A poll of nation-wide RV’s conducted Sept 6-8 by YouGov for the Economist has Bush leading Kerry 46-45 percent, with 1 percent for Nader.
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TDS Strategy Memos
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tds-wwc-roundtable
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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January 26: Republicans Can’t Specify a Debt-limit Ransom
It’s one of the more comical aspects of the deadly serious game of chicken that House Republicans are playing on the debt limit, but it’s worth pointing out, as I did at New York:
As the United States lurches toward a possible debt default thanks to House Republican hostage-taking on legislation needed to extend or suspend the debt limit, it’s increasingly evident that (as my colleague Jonathan Chait observed) the hostage-taker is strangely reluctant to name a ransom. Indeed, the initial Democratic strategy in this complicated chess game was simply to force House Republicans to say exactly what kind of spending cuts they propose to make in exchange for allowing a debt-limit measure to wobble its way to Joe Biden’s desk.
It’s easy to mock GOP lawmakers for the brainlessness, or maybe cowardice, of their effort to make Democrats identify the spending cuts their opponents want. The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell tans the elephant’s hide with considerable panache:
“Republicans have Very Serious budget demands. Unfortunately, they can’t identify what any of those demands are.
“They say they want to reduce deficits — but meanwhile have ruled out virtually every path for doing so (cuts to defense, cuts to entitlements, wiping out nondefense discretionary spending, or raising taxes). …
“Republicans say they want lower deficits — in fact, they have pledged to balance the budget (that is, no deficit at all) within seven or 10 years. But they have not laid out any plausible mathematical path for arriving at that destination. They promise to cut ‘wasteful spending’ … but can’t agree on what counts as ‘waste.’”
In so quickly reaching this predictable dead end in answering the world’s easiest math problem, Republicans have one plausible line of defense: It’s how much of the public feels about fiscal matters as well. They really don’t like deficits and (especially) debt. But they really don’t like the kind of spending cuts that Republicans are talking about either (tax increases, of course, are categorically off the table for the GOP and have been since the George H.W. Bush “Read my lips: No new taxes” debacle).
A September 2022 poll from the deficit scolds of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation found that Americans are up in arms about all the borrowing:
“A 31-month high of 83% of voters are urging the president and Congress to spend more time addressing the national debt, with the biggest jump among those under age 35 (8 points to 85%).
“More than eight-in-ten voters (81%) also said that their concern about the national debt has increased. Nearly three-in-four voters (74%) feel the national debt should be a top-three priority for the president and Congress, including 65% of Democrats, 74% of independents, and 86% of Republicans.”
From 40,000 feet, all that red ink looks pretty alarming, it seems. More recently, this very week, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal found a majority of Americans stamping their feet about it:
“Most Americans oppose raising the federal debt ceiling without accompanying cuts to federal spending, a new RMG Research poll finds.
“Sixty-one percent of 1,000 registered voters in the survey said Congress should either raise the debt ceiling with spending cuts (45%) or refuse to raise the ceiling at all (16%). Only about a quarter (24%) said Congress should raise the ceiling without accompanying spending cuts.”
To House Republicans, the great symbol of runaway spending is the “monstrous” $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress in December. Many of them claimed during the fight over Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership bid that “the American people” were outraged by the measure despite the fact that it cleared the Senate, House, and White House. Perhaps they were thinking of a Twitter poll conducted by Elon Musk that showed that 75 percent of respondents opposed the omnibus bill.
The sad truth is, however, that the more specific you are in identifying items in one of those “monstrous” bills, the more support they command from the public. In 2021, Gallup published a summary of public-opinion research on what was then a $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Democratic budget-reconciliation proposal (soon whittled way down to $2.2 trillion and then to a net-negative figure in the ultimately enacted Inflation Reduction Act) and found that its provisions were very popular despite the debt they required:
“[S]everal recent polls … ask about the bill in a broad, umbrella fashion, and all find majority support. A Quinnipiac poll conducted July 27-Aug. 2 asked, ‘Do you support or oppose a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks and expanding Medicare for seniors?’ and found 62% support, 32% opposition. A Monmouth University poll conducted July 21-26 asked about both the initial infrastructure bill and the new $3.5 trillion bill, describing the latter this way: ‘A plan to expand access to healthcare and child care, and provide paid leave and college tuition support.’ The results were similar to the Quinnipiac poll, with 63% in favor and 35% opposed …
“A progressive think tank, Data for Progress, conducted an online poll among likely voters July 30-Aug. 2, with a much more detailed 130-word description of the bill, including in the question wording a bulleted list of six specific proposals in the plan, the $3.5 trillion price tag and even a description of the ‘reconciliation’ procedure necessary to pass it. All of this (and the online mode, and the sample of likely voters as opposed to national adults) also didn’t seem to make much difference; 66% of likely voters in their sample supported the plan as described, while 26% opposed it — similar to the Quinnipiac and Monmouth results.”
