It appears that the Gallup Shop is at it again, oversampling Republicans like pod people, this time to jack up President Bush’s post-SOTU approval ratings, reports Steve Soto in the Left Coaster. Soto notes that Bush’s most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup approval rating of 57 percent — up from 52 percent in early January — generated considerable buzz among the political pundocracy. But the sample was based on 37 percent Republicans, 35 percent Independents and just 28 percent Democrats–this depite other recent polls showing the Democrats taking a lead over the GOP.
As Soto points out:

Gallup feels that Democrats have fallen through the floor amongst the electorate as a whole, even though other polls since the election show the Democrats retaking a lead over the GOP.
The mid-January NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was based on a sample that contained 39% Republicans and 39% Democrats; poll respondents said that Bush did not have a mandate.
The mid-January CBS News/New York Times poll was based on a sample that contained 34% Democrats and 31% Republicans.
The Pew Center poll and analysis released January 24, 2005 reflected a split of 33% Democrat, 30% Republican.
And it should be noted than an ABC News/Washington Post poll done in mid-December showed that Americans self-identified 11% more as being Democrats (38%) than those who identified as being Republican (27%).
Yet Gallup looks at the electorate over the weekend and somehow feels that Democrats have fallen to only 28% of the electorate, a figure never seen for the party in decades if ever. At what point in our history over the last several decades has the GOP ever had a 9% edge over the Democrats? And knowing that, why would they put out a poll showing a 57% approval rating when they must know that it is based on a bogus sample?

A fair question that merits a straight answer.

A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted 2/4-6 indicates that the Administration’s panic-mongering on social Security isn’t finding many believers in red or blue state America. Only 17 percent of the respondents agreed that Social Security was in a “state of crisis” and 50 percent disapprove of the President’s “approach to addressing the Social Security system,” while 44 percent expressed their approval.

If they gave an award for least comforting argument for Social Security privatization, the slam-dunk winner would be President Bush, for his comment that the lowered life expectancy rate of African Americans in comparison to whites makes privatization an especially good deal for the Black community. The President’s pitch, delivered at a meeting with hand picked African American conservatives in late January, was part of a broader GOP effort to win greater support for his agenda.
Despite media reports to the contrary, the GOP’s inroads into the black vote have been limited at best, as Chris Bowers explains in an interesting wrap-up over at MyDD. Although Bush did increase his percentage of the black vote from 9 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2004, Bowers points out that John Kerry received 10 million African American votes more than did George Bush. This was a 25 percent increase over Gore’s margin, significant because overall voter turnout increased by only 16 percent in 2004. This was the largest margin of African American votes for a presidential candidate in history. In a two-party, head-to-head comparison, Kerry’s portion of the Black vote was even higher than Clinton’s in ’92 and ’96. Lastly, and perhaps most encouraging for the 2006 congressional elections, African Americans, along with union members and voters under 30 are the three groups whose partisan self-identification shifted more strongly toward the Democratic Party in the ’04 election, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey.
The mainstream media has made much of the opposition of some African American religious leaders to same-sex marriage as a harbinger of increased future support for the Republican agenda among Black voters who hold strong religious convictions. But Bowers also notes that a late January meeting of leaders of 15 million African American Baptists joined together in declaring their opposition to such GOP causes as increased funding for the war in Iraq, the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General and the continuation of recent tax cuts. They also expressed strong support for leading Democratic Party priorities like a higher minimum wage, greater investment in public education and reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. It appears that African American voters will continue to support candidates and policies that respect their interests — and that’s good news for Democrats.

An AARP opinion poll released on 1/24 indicates that a strong majority of Americans are opposed to President Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security. The poll, conducted 12/6-23 by Roper Public Affairs for the AARP, revealed that 83 percent favored strengthening Social Security, rather than replacing it, and 60 percent believed that private accounts would hurt Social Security. Three out of five respondents would “strengthen social security with as few changes as possible.”
When informed that the white house proposal would not guarantee against reduced benefits and could pass on an additional $1 trillion in debt to the next generation to pay current obligations, an anemic 17 percent of respondents supported privatization. When informed about “all of the consequences to diverting payroll taxes to fund private accounts,” including an end to pre-retirement withdrawalls, support tumbled to 5 percent.
The poll found that 66 percent of respondents over the age of 30 favored keeping Social Security “as is.” Despite concerns about the viability of Social Security, 62 percent of the so-called “Gen X-ers” (ages 30-39), frequently identified as a key constituency for President Bush’s privatization scheme, agreed.

