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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: July 2006

Ranking Values – How Much Consistency?

by Scott Winship
A central line of social psychological research maintains that people have stable rank-ordered values, each of which inform behavior across diverse settings. On the other hand, political behavioral theory offers a number of reasons why voting might not be a simple matter of consulting one’s ordered values. Values may be in conflict, and choosing to prioritize one may come at the expense of others. Another possible complication is that voters may be indifferent, thus unable to rank two competing values. Or value rankings may be situational. Finally, the possibility that value ordering may be manipulable by political elites is highlighted by the current popularity of “framing”.
In his new paper, “Value Choices and American Public Opinion” (American Journal of Political Science 50(3), William G. Jacoby examines the question of how values are ordered. The survey Jacoby used first defined four values for respondents: liberty, equality, economic security, and social order. It then asked respondents to rank pairs of these four values presented one at a time so that each value was evaluated against each other value.
Jacoby found that economic security was ranked highest, followed by liberty, equality, and social order at the bottom. When he considered how many people produce a clearly ranked set of values from the pair comparisons (as opposed to a set of inconsistent choices), he found that four in five adults have a clear ordering. And when he looked at sets of three values, between 90 and 94 percent of adults ordered them consistently.
These figures overstate how many people truly have consistently ranked value preferences however. Some people who end up with ordered rankings really have non-ordered ones but for one or more pair comparisons, they couldn’t prioritize the two values and essentially chose one randomly. If people who are truly ambivalent or indifferent between a pair of values flip a coin when stating a preference, then the one-fifth of adults whose responses were inconsistently ranked would translate into one-third of adults actually having non-ordered preferences.
Another interesting finding is that adults with less education, political knowledge, and income are more likely to order the four values inconsistently. Jacoby persuasively argues that this is evidence that inconsistent rankings are primarily due to indifference arising from a lack of political information and, more generally, education and time.
Finally, Jacoby provides a creative test of whether framing affects policy preferences. If framing is effective, it should be the case that the influence of some values on support for policies increases while the influence of other values decreases under alternative frames. In contrast, Jacoby finds that the effects of liberty, equality, and economic security on support for government spending are statistically the same regardless of whether spending is framed as being for the poor, for minorities, or for the general public. Jacoby doesn’t seem to appreciate, however, that values could be operating through partisanship, which is also included in the models and which does have different effects depending on the framing.
Jacoby’s study shows that for most adults, there is a clear ordering of values. Apparently, choosing between competing or conflicting values is not a problem for most people in forming policy preferences. Americans value economic security above liberty, liberty above equality, and all three above social order. Where values are not clearly ordered, it is mainly due to low education levels. Those who are less educated consider questions of value ordering less than well-educated adults do, perhaps because they have less time, interest, or ability to do so. Unfortunately, Jacoby didn’t look at whether the policy positions of the least educated reveal similar indifference and whether the positions of the most educated are consistent. This question is crucial to interpreting survey responses on preferences for spending, tax cuts, deficit reduction, and other policies.
Update: Here’s a link to the paper.


Dems’ Game Plan Taking Shape

Ari Berman’s article in The Nation, “Where’s the Plan Democrats?” should be of interest to anyone involved in Democratic politics. Berman assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the Dems’ readiness for the November elections, and explains what the DNC, DSCC and DCCC are doing to get the vote out for ’06 and beyond. He sees a stronger-than-usual GOP GOTV effort, but credits the Dems with significant improvement in fund-raising and mobilizing key constituencies. Berman also discusses Howard Dean’s emphasis on longer-term strategy, compared with the focus on November ’06 advocated by Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel.