So the minute you get into the particulars of Democratic-proposed spending bills, public concerns about debts and deficits tend to fade. And oh — there’s another problem for Republicans on the fiscal front: voters like the idea of higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to pay for popular spending measures.
The lesson for Republicans is clear: Their crusade for fiscal discipline is popular, so long as it is very general and you exclude higher taxes on the rich as a possible solution. No wonder politicians like McCarthy want Democrats to be the ones who name the GOP’s price for letting the U.S. economy get through the year without calamity.
Sorry, the link didn’t work. Here’s the URL for the Globe article. (Also in the url field below – click on my name).
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/09/05/poll/
I meant to post this earlier, but this is a better place for it. The Economist and Zogby are examples of internet polling, which has been criticized by some. But this article in the Boston Globe seems to suggest that internet polling is the way of the future. Very interesting.
Excerpt:
Most political pollsters regard online polling as an inherently unreliable way to measure public opinion. For one thing, they say, only between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans have Internet access. Internet polling “starts out ignoring one of the fundamentals of scientific survey research, which is that everybody in the population under study needs to have a chance to fall under the sample,” says Nancy Belden, president of the National Association for Public Opinion Research. Says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup, “We at Gallup do not believe you can generalize to the general population using Internet samplings.”
But results, say the believers, speak for themselves. Three years before the California poll, a Harris online poll outperformed most of its telephone rivals in predicting almost exactly the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. And in Britain, online polling outfit YouGov has in four years gone from startup to one of the country’s most prominent polling organizations. (The firm’s first US poll, which began running in The Economist in July, currently shows George W. Bush and John Kerry in a dead heat.)
As Bush awaits the news on his post-convention bounce, 2004 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for the online polling industry. In the United States several major publications, including the Wall Street Journal, are experimenting with online polls. If Internet-based pollsters match their earlier success, or if beleaguered telephone pollsters misjudge the closely fought presidential race, some say, this year could be the beginning of the end for traditional polling.
But that’s NOT the headline my local paper – the Hartford Courant is trumpeting – we are getting “Bush Takes Big Lead” – from the WP poll. Hidden in the article is the important info on battleground stats. (Of course another article talks about fund raising efforts for our disgraced ex-Governor) And Ct is suposedly Kerry territory…
Great news.
I’m going to plant this here, because it relates to the polls, the Economist, London oil speculators, and what we have been discussing here the past week.
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I read something online at democrats.com today which raised a good point regarding oil:
What is with the conflicting reports of oversupply, undersupply, etc.?
One day we have a report that there will be plenty of oil, then the next, shortages of US reserves. The current US reserves are lower than they have been in 6 months, and this is cause for concern, which creates an uptick in demand for oil, resulting in a slight increase in price.
Why are there all these competing headlines?
Think of the world’s oil interests as 527s that have a stake in the election. They are getting their stories out, and each has some side to pitch. The Saudis are clearly delivering on their promise to help Bush at election time as a reward for helping Saudis, including the bin Ladens, leave on September 13th, 2001, but they can only increase short term production so much, and that can be offset by either speculators who buy more product, or producing countries which reduce production short term.
Is this part of a Bush plan?
Yes. The speculators who sold off Monday were Saudis (and probably connected groups) who were delivering exactly when requested by Bush. The post convention poll play by the right and the Saudi oil promise were both intended to steamroll Kerry. The past 7 days they’ve been trying to deliver a knockout punch to Kerry. The polls, the Monday speculators selling off to drop oil for the Tuesday opening bell, the Tuesday Saudi announcement to further drive price concerns down, the Fox pep rally on Monday exhorting Wall Street it should be UP – all orchestrated to create an illusion of stampede for Bush.
Fox News was pushing the polls and their expectations of a good market reaction big time. Looking back at this past 7 days, we can say that media manipulation is an epidemic to which Fox is merely Typhoid Mary.
What about the other countries and other stakeholders?
Everyone has a stake in this election, and the oil consuming and producing worlds are most interested. Perception drives market price, and speculation is adding to the cost of a barrel of crude. The Iraq instability is also adding to the price. Energy supplies must be viewed as a stream, like a huge river flowing through the country. If the snow in the mountains is less in winter, we know we’re in for a hard spring and summer. Likewise, when there are saboteurs in Iraq and other places targeting oil production facilities, it raises the prospect of interruption.
Where is the price of oil going?
The current price barrel of oil is at least $8-12 a barrel higher than it should be, and the difference is speculation driven by fear of interruption due to terror and/or the war in Iraq and the instability it portends. If Bush gets a second term, oil will go up, up, up. If Kerry wins, it is coming down.
How can I say that?
Because the average price of a barrel of oil for the four years prior to 2004 was barely $28 a barrel. See here http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chron.html While demand is definitely contributing to the increase in price this year, much of the current price is directly related to the Bush debacle in Iraq.
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Later troops. I have things to do, but I want this out here for whoever needs it and can use it.