RFK Jr. and MTG are using the same dismissive term for major-party differences. I took at look at this phenomenon at New York:
Partisan polarization has been steadily growing in the U.S. since roughly the 1960s. Ironically, during this time, the complaint that the two parties are actually too alike has become increasingly prevalent. For years, right-wing Republicans have called people in the GOP who donât share their exact degree of ideological extremism RINOs, or âRepublicans in name only,â suggesting theyâre basically Democrats. Left-wing Democrats occasionally echo these epithets by calling (relative) moderates âDINOs,â âConservaDems,â or â back when maximum resistance to George W. Bush was de rigueur â âVichy Democrats.â
Today the term âUnipartyâ has come to denote the idea that Democrats and Republicans are actually working for the same evil Establishment enterprise, their loudly proclaimed differences being a mere sham. This contention was the culmination of a five-page letter Marjorie Taylor Greene recently sent her Republican colleagues calling for House Speaker Mike Johnsonâs removal, unless he changes his ways instantly. She wrote:
“With so much at stake for our future and the future of our children, I will not tolerate this type of ‘leadership.’ This has been a complete and total surrender to, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democratsâ agenda that has angered our Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority âŚ
“If these actions by the leaders of our conference continue, then we are not a Republican party â we are a Uniparty that is hell-bent on remaining on the path of self-inflicted destruction.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also leaned heavily into the Uniparty idea in his recent speech introducing running-mate Nicole Shanahan:
“Our independent run for the presidency is finally going to bring down the Democrat and Republican duopoly that gave us ruinous debt, chronic disease, endless wars, lockdowns, mandates, agency capture, and censorship. This is the same Trump/Biden Uniparty that has captured and appropriated our democracy and turned it over to Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, and their other corporate donors. Nicole Shanahan will help me rally support for our revolution against Uniparty rule from both ends of the traditional Right vs. Left political spectrum.”
The Uniparty claim is ridiculous, of course, as FiveThirtyEightâs Geoffrey Skelley demonstrates:
“[O]ur current political moment is arguably farther away from having anything resembling a uniparty than at any other time in modern U.S. history. Based on their voting records, Democratic and Republican members of Congress have become increasingly polarized, and both the more moderate and more conservative wings of the congressional GOP have moved to the right at similar rates. Meanwhile, polling suggests that Americans now are more likely to view the parties as distinct from one another than in the past, an indication that the public broadly doesnât see a uniparty in Washington. Although there are areas where the parties are less divided, the broader uniparty claim is at odds with our highly polarized and divided political era.”
Kennedyâs subscription to the Uniparty notion is understandable on two points. The first is that his candidacy is vastly more likely to tilt the 2024 presidential campaign in the direction of one of the two major-party candidates (likely Donald Trump, according to most of the polling) than to actually succeed in winning the presidency. Maintaining that it really doesnât matter whether itâs Biden or Trump running the country is essential to maintaining RFKâs appeal as November approaches and the futility of his bid becomes clearer. Second, Kennedyâs pervasive conspiracy-theory approach to contemporary life lends itself to the argument that the apparent gulf between the two major parties is a ruse disguising a sinister common purpose.
MTGâs Uniparty contention also reflects dual motives. In part she is simply echoing Trumpâs weird but useful contention that heâs an âoutsiderâ battling a Deep-State Establishment that secretly controls both parties, which is pretty rich since he dominates the GOP like Genghis Khan dominated the Golden Horde. But there is a marginally more legitimate sense in which key elements of the two parties really are in line with each other on isolated issues that happen to obsess Greene, such as aid to Ukraine. If you are a hammer, as the saying goes, everything looks like a nail.
The same is true of other implicit Uniparty claims, particularly those made by progressive pro-Palestinian protesters who adamantly argue that the need to smite âGenocide Joeâ Biden for his pro-Israel policies outweighs all the reasons it might be a bad idea to help Trump return to the White House (including the fact that Trump is palpably indifferent to Palestinian suffering). If the two parties do not appear to differ on your overriding issue, then the fundamental reality of polarization can fade into irrelevance.
So weâre likely to hear more Uniparty talk even as Democrats and Republicans head toward another highly fractious election with very high stakes attributable to their differences.
NEWSWEEK/TIME POLLING IS A JOKE.IT MAY AS WELL BEEN DONE BY THE RNC.38%REPUBLICANS WERE POLLED,31%DEMOCRATS AND 31%INDEPENDENT.THAT IS DICTATING AN OUTCOME.
