconnected conservative voters are from the conservative chattering classes) I’ve presented the partisan and ideological alignment in the chart below The size of each box is proportional to the percentage of the population.

Republican Independent Democrat  
Conservative Moderate Liberal  


I am interested in the connection between party and ideology that we get from the underlying data. Some observations:

  • The GOP and conservatives are, basically, the same with Republicans being 30% and conservatives are 29%
  • Liberals are, however, only half the self-identifying Democrats with self-IDing Dems being 40%, while liberals only 19%
  • In other words, 50% or so of self-identified moderates feel comfortable identifying as Democrats.
  • In other words, almost no moderates are identifying as Republicans.

The GOP is not appealing to moderates at this moment while half of self-identified Democrats are moderates. That should scare us.

Now, some caveats. These labels describe self-identification quite a long ways from an election and are a reaction to Bush. Once the frame shifts so that Bush will, hopefully, not define Republicans.

But still. This is bad

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Elephant in the mirror

June 28, 2007 – 7:09 am

Yesterday, Marc Ambinder reported about a poll taken by Fabrizio McLaughlin. Liz Mair had some of the top-line numbers. The Hill and the Boston Globe wrote a little about it, but frankly, I think that they missed the real stories in here. I got my hands on the presentation, and I thought I would write a little about it. It shows some very striking things about the GOP. So, some conclusions.

First, the GOP is getting older. Somewhat dramatically older. This is not good news. We already know that we are struggling with younger voters. These results, at the right, confirm this and point out just how old our base is shifting. This probably represents several things including, aging of the people involved in the conservative backlash to the 60s, losing the younger generation due to the war, and the dying, frankly, of the New Dealers. It also suggests that it could become increasingly difficult for the GOP to enact real entitlement reform. Related to this last point, on of the points that the MSM did notice is that 51% supported some sort of universal health care. (the specific form was not clearly defined). In addition, this found that the GOP was split 52%-44% on private accounts in social security, with the 52% for. Hardly a base to advance from on an issue that is unlikely to split Democrats.

Second, to Republicans, terrorism was seen as the unifying issue, not taxes or small government. 36% thought that terrorism or Iraq were "the issue that best defines the Republican party today." Next was immigration at 9%, abortion at 8%, national defense and taxes at 7% each, and the economy at 6%. That’s a pretty steep drop. It is also interesting that only 13% identify economic issues.

And that leads to the third observation. Whereas in 1997, somewhere between 45 and 53% of the base was understood by Fabrizio as economic conservatives or driven by economic concerns, that has fallen to 16% divided equally into two groups, "Free Marketers" and "Heartland Republicans," which loosely maps onto a group that is highly suspicious of government and a group that is much less suspicious of government. (one is more worried about tax rates, the other about deficits. One is very enthusiastic about strong entitlement reforms, the other is very supportive of the current social security model and universal healthcare)

Debates in the party are often framed as economic conservatives versus social conservatives. This poll identifies about 25% as "Moralists", who would be clearly identified as social conservatives. However, with only 16% of the base being primarily economic conservatives, this seems like an overly simplistic perspective. Another 59% of self-identifying Republicans are left including 28% between varieties of defense conservatives, about 13% split between people like soccer moms and retirees, and 14% for a group that would be stereotypically gun-owning men suspicious of government and immigrants. ("Dennis Miller" Republicans, but perhaps somewhat Buchananite?)

I suspect that these various subgroups vote at different rates in primaries, so you probably cannot take this as a map of the primary electorate.

In addition, Rudy Giuliani leads in this poll with 30% and among every subgroup. McCain is second in 4 of the 7 subgroups, while Fred Thompson is second in the remainder. (this poll was taken before the main dust-up on immigration, so take with salt)

All in all this is interesting and a little scary, I think. Polls have indicated that the GOP is no longer viewed as the fiscally conservative party. Whatever underlying phenomenon that it, this might be represented by the fact that only 16% are driven by economic issues. It seems to me that the party needs to work very hard on re-establishing its credibility on these issues.

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Ask an honest question?

June 26, 2007 – 7:29 pm

Get an honest answer:

"When we walked through the series of measures that are being proposed, we got 77 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of Democrats, and 70 percent of independents supporting it," says Goeas (pronounced GO-as). "There’s not a piece of research I’ve seen that, if you explain each one of those pieces, you don’t get a majority saying they approve it." Several issues are at play, Goeas says.

Shocking. Confirming all the evidence, Republicans support immigration reform.
So, instead of leading, the naysayers are not bothering to educate their constituents…

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The 2008 congressional environment

June 21, 2007 – 3:09 pm

Lots of ink has been spilled over how hard the 2008 environment is going to be for Republicans. This mostly focuses on Bush and Iraq. While most of this is correct, I wonder how overwhelming this will be. Gallup underscores the argument:

The percentage of Americans with a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress is at 14%, the lowest in Gallup’s history of this measure – and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year’s Confidence in Institutions survey. It is also one of the lowest confidence ratings for any institution tested over the last three decades.

