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From James Hohman at The Washington Post Daily 202:
What’s clear from numerous polls in recent weeks and months is that Americans across the political spectrum don’t think the wealthy or big businesses should get a tax cut. And few see taxes as the top issue Congress should tackle,” Heather Long writes on Wonkblog. “What does have solid support in recent polls is tax cuts for small businesses and the middle and lower classes.”
A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released Sunday found that only 25 percent think the tax bill is a “good idea.”
A Politico-Morning Consult poll published yesterday showed 48 percent “support” or “somewhat support” a tax bill. But sentiment dropped sharply when people are asked about some of the specifics that will be in the GOP bill, especially a tax cut for business.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll in September asked, “Do you support or oppose Trump’s tax plan?” 28 percent said they “strongly” or “somewhat” supported the plan; 73 percent believe that the current tax system favors the wealthy; and 65 percent believe businesses pay too little.
A CBS poll released Wednesday found 80 percent think that taxes for big business should stay the same or go up; 56 percent said Trump’s plan will benefit the rich, while 13 percent said it would benefit the middle class; and 70 percent said Congress should address other issues before passing a tax bill.
Gallup found this April that 51 percent of Americans feel their taxes are “too high.” In 1985, the last time the system was overhauled, 63 percent felt that way.
Yet, despite such poll numbers, there is a real danger that the legislation could pass and be signed into law. As Harry Enten notes at FiveThirtryEight, “Luckily for the Republicans, tax reform isn’t a top issue for most Americans. If that continues to be the case, voter opinion might not greatly affect the bill’s chance of passage.”
The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist: Why the 21st Century Will Be Better Than You Think and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:
Trump has hit a new low in his job approval ratings. As the Washington Post notes:
On Sunday evening, a poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal indicated that Trump’s approval rating had hit a new low, sinking to 38 percent. More worrisome for the president? Since September, the drop was biggest among independents, whites and whites without a college degree — key components of the coalition that won Trump the White House. NBC and the Journal also reported that the 38 percent rating was lower than any other president had seen at a similar point in their first terms in the modern era.On Monday, new data from Gallup reiterated that same message. In Gallup’s daily tracking poll, which looks at three days of national polling, Trump’s approval rating hit a new low of 33 percent and his disapproval a new high of 62 percent. The net approval — those who approve minus those who disapprove — hit a new low at minus-29.
The decline among working class whites is particularly noteworthy. Without strong support from these voters, Trump is in big trouble. This is a trend to watch.
The following article by Sherry Linkon and John Russo, authors of Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown, is cross-posted from Working-Class Perspectives:
In a 60 Minutes interview in September, Steven Bannon touted his form of economic nationalism and suggested that Democrats like Senator Sherrod Brown and U.S Representative Tim Ryan understood his economic vision, even if they didn’t agree with him. It was fitting that he name-checked Brown and Ryan, as both come from Northeast Ohio, where the history of deindustrialization began 40 years ago this fall. On September 19th, 1977 — known locally as “Black Monday” — Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced that it was shutting down, kicking off a wave of steel mill closings that would displace more than 40,000 area workers basic steel and steel-related industries.
At the time, some explained deindustrialization as part of the “natural economic order.” Borrowing the term from Joseph Schumpeter, economists and business leaders saw the closings as part of an evolutionary process, a form of “creative destruction” that caused temporary hardships but would lead both capital and labor to more productive activities. While commentators acknowledged that the process was difficult and uncomfortable, they insisted that the ultimate outcome would be economic growth and a higher standard of living.
Eager to validate such promises, local leaders brought in an array of speakers, including Irving Kristol and Michael Novak from the American Enterprise Institute, who gave public lectures at Youngstown State University. Both insisted that the Mahoning Valley would prosper over time as new industries took root and workers retrained for new jobs. It was all part of what Novak called The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.
Raven Brooks, chief operating officer of Vote.org, has a post up at Campaigns & Elections showing a strong edge for texting over email as a tool for getting out the vote. Here’s the lede and the link:
At the beginning of the 2016 cycle, we felt that text messages held promise based on some existing studies done by our peers in the civic engagement world. They were promising, but not done with large sample sizes because on the whole most campaigns organizations hadn’t invested much in mobile programs yet. We were eager to build on their work and run some larger studies as well as testing a new mode of contact.
