In my February 10 post, I noted that Gallup’s 57 percent approval rating for Bush in their February 4-6 poll was way out-of-line with other recent polls and was likely driven by the lopsided Republican party ID advantage (+9) in their sample, rather than any real world shift in public sentiment.
Now Gallup has a new poll, conducted February 7-10, and lo and behold, Bush’s 57 percent approval rating has nosedived to 49 percent, in the same neighborhood as other recent polls. It’s just a wild guess, but I shouldn’t be surprised if this lower rating for Bush was also accompanied by the disappearance of that big Republican party ID advantage (paging Steve Soto!).
You’d think that their first poll’s heavily Republican sample and outlier status relative to other polls would make the Gallup folks cautious in interpreting Bush’s approval rating drop in their second poll as representing a real political trend. Think again! Gallup, in fact, contructs a whole political story to fit their data, starting with their title “From Public’s Perspective, Past Week Not Good One for Bush: Approval ratings drop” and continuing thusly:

The new poll, conducted Feb. 7-10, shows his approval rating is back down to 49% as the news focus has shifted to his proposed federal budget and his plans for changing the Social Security system.

Could be. But an alternative, more parsimonious hypothesis is this: Bush never had a popularity spike to begin with; little changed over the period covered by Gallup’s two polls and Gallup’s swing against Bush in their latest poll is an artifact of their changing sample composition, not the product of a real shift in public opinion.
But that wouldn’t fit with the Gallup philosophy: reality’s job is to explain Gallup’s data, not the other way around.

The February reading list for Democrats provides a host of interesting articles on the party’s future prospects and strategy as Howard Dean takes charge of the DNC. It is usually a good idea to begin with the newspaper articles, because of their short shelf-life as freebies. So start with E. J. Dionne’s thoughtful piece in the Washington Post Sunday Outlook “Can Dean Give ‘Em A Winner?” enumerating and analyzing the choices and challenges facing Howard Dean as he assumes command. Then peddle on over to the Los Angeles Times, and take a peek at Ronald Brownstein’s “Democrats Aren’t Giving Bush A Break This Term,” predicting a much more contentious tone, not only from Dean, but across the Democratic spectrum. Chuck Todd’s “Clintonism R.I.P.: How Triangulation Became Strangulation” in the Atlantic has reinvigorated the debate about Bill Clinton’s strategy as a template for the Dems’ future, but you’ll have to subscribe to read it and an accompanying interview, as well as Al From’s critique. For an optimistic take, The American Prospect offers Robert Kuttner’s “Being Howard Dean: Give the Chair a Chance. You Just Might Like What You See.” If you’re up for some heavy lifting, check out Peter Dreier’s “Why Bush Won: What To Do Next” in the current issue of Dissent. Also reccomended is John Nichols’ recent Nation profile “Dick Durbin: Bush Fighter,” about Illinois’ soft-spoken tough guy and possible prototype for Democratic leaders of the future.

The post below points out that the new Ipsos-AP poll has Bush’s approval rating at just 45 percent, in rather stark contrast to Gallup’s 57 percent rating, which was accompanied by a 9 point Republican party ID advantage.
But it’s interesting to note that the Ipsos poll also has a lop-sided party ID advantage–but this time for the Democrats (+12). The fact that the Ipsos party ID figure is for RVs and the Gallup figure for all adults hardly seems adequate to account for this vast difference.
In truth, neither figure seems terribly credible and, therefore, both approval figures are probably outliers driven by the party ID composition of their samples. Certainly neither figure should be taken particularly seriously on its own, though you could average the two if you wish. In that case, you get a 51 percent approval rating for Bush, pretty much in line with other figures from recent polls.
What is to be done about these wacky partisan samples, which give such misleading pictures of current politics? Perhaps it’s time to revive “dynamic party ID weighting“, an idea whose time may finally have come. Aruguably, this is the time to pursue such an innovation, away from all the passions induced by a political campaign. And, if pollsters did so, I think it would help smooth out poll results and avoid the fake surges this way and that that are starting to erode faith in the veracity of polling.
Of course, down at Gallup and many other polling headquarters as well, the view is probably that all is fine. I can assure them that all is not fine and it is time to trade in their stone-walling for a bit of listening and openness to change.