The first WSJ/NBC News Poll conducted since the election offers scant support for President Bush’s assertion that he has “earned a mandate.” The poll, conducted by Hart/McInturff December 9-13, found that 41 percent of respondents think the country is “headed in the right direction,” while 46 percent agree that it is “off on a wrong track.” Bush failed to get a favorable majority for his job approval rating (49-44), while 51 percent disapproved of his handling of both the economy and foreign policy. He did get 51 percent approval for his handling of the war against terrorism, but the poll was conducted before most of the revelations of the Kerik debacle were reported.
As the President launches his campaign to privatize Social Security, the poll reports that only 35 percent of the respondents believe his election entails a ‘mandate’ for investing SS taxes in the private sector, while 51 percent say it does not. While 41 percent said they were “more confident” that the War in Iraq will come to a successful conclusion, 48 percent said they were “less confident” in that prospect. It appears that the only ‘mandate’ the President received in his 2 point margin of victory, if he wants to get anything done, is to move toward the political center.

According to the first national post-election survey of student participation in the 2004 election, the era of student apathy is over and the Democratic Party is the big winner. The poll, conducted by Schneiders/Della Volpe/Schulman from November 9-19, found that 77 percent of college students nation-wide said they voted on November 2nd, and they voted for John Kerry by a margin of 55-41 percent.
The poll also found that 62 percent of the respondents said they encouraged or helped someone else to vote, nearly double the figure for 2000. Interestingly, two-thirds of the respondents were registered in their home town. However, the third who were registered in their college’s towns turned out to vote at a slightly higher rate. John Kerry received a healthy majority of all student major groups, except those who majored in education, 51 percent of whom voted for Bush.

Democratic Leadership Council bigwigs Al From and Bruce Reed have an article in today’s Wall St. Journal, “Get the Red Out,” that rolls out a couple of fresh ideas for a Democratic resurgence. Along with their more predictable proposals and pot shots at Michael Moore and Joe Trippi, From and Reed propose a “Heartland Project,” which would include “family policies that give parents more time to raise their kids right,” a provocative idea that merits further exploration. They also advocate a new message strategy that gives more emphasis to the Democrats’ outsider status, as they “take up the reform mantle” and become “the party of change, protecting our principles, not our programs.” All Democrats may not be able to unite behind the DLC’s positions on Iraq policy, same-sex marriage and other issues, but Reed and From are thinking creatively about the Party’s future, and their ideas merit thoughtful consideration.

Journalism 101 professors should require their students to read an excellent article in the Sunday Washington Post, “The Anatomy of Myth: How did one exit poll answer become the story of how Bush won?”. The author, Dick Meyer, editorial director of CBSNews.com, shreds the argument that concern about declining ‘moral values’ was the pivotal determinant of the 2004 presidential election. Meyer notes that responses to “a single dodgy exit poll question” ranking ‘moral values’ as the most important priority for 22% of exit poll respondents over economy/jobs (20%), terrorism (19%) and Iraq (15%) became the basis for a media bandwagon based on lazy reporting and thin suppositions about the meaning of the term.
Meyer likens the term to a “Rorschach test” holding a multitude of meanings for different people, “not a discrete, clear political issue to be set next to taxes or terrorism.” Reporters seized on the exit poll responses to the catch-all question as proof that voters were reacting to same-sex marriage, late-term abortion and other cultural concerns of the religious right. Yet to many voters, moral issues include the war in Iraq, personal integrity of the candidates, patriotism or helping the poor. Had the term “moral values” been broken down into such categories in the poll, or had terrorism and Iraq been combined, the ranking would likely have been quite different. As Meyer concludes “the moral values doctrine has morphed from a simple poll finding to a grand explanatory theory to gospel truth. This contaminated strain of punditry needs to be eradicated before it spreads further.”

Progressives and Democrats seeking spiritual and intellectual nourishmant in the wake of the elections are invited to a grand buffet over at The Nation Online, where 25 writers and activist share their recipes for Democratic victory in “Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Forum.” Contributors include Robert Coles, Eric Foner, Susannah Heschel, Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin, Dan Carter, Theda Skocpol, Jonathan Kozol and other cutting-edge luminaries. The writers address a range of hot topics, including coaltion-building, faith and politics, ballot reform, candidate development, winning the Latino vote, broadening moral awareness, mobilizing to end the war in Iraq and educational reform, to name just a few issues of current concern.
In addition to the forum, The current online edition of The Nation features interesting posts on political strategy by editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Robert Borosage, James K. Galbraith, Robert Scheer and David Corn.

The current online edition of The American Prospect includes required reading for wonks, pundits and Democrats concerned about preparing for the ’06 and ’08 elections. A quartet of articles “Facing Up: The Democrats Must Confront What Ails Them,” by Garance Franke-Ruta, Sarah Wildman, Sarah Blustain and Matthew Yglesias, offers insightful diagnoses and cures for Democratic political myopia with respect to middle class priorities, abortion, foreign policy and same-sex marriage.
TAP’s current issue also includes perceptive articles on strategy and a range of issues bearing on the Party’s future health by Alan Brinkley, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Lizabeth Cohen, James Mann, Rick Perlstein, Anna Greenberg, Robert Kuttner, Harold Meyerson, Robert B. Reich, Jeff Faux, Robert Borosage and others.