In 2014 the Analyst Institute conducted a study of texting with around 150,000 participants. They found this increased turnout in that midterm year by 0.9 and 1.4 percent for “plan-making” texts (those that get the voter to go through the mental process of planning how they will get to the polls). The program operated at an incredibly low cost when looking at cost per vote, especially compared to other modes of contact.
At vote.org, we ran three experiments in 2016 using SMS for voter registration and two varieties of GOTV. But before we get into the findings, some explanation of terminology is in order.
The following article by James Carville and Stan Greenberg is cross-posted from Democracy Corps:
About 9 months into his presidency, Donald Trump has settled into a historically weak job ap- proval of 41 percent, well below his presidential vote, and with the strong disapproval over 45 percent of voters. He remains an unrepentant divider which pervades all political discourse.1
Yet the most hated politicians are the Republicans in Congress, and perhaps they ought to be more of the focus as they are on the ballot in 2018. Mitch McConnell is the least popular con- gressional leader in Democracy Corps’ polling, followed by Speaker Ryan. Voters know that the Republicans are in charge in Congress and these are the poster children. So why do the Democrats not enjoy a stronger lead in the ballot?
1 National phone survey of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Research from September 30 – October 6, 2017. The survey was matched to voter file and 67 percent of respondents were reached by cell phones. Of these registered voters, 667 are “likely voters” in 2018. Greenberg Research maintains its own survey and weighting methods, independent of surveys released by GQRR.
The Democrats are ahead by just 8-points among registered voters, and 5-points among likely 2018 voters in Democracy Corps’ most recent national survey. That is marginally down from the 10-point and 7-point advantages (among registered and likely voters, respectively) Democrats held in our June polling on behalf of WVWVAF. (We will release new findings on behalf of WVWVAF next week.)
See graph at this link.
The focus should be more on the GOP Congress, but contributing is the Democratic Party brand, which is unimpressive in this poll. They are viewed more favorably by just net 4-points. There has been no growth in identification with the Democratic Party, as there was in going into 2016.
This dynamic is producing a situation where self-identified Democrats, generic Democratic voters and Hillary Clinton-supporters hold their preferences with great certainty, but they are no more likely to turnout for Democrats in the off-year election, according to this poll.
A remarkable 81 percent of Democrats strongly disapprove of Donald Trump, while just 55 per- cent of Republicans strongly approve of his job performance. Those voting for the Democrat for Congress are more certain of their choice by 62 to 38 percent, while those voting Republican are split in their certainty (52 very certain to 48 percent somewhat certain).
Yet when it comes to the measures used to gauge interest and intention to vote, Democrats and Republicans are showing equal engagement. That will not produce the landslide election Democrats are hoping to achieve.
See graph at this link.
Maybe Steve Bannon is right that stoking the flames of identify politics creates an environment where Democrats calling for big economic change don’t get heard. We saw in the polling we re- cently released with Public Citizen that Donald Trump has high approval marks when it comes to ‘keeping jobs in the US’ (+27) and ‘putting American workers before the interests of big corpo- rations’ (+7).
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But two things catch our eye in this poll to suggest the election could take shape in very different ways by next year. First, watch the seniors and Baby-Boomers. With acute sensitivity to the impact of health care changes, seniors and Boomers are giving particularly high negative marks to Trump and Republicans. The Democrats even hold a 2-point lead in the generic ballot among seniors, breaking the age pattern that has shaped our recent elections.
Second, in our first poll testing a 2020 presidential contest between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, the Senator wins by 12-points (54 to 42 percent). In coming polls, we will test other potential nominees, but that result is some measure of the real structure of the partisan balance.
The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist: Why the 21st Century Will Be Better Than You Think and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:
Do people in small town, exurban and rural America really have anything to complain about or are they just lashing out because of the rise of diversity? A fascinating column by Ron Brownstein covers the diverging fate of these places and the faster growing cores of metropolitan areas. It would appear that folks in these areas really do have something to complain about and that they really are, in fact, being left behind.