Not to pile on concerns about the credibility of Gallup’s sampling choices, but a new AP/Ipsos Poll indicates 54 percent of adults now disapprove of President Bush’s job performance, while 45 percent approve. Seniors over age 65 registered the highest disapproval ratings, a very bad sign for Social Security privatization prospects. The poll, conducted 2/7-9 also showed 57 percent disapproving of Bush’s Iraq policy and 56 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy. In addition, 58 percent of the respondents now believe the country is headed down the “wrong track”, a hefty increase from 51 percent in January.

As noted yesterday, Gallup’s latest approval rating for Bush (57 percent) seems, well, a little on the high side and, teamed as it is with a lopsidedly Republican sample (a 9 point Republican advantage in party ID), seems distinctly lacking in credibility.
It’s noteworthy that no other recent poll seems to be able to come close to Gallup’s 57 percent rating. ABC News/Washington Post, for example, had Bush’s approval rating at 50 percent on January 26-31–but then, that was mostly before the Iraqi elections so perhaps the Post poll couldn’t capture that big post-Iraqi election surge toward Bush (Gallup’s own explanation for Bush’s high rating in their poll).
Newsweek, however, polled on February 3-4–after the Iraqi elections–and found only a 50 percent rating for Bush. But the Gallup poll was February 4-6 so perhaps this surge was late developing?
But, inconveniently for Gallup, Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University were in the field February 3-6 and they also found just a 50 percent approval rating for Bush.
And here’s the coup de grace: the new Fox News poll, not generally known for being unfriendly to the president and low-balling his approval rating, found his approval rating, on February 8-9, to be only 51 percent. Moreover, Fox’s 51 percent rating is actually a point below their mid-January rating for Bush, while Gallup’s recent 57 percent rating is six points above their mid-January rating for the president.
Well, something’s happened here. But I don’t believe it’s among the general public. I think it’s more in Gallup’s polling and–as indicated at the top of this post–we have some obvious suspects.

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.

There are many theories about what drove the 2004 election results and some of the more fanciful (exurbs, fast-growing counties, evangelicals, Hispanics, values voters) have been critiqued on this site. Now, with the release of the raw data from the 2004 NEP exit poll, it is possible to do some closer analysis of trends that really were of high salience. One such trend was the movement of white working class voters away from the Democratic ticket.
Here some findings from an initial pass through the NEP national data:
1. In 2000, Gore lost white working class (defined as whites with less than a four year college degree) voters by 17 points; this year, Kerry lost them by 23 points, a swing of 6 points against the Democrats. In contrast, Gore lost college-educated whites by 9 points and Kerry lost them by 10 points–not much change.
Therefore, white working class voters were responsible for almost all of Bush’s increased margin among whites as a whole (which went from 12 to 17 points). And Bush’s increased margin among whites, of course, was primarily responsible for his re-election.
2. Almost all of the white working class movement toward Bush was among white working class women, rather than white working class men. Bush won white working class men by almost identical margins in the two elections (29 points in 2000 and by 30 points in 2004). But he substantially widened his margin among white working class women, going from a 7 lead in ’00 to an 18 point lead in ’04. That 11 point swing against the Democrats among white working class women is arguably arguably the most important single fact about the 2004 election.
3. Looking at married versus single white working class women, both groups appear to have swung substantially against the Democrats. Single white working class women (38 percent of white working class women) went Democratic by 15 points in 2000, but only by 2 points in 2004. Married white working class women (62 percent of white working class women) gave Bush a 15 margin in 2000 and more than doubled that margin, to 31 points, in 2004. Since married white working class women are the bulk of this group and had a slightly larger pro-Republican shift, they are responsible for most of the shift toward Bush among white working class women, but their single counterparts clearly made an important contribution as well.
4. But why did these shifts against the Democrats among the white working class occur? That’s a topic that deserves a lengthy discussion, but here are some data to ponder from the NEP poll:
Among white working class voters, 66 percent said they trusted Bush to handle terrorism, compared to just 35 percent who said the same about Kerry. That’s pretty bad, but check this out: 55 percent of these voters said they trusted Bush to handle the economy and only 39 percent said the same about Kerry. Guess that Kerry message about the economy didn’t quite get through to the white working class!
It’s also interesting to note that there wasn’t much of a difference in these sentiments among men and women in the white working class: 55 percent of white working class women said they trusted Bush to handle the economy and 40 percent said they trusted Kerry, while 56 percent of white working class men said they trusted Bush on the economy and 37 percent said they trusted Kerry.
That’s something to ponder. Not only were white working class women alarmed about terrorism, but they were also, in contrast to previous elections, no more likely to find the Democratic economic message compelling than their male counterparts.