It excludes the indigent who don’t have internet access or email accounts. Although, most of them are probably more likely to vote for Kerry anyway…
The only surprise here is Iowa — for Bush?
Isn’t it more likely for Dems to have internet?
I doubt it. Isn’t the Internet more likely to be used by the more wealthy, and doesn’t that mean Republicans?
Like xdog and John Mcc, I’m on Zogby’s email polling list.
xdog gave a good description of what we see when we respond.
I’ll note, as I have a couple times previously on this board, that the answer options to the Zogby question on party identification don’t include the Democratic party. Instead, Zogby lists that mythical dittohead creation, the “Democrat” party.
I’ve emailed several zogby contact names several times on the error, with no respons. This last time, I included a Google search URL for “Democrat party” on rushlimbaugh.com.
I’ll be curious to see if the error is corrected in the next poll. Maybe I accomplished nothing more than getting my email removed from the list.
Gore’s speech is getting news airtime. MoveOn might want to replay it in its entirety to take advantage of the publicity. CNN played a decent soundbite of it this morning.
Pelosi, Gore. The language of condemnation is getting stronger. What is needed is a Republican voice to speak as strongly along the same lines so as to take the partisan onus off the words. Of course, anyone who did so would be immediately ostracized from the GOP, but then if Zel Miller can shill for the GOP, someone in the GOP can find enough integrity to call Bush out on his ineptitude. I think it would have to be a CA Republican. There’s got to be a CA Republican with a liberal enough constituency who could make this move without putting his seat too much on the line.
I just finished watching Al Gore’s speech at NYU on the C-span. Wow! It was a beaut. Gore hit Bush about as hard as anyone has.
I hope Move-on.org which sponsored the event finds a way to play it again and again over the next few weeks. It will really help Kerry. Its the kind of surrogate help that Kerry has needed.
If you check out the National Council on Public Polling’s website (www.ncpp.org/poll_perform.htm) you will see that in the 2000 election the closest results were from, believe it or not: Harris Interactive!! Harris Interactive, if I’m reading the results correctly, came closer than any other pollster (including Zogby and CBS) except maybe the regular Harris polling. Maybe there is something to this interactive polling.
xdog – I’m no pollster, but from my understanding of probability, it’s not a factor of 2, but of squareroot(2) =~ 1.41
You’re right angry moderate. I see that happen all over the place, but am a bit suprised to see it here.
Ruy – Ohio isn’t outside the MOE. Aren’t you supposed to double the reported MOE for two-person contests because the MOE is for each individual number, i.e. +/-3 for Kerry individually and Bush so margin would have to be over 6 to be 95% certainty that Kerry is leading. I’ve read this in numerous places including an SSRC guide to interpreting polls so assume it must be true. Did you let down your guard here?
I’ve participated in Zogby on-line polls for a couple of years. He leads with a few questions to determine past voting preferences, party registration, union membership, and the like before getting to the issue at hand (usually national politics although the last was nano-tech–I passed) and closing with demographic questions.
I’m in GA, which is far from being in play.
I realize that Zogby isn’t about to explain the methodolgy but just as with Robo polls the results a can be compared to random sample phone interview polls run contemporaneously.
I receive my email notices during roughly the same period as the Zogby telephone polls
I am in the Zogby internet polling population though
DEFINITELY not in a battleground state (Kerry +15 in CA..Field Poll)..
I have been doing this for 3 years or so but thought that the project was experimental.
Is this not still the case?
AND
What are the methodolgical probems
The methodology page on the “interactive version” says as much:
“Slight weightings were applied to ensure that the selection of participants accurately reflects characteristics of voting population, including region, party, age, race, religion, and gender.”
I imagine that you list your party affiliation and other demographic info, and then John Zogby takes the data, and tweeks the sample based on party affiliation.
For example, say in state A, 75% of the respondats were Dems, 15% were Indys, and 10% were Repubs. However, the actual party registration breakdown in state A is 45% Dem, 40% Repub, and 15% Indy. So, JZ would just do a sample dist of 45% D, 40% R, and 15% I.
Ya, but Republicans tend to stuff the ballots more than Dems đ
My question is, how does responding to an email make the process more accurate? I mean, unless Zogby has some sort of vetting process…
Isn’t it more likely for Dems to have internet?