In metro areas from Seattle to Chicago to Washington, DC, new data show that per capita incomes, education levels and the young adult share of the population are rising rapidly in downtown urban centers that were left for dead 30 and 40 years ago. Simultaneously…incomes, education levels and the age structure is failing to keep pace, or even deteriorating, in the small town and exurban communities at the metropolitan area’s periphery.
This widening geographic separation between town and country — reinforced by a strong urban tilt in such key measures as venture capital investment and new business formation — helps explain President Donald Trump’s overwhelming support in the smaller, mostly white communities that largely feel excluded from the economic recovery since 2009….. per capita incomes since 1990 have increased just three percent in communities 30 miles out, while rising fully 45% at the city center.
Like a river cutting through rock, these shifting economic currents are helping to carve the nation’s stark new political alignment. Along with unease about demographic and cultural changes, the sense of falling behind economically helps explain Trump’s dominance of mid-sized and small town America: he carried more than 2,600 counties last fall, more than any candidate in either party since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Conversely, the thriving economies, and increasingly youthful and well-educated profiles of the largest urban centers, help explain how Hillary Clinton carried 87 of the 100 largest counties by a combined margin of nearly 14.7 million votes, according to calculations by Pew Research Center senior writer Drew DeSilver (including Washington, DC, pushes the margin to nearly 15 million votes). Although few Democrats recognize it in their rhetoric or agenda, they are increasingly the party of the places in America that are succeeding the most in the globalized, post-industrial economy.
The moral of the story: if Democrats want to succeed with the voters they’ve been losing, they will have to make a very serious effort to spread economic opportunity more widely.
The following article by Democratic strategist Michael Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
My old colleague Doug Schoen from the Clinton White House days has an op-ed out in the New York Times that is remarkable for its audacity. In “Why Democrats Need Wall Street,” he argued that Democrats have not been winning many elections lately because the party philosophy has become more Bernie Sanders and less Bill Clinton. According to Schoen, “moving the party away from a reflexive anti-Wall Street posture” was a key factor in the success of one Clinton presidency and the defeat of another.
Let’s start with the basic premise, that getting closer to Wall Street helps in winning elections. Any serious look back on Clinton’s 1996 campaign would have to note that the most important moment by far was the 1995 government shutdown fight with Newt Gingrich and the eventual Republican nominee, Bob Dole. Before that fight, Bill Clinton was about 10 points down in the national polls against Dole. After the smoke cleared, Clinton was about 10 points ahead, and the race never again got close.
Schoen and his partner, Mark Penn, argued against having that fight with Newt and Dole, saying Clinton would look more moderate by just splitting the difference and coming to a quick compromise more on their terms. But when Clinton rejected that advice, and instead announced he would fight to the end on preserving money for Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment, the polling turned bad for the Republicans. We won decisively.
Oddly enough, President Clinton’s campaign stump speeches that year never did mention his desire to deregulate Wall Street. Fast forward to 2010, which was a terrible year for Democrats. Voters were outraged by the Wall Street bailouts, the fat bonuses that went to the same executives that crashed the economy, and the utter failure to prosecute any bankers that were responsible. Exit polls noted that 24 percent of the public thought the top blame for the bad economy was due to Bush, 29 percent said Obama, and 44 percent said Wall Street. Of those who blamed Wall Street first, Democrats got beat almost 2-1. Pollster Stan Greenberg argues compellingly that these soft-on-Wall Street factors hurt Hillary’s 2016 campaign badly and are still haunting Democrats today.
Even though the economy remained weak and Obama was vulnerable, Democrats got lucky in 2012 when the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney of Bain Capital. Obama won in great part due to bashing Romney for his financial industry track record of stripping jobs from communities for the sake of big profits for his company.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren was the only challenger in the country who beat an incumbent senator, a well-liked moderate one at that. Sherrod Brown had more money spent against him than any senator in the country, yet never trailed in the ultimate swing state of Ohio, winning by more than Obama. Tammy Baldwin upset a popular ex-governor to win an open Senate seat. All three based their campaigns in large part on running against Wall Street.