Now, there have been discussions for a while about why the numbers for Congress have been falling. The most recent collapse appears to be due to the loss of faith in their own leaders by the left, especially over Iraq Other people are alleging that the immigration issue is the problem, but that appears to be an ideological position, not one supported by the data.

What is clear is that there will be a strong anti-Washington sentiment. This clearly won’t help the GOP in maintaining the White House. It won’t help in the Senate either. Just look at which seats are up. Looking locally, it might help in the House, however. This was the argument made by Tom Cole to a bunch of conservative bloggers at the NRCC on Tuesday.

Now, what to make of this? One scenario is that the election will nationalize. This would be a 2004, 1980, or 1952 model. If that is the case, it is likely to be a very bad year for Washington. However, another model in 1992 where there is a disconnect and a malaise. Then, Ross Perot was capable of expressing that malaise. I don’t see any candidates or movements on the horizon that are capable of speaking to the anger and frustrations of the people.  But the entrance of Nader expresses some of the distaste on the far-left, while the more

In any case, look for candidates of all sorts to push anti-Washington agendas. That is why Mitt Romney says, "I can’t wait to get my hands on Washington." (Never mind that his campaign is stuffed to the gills with lobbyists. I know what they would do if they got their hands on Washington) And why Thompson says, "After eight years in Washington, I longed for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood."

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Bloomberg effect

June 20, 2007 – 1:35 pm

Pollster.com has the results of a 16-state survey of 2-way and 3-way matchups between Giulaini, Clinton, and Bloomberg. First, the data:


 3-way 2-way Bloomberg Effect
State Giuliani Clinton Bloomberg Giuliani Clinton From G
 From H
Alabama 46 39 11 53 41 -7 -2
California 40 45 10 44 49 -4 -4
Iowa 37 42 11 41 47 -4 -5
Kansas 47 36 8 53 41 -6 -5
Kentucky 42 41 10 47 44 -5 -3
Massachusetts 37 47 9 42 52 -5 -5
Minnesota 37 48 7 41 50 -4 -2
Missouri 39 44 10 47 46 -8 -2
New Mexico 41 45 8 44 50 -3 -5
New York 32 49 15 38 56 -6 -7
Ohio 41 47 8 46 49 -5 -2
Oregon 38 44 11 44 48 -6 -4
Texas 48 34 10 54 37 -6 -3
Virginia 45 40 9 48 44 -3 -4
Washington 41 42 11 47 44 -6 -2
Wisconsin 40 44 10 46 47 -6 -3


Several things to notice. First, the differences created by a Bloomberg candidacy are real. While there is plenty to be suspicious of, here are some thoughts:

  1. Even without Bloomberg, Giuliani loses nearly every swing state. Giuliani would win only Missouri and Washington. Note that WV, CO, NV, AZ, PA, MI, and FL are not included in this sample.
  2. Bloomberg seems to take his votes from both sides, but somewhat more from the GOP. However, in the swing states, the damage seems to be almost 2-1 against the GOP. However, these results are almost all within the margin of error.
  3. It is going to take more data to figure this out.

But this is not good for the GOP with or without Bloomberg

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General election matchups

June 19, 2007 – 3:14 pm

I have been interested in the whole "electability" question and general election matchups. I am fascinated by the numbers from the new Cook/RT poll.

  Clinton Obama 
  All GOP Ind All GOP Ind
Giuliani 0 +74 +4 0 +67 +7
Thompson 0 +78 +1 -7 +45 -13
Romney -7 +71 -8 -13 +46 -16

Several thoughts:

  1. Why does Giuliani do so much better among GOP voters against Obama? What the hell is going on here? Not to mention independents. Is this just name ID? What about Obama’s name ID?
  2. It is likely that Romney’s numbers will move up among independents because he will talk about health care and the like. After all, he has made clear that he intends to run on that and a soft-sell on Iraq.
  3. But, what is going on that Thompson’s margins among GOP voters are so much higher than Romney’s against Clinton?

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Junk poll from Datamar: Quality software since 1981

May 24, 2007 – 6:42 pm

Datamar has a poll of the 2008 GOP Florida primary. Race42008’s HeavyM says, "who in the world is DataMar?"

Well, from their website:

Providing quality software solutions since 1981
      
Surveys & Data Intelligence Strategies

Datamar Modular Accounting Solutions 

Sweet! I needed an … accounting system? For my polls. Right….

In addition, they used auto-dials, never particularly reassuring. So, all in all, probably a step below Zogby, if such a thing exists. So, a word of advice: don’t quote DataMar. Especially when it is a real outlier from other Florida polls.

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