GOP ’06 Strategy Hinges on Iraq, Terrorism

The GOP appears to be anchoring its ’06 campaign hopes on stigmatizing Democratic candidates as weak on Iraq and terrorism, according to L.A. Times reporters Doyle McManus and Peter Wallsten.
GOP leaders, including President Bush and Rep. John Boehner this week accused Democrats of “defeatism,” advocating “special priviledges for terorrists” and wanting to “wave the white flag of surrender.” But blaming the Democrats may be a very tough sell for the GOP, and their timing is not the best, as the authors explain:

The environment is not entirely hospitable. A car bomb killed scores of people in a busy Baghdad market Saturday, a day after the Army announced that American soldiers were accused of raping an Iraqi woman and then killing her and three family members. Polls find most voters say they want to see Democrats take control of Congress this fall.

Democrats will likely be ready for the GOP to do its worst. Responding to Boehner’s accusing the Dems of being soft on al-Qaeda, Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Minorty Leader Nancy Pelosi replied:

Republicans are resorting to their tired tactics of distort, distract and divide. Instead of actually doing something to protect our nation, such as implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations or hiring more border control agents, they are doing what that always do: trying to incite fear and attack Democrats. It won’t work.

A good strong reply, and it is likely that other Dem leaders will not hesitate to point out the Administration’s failure to secure America’s ports and the weak response to disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as an indication of the Administration’s preparedness for possible terrorist acts. As the authors point out, races in the House, where the Dems are more likely to win a majority, will be less likely than the Senate to turn on foreign policy issues.


GOP ’06 Strategy Hinges on Iraq, Terrorism

The GOP appears to be anchoring its ’06 campaign hopes on stigmatizing Democratic candidates as weak on Iraq and terrorism, according to L.A. Times reporters Doyle McManus and Peter Wallsten.
GOP leaders, including President Bush and Rep. John Boehner this week accused Democrats of “defeatism,” advocating “special priviledges for terorrists” and wanting to “wave the white flag of surrender.” But blaming the Democrats may be a very tough sell for the GOP, and their timing is not the best, as the authors explain:

The environment is not entirely hospitable. A car bomb killed scores of people in a busy Baghdad market Saturday, a day after the Army announced that American soldiers were accused of raping an Iraqi woman and then killing her and three family members. Polls find most voters say they want to see Democrats take control of Congress this fall.

Democrats will likely be ready for the GOP to do its worst. Responding to Boehner’s accusing the Dems of being soft on al-Qaeda, Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Minorty Leader Nancy Pelosi replied:

Republicans are resorting to their tired tactics of distort, distract and divide. Instead of actually doing something to protect our nation, such as implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations or hiring more border control agents, they are doing what that always do: trying to incite fear and attack Democrats. It won’t work.

A good strong reply, and it is likely that other Dem leaders will not hesitate to point out the Administration’s failure to secure America’s ports and the weak response to disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as an indication of the Administration’s preparedness for possible terrorist acts. As the authors point out, races in the House, where the Dems are more likely to win a majority, will be less likely than the Senate to turn on foreign policy issues.


More GOP Chutzpah

This headline from today’s Washington Post says it all: “GOP Seeks Advantage In Ruling On Trials.” In other words, now that the Supreme Court has denied that George W. Bush has virtually monarchical powers to deal with terrorist suspects as he sees fit, Republicans want to suggest that any Democrats who recommends legislation complying with the decision is a terrorist-lover. Here’s a sample of what we’re going to hear real soon:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi‘s comment Thursday that the court decision “affirms the American ideal that all are entitled to the basic guarantees of our justice system.” That statement, Boehner said, amounted to Pelosi’s advocating “special privileges for terrorists.”

You know what this line of “reasoning” reminds me of? Many years ago I happened to be in one of those states with no limitations on campaigning for judicial positions, and to my horror, I watched a TV ad where some craggy old buzzard cast a steely eye at the camera and said: “Elect me to the bench, and I’ll always rule against the criminals. I’ll be the hangin’ judge.”Now you don’t need a law degree to understand that the reason we have safeguards and procedures for criminal proceedings is that you don’t know who the criminal is until after the trial. Same goes for terrorist suspects. If some sort of evidence-based system for figuring out who terrorists actually are before you punish them is a “special privilege,” then I’m all for it, and you should be, too.