Two years later, the 2014 elections were a debacle for Democrats nationwide, but especially for more centrist Democrats. Strong advocates of Wall Street accountability like Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Al Franken of Minnesota, and Gary Peters of Michigan all won races that were supposed to be challenging rather easily.
In 2016, while Secretary Clinton certainly took some progressive stands on economic issues, she rarely waved the populist flag or made tough attacks on Wall Street. In fact, Clinton was badly damaged by taking six-figure speaking fees for speeches to Goldman Sachs. She never fully embraced Elizabeth Warren’s Wall Street reform agenda, and instead of picking a populist VP candidate such as Warren or Sherrod Brown, she chose the single candidate who was widely seen as closest to Wall Street.
Meanwhile, Trump attacked Wall Street, hedge funds, and firms like Goldman Sachs in speech after speech, as well as TV ads. He even endorsed Warren’s idea of reinstating Glass-Steagall and breaking up the biggest banks.
Schoen says Democrats need Wall Street’s money, but Warren in her Senate race and Sanders in his presidential campaign proved small online contributors could make a strong populist campaign financially competitive with a Wall Street-funded campaign. Schoen argues that there are more people who self-identify as moderates than liberals, ignoring the fact that most moderate swing voters hate Wall Street.
Finally, Schoen says Democrats need to be a pro-small business/pro-entrepreneur party. On this I heartily agree with him. The problem is that being pro-Wall Street is not the same thing. The too-big-to-fail banks rarely lend to small businesses and start-ups. They work mostly with the biggest businesses when they are lending, and use much of their money for financial speculation in the markets.
And what Schoen views as policy successes – Clinton’s deregulation of media and banking that has led to the consolidation of those industries into oligopolies – inherently crushes the little guy. Truly being pro-small business entails using anti-trust law to free markets from monopolies; making sure community banks can lend money to local businesses; and making sure potential customers of those local businesses make enough money to be able to buy things from those local businesses.
Schoen’s op-ed fails at policy and fails at politics. Hillary Clinton didn’t lose because of her wild, raging, left-wing populism ― she lost because working-class voters who haven’t gotten a raise in years don’t think Democrats are willing to fight for them.
The following article by Stanley Greenberg of Greenberg Research is cross-posted from Democracy Corps:
Donald Trump remains deeply unpopular with the American people, and his recent actions to undermine health care and pursuit of trickle-down tax cuts will surely make matters worse.
But the round of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations that occurred last week in Washington reminds us that there is an area where Trump’s job performance is relatively strong. According to Democracy Corps’ most recent poll, 46 percent of registered voters approve of his “handling of trade agreements with other countries,” 51 percent, how he is “putting American workers ahead of the interests of big corporations” and 60 percent, “keeping jobs in the United States.”
That is made possible, in part by the relative silence of Democrats on these issues (and in spite of committed progressive trade advocates among America’s unions and consumer and environmental organizations.)
Indeed, Hillary Clinton and national Democrats’ failure to vociferously express their doubts about NAFTA and opposition to President Obama’s signature trade policy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), contributed mightily to Trump’s victory in many of the swing Midwestern states.
What Trump knows and all Democrats must understand is this: for the voters, this is not about trade agreements like NAFTA and TPP per se. It is about the outsourcing of good paying American jobs that these agreements facilitate.
Only 11 percent of voters view “outsourcing” favorably in our most recent poll. That was vividly expressed by voters from the Rustbelt to Seattle in focus groups conducted this summer. Just hearing the word ‘outsourcing’ would get them fuming, and they say those are “middle income jobs” and companies that outsource jobs are “traitors” and “should be financially penalized.”
While the country is evenly divided on whether NAFTA has been good for the economy, they are pretty sure it has meant fewer American jobs. That is why Trump has made trade agreements so central to his agenda – it makes him relevant to Americans’ consuming struggle with jobs and wages.
NAFTA renegotiations are putting trade front-and-center again, and this time Democrats must not remain invisible. That is not just because it makes Donald Trump relevant on the issue of jobs and wages and fuels one of his only remaining areas of approval.