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.

Well, President Bush threw down the gauntlet in his Tuesday State of the Union speech on his plan to privatize Social Security. Ready or not, here he comes!
So far, response to his initiative has been underwhelming and members of his own party are edging away from it, even as Democrats continue to hold firm against it. A good part of the reason may be seen in recent polls which continue to show the proposal performing weakly once its basic provisions are made clear. Republican politicians are understandably nervous about being associated with a loser and Democratic politicians see little reason to defect when public opinion clearly backs them.
Three new polls provide more evidence of just how difficult the public opinion climate is for Bush. The first is a Westhill Partners poll released by The Hotline this week. Among the key findings are the following:
1. Bush receives a 34 percent approval rating on handling Social Security, with 52 percent disapproval. And among independents, his rating is markedly worse: a mere 23 percent approval and 59 percent disapproval.
2. A question on the seriousness of the problems with Social Security yields just 18 percent saying the system needs to be completely rebuilt (12 percent among independents), with 33 percent saying major changes are needed and 43 percent calling for only minor changes.
3. By 61-29 (66-21 among independents), voters say that keeping Social Security as a program with a guaranteed monthly benefit is more important than letting younger workers decide for themselves how some of their Social Security contributions are invested, with varying benefit levels depending on the success of their investments.
4. By 61-24 (66-16 among independents), voters say Bush’s November election victory does not mean the American people support his ideas on Social Security.
5. By 54-42 (61-33 among independents), voters say they would not be likely to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in the stock market if they were allowed to do so.
6. By 50-33 (53-25 among independents), voters say they “disapprove of proposals to incorporate personal accounts into the Social Security program”. (Interestingly, despite the Republicans’ now-religious belief that saying “personal accounts” rather than “private accounts” somehow makes these accounts much more attractive, the half-sample that was asked this same question with private accounts substituted for personal accounts actually had a slightly less disapproving reaction.)
The second poll showing tough sledding for Bush on Social Security was conducted by Roper Public Affairs for AARP, Rock the Vote and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The poll is particularly useful for showing how soft support for private accounts is among younger adults (18-39). When supporters of private accounts (based on a question that simply describes the accounts and mentions none of the associated costs and tradeoffs) were asked a series of followups, here is what the poll found.
1. Sixty-one percent of the public (53 percent of younger adults) oppose such accounts if stock market fluctuations could result in decreased money in retirement.
2. Sixty-three percent of the public (57 percent of younger adults) oppose such accounts if they mean a lower guaranteed benefit in retirement.
3. Sixty-eight percent of the public (63 percent of younger adults) oppose such accounts mean massive new federal debt in order to pay current benefits.
4. And 69 percent of the public (65 percent of younger adults) oppose private accounts if they would result in cuts for guaranteed benefits for everyone, not just people who choose to have such an account.
5. In addition, 53 percent of younger adults believe private accounts paid for by Social Security money will hurt Social Security, not help it and 75 percent of younger adults agree both that Social Security should be protected as a guaranteed benefit, not privatized and that it isn’t fair to saddle our children with additional Social Security debt by taking money out of Social Security for private accounts.
The final poll with bad news for the Bush plan is the new Newsweek poll, conducted entirely after Bush’s SOTU address. Here are some of the key findings:
1. Just 12 percent of the public would support cutting Social Security benefits to retirees to keep Social Security financially solvent.
2. In a completely unaided question, that simply refers to “the changes to Social Security proposed by the President”, 36 percent say they oppose these changes, compared to 26 percent who favor them.
3. By 44-40, the public doesn’t think allowing one-third of the Social Security payroll tax to be diverted into individual savings accounts will result in a better deal for retirees than the current system.
No doubt about it, Bush has quite a sales job on his hands. Unfortunately for him, the more details of his plan that come out, the more the public seems likely to be reminded of what they don’t like about it. In other words, as the data above show, his plan is only popular on the level of vague generality–anything specific and the public starts bailing out. That’s a tough dynamic for a president–any president–to overcome.