What is more important is the opportunity to secure changes to NAFTA for which many progressives have been fighting for so long. That includes taking on the lack of enforceable labor and environmental standards and the special protections for corporations (like Investor State Dispute Settlement) that push so many corporations to outsource good paying American jobs.
Our focus groups and polling for Public Citizen has revealed just how much both Clinton voters and Trump voters, including his white working class base, dislike features of NAFTA. That includes some elements that progressive trade reformers have been fighting for years and that the current U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, proposed to address in the recent NAFTA talks.
At the top of that list is a significant rollback of the corporate investor protections and ISDS regime that make it less risky and expensive for corporations to outsource jobs to Mexico. Also proposed was an end to NAFTA’s open-ended waiver of Buy American and other local preferences in government procurement that outsource our tax dollars rather than reinvesting them to create jobs here.
Trump’s has reneged on too many trade-related campaign promises that enjoy progressive support like confronting currency manipulation and making negotiations more transparent for Democrats to be silent now.
Voters are also concerned by problems with NAFTA that the administration has shown no interest in addressing. The most convincing argument for major changes to NAFTA is one that says “the U.S. worker is the big loser” because NAFTA lacks enforceable “labor and environmental standards so companies can move U.S. jobs to Mexico to pay workers poverty wages” and dump pollutants and “then import those products back to the U.S. for sale.” Over 80 percent of Trump voters and over 60 percent of Clinton voters found that a compelling argument against the current NAFTA. But new terms to remedy this do not appear to be at the top of the Trump trade agenda.
If saving American jobs and better wages is not enough for Democrats to take a visible stand on trade, then consider this: after a simulated debate over NAFTA, nearly 60 percent of voters came to believe NAFTA was bad for the economy and meant fewer American jobs. For Democrats, there is no upside to being on the sidelines – or worse, the wrong side – of this debate.
Democrats owe it to their voters and the country to lead the fight for a better NAFTA.
The following article is cross-posted from a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research e-blast:
A new poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner shows a 55- 45% majority of registered voters trust Democrats in Congress more than Donald Trump to handle America’s national security. This represents a huge 18-point swing toward Democrats since March, when a 54-46% majority said they trusted Trump more.
The declining trust of Americans toward Trump on national security comes at a time when the country and Trump administration face a host of foreign challenges, from growing tensions with North Korea, to Trump’s recent decision to decertify the Iran deal, to a consensus that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election.
GQR partner Jeremy Rosner, who served on the National Security Council staff under President Clinton said: “The American public is rapidly losing faith that Donald Trump can keep them safe. The more they watch him handling foreign challenges, from North Korea to Iran to Russia, the less confidence they have in him.”
The American public particularly lacks faith in Trump’s ability to deal with North Korea – arguably the most dangerous of his immediate national security challenges. The public trusts Democrats in Congress more than they trust Trump to deal with North Korea, by a 57-42% margin. This 15 point Democratic edge is up 5 points just since this August, when Trump first threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” – a sign that Trump’s bellicose rhetoric is undermining his own public support, rather than enhancing it.
Equally notable: at a time when Republicans in Congress have dismal ratings – CNN polling in September shows 72% of the public disapproves of the job performance of “Republican leaders in Congress” – the public trusts Trump even less than Republicans in Congress on these life-or-death issues of national security. By a wide 62-37% margin, respondents in the GQR poll say they trust Republicans in Congress more than Trump on national security.
Trump’s mishandling of national security is starting to erode the Republican brand on these issues. In March, voters trusted “Republicans in Congress” on national security more than “Democrats in Congress,” by a large 20 point, 60-40% margin. But nine months of Trump’s tenure as Commander in Chief has cut that margin to just a 5-point, 52-47% advantage. Indeed, the GQR poll shows that on the central threat of North Korea, the public already trusts Democrats in Congress more than their Republican counterparts, by a 53-47% margin.
The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey fielded online, October 3-10, among 2,000 registered voters.
For more information, contact GQR at info@gqrr.com.
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