I covered the basics of the new Washington Post poll yesterday. Today I want to comment on the notably negative views of Bush expressed by independents in this poll (the Post makes basic crosstabular information from their polls available interactively on their website, a facility which is well worth checking out).
These views are so negative that they suggest a decisive majority of independent voters may be in the process of giving up on Bush–becoming more and more convinced that his performance in office has been too poor to merit re-election and that Kerry is almost certainly a better bet than he to run the country. The more that perception settles in among these voters, the more the GOP will have to rely on big Republican turnout that is not countered by big Democratic turnout to win. I consider the latter a highly unlikely scenario in this election year.
In this poll, Bush’s overall approval rating among independents is just 44 percent, with 56 percent disapproval. And in the two critical areas of Iraq (36/62) and the economy (35/65) his ratings among this group are truly dreadful and much worse than among the public as a whole.
And there is not a single issue area in this poll on which independents prefer Bush to Kerry. In fact, the closest Bush comes to Kerry is on the situation in Iraq and on the US campaign against terrorism, where he lags Kerry by a comparatively modest 5 points. In all other areas, Kerry has impressive double-digit leads over Bush: international affairs (13 points); health care (17 points); the economy (17 points); taxes (19 points); the federal budget deficit (20 points); education (21 points); and prescription drug benefits for the elderly (26 points).
How can Bush win with this kind of sentiment among independents? I don’t believe he can. But how well positioned is Bush at this point to play to the independent voter and turn these numbers around? Not well I think given the hard-line conservatism he’s practiced since he was elected. The (independent) chickens may be coming home to roost.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll suggests rather strongly that President Bush has failed to generate much political benefit from a series of events that has included a good jobs report, some diplomatic progress on the Iraq situation and the funeral of Ronald Reagan. In the poll, conducted June 17-20, Kerry is ahead of Bush among RVs by 8 points (53-45).
Any more bounces like this one and John Kerry may not have to bother to campaign at all.
And in perhaps the poll’s most startling result, the public now says it prefers Kerry over Bush on who would do a better job handling the US campaign against terrorism (48-47). That’s a big change from late May when Bush was leading Kerry 52-39–which, in turn, was down from a 21 point Bush lead the month before.
I think I detect a pattern here. Kerry is also ahead of Bush on handling health care (+21), taxes (+13!), prescription drug benefits for the elderly (+12), education (+10), international affairs (+8), the economy (+5) and the federal budget deficit (+4). In fact, the only area where the public says it prefers Bush over Kerry is, interestingly enough, on handling the situation in Iraq, where Bush leads Kerry by 5 (50-45).
I say “interestingly enough” because other data in the poll show that people are not at all happy with how Bush is currently handling the situation in Iraq. His approval rating on Iraq, while improved over last month in the same poll, is still solidly negative at 44 percent approval/55 percent disapproval. Moreover, the poll has the most negative reading yet on whether “the war with Iraq was worth fighting”: 47 percent say yes, compared to 52 percent who say no. And a remarkable 71 percent now say that there has been an “unacceptable number of US military casualties in Iraq”–also the most negative reading yet.
A host of other indicators also show the most negative results so far, including whether the war with Iraq has “contributed to the long-term security of the United States” (down to 51 percent), damaged US relations with other countries with other countries who opposed the war (up to 63 percent), contributed to long-term peace and stability in the Mideast (down to 42 percent) and damaged the United States’ image in the rest of the world (up to 76 percent). And a high point has been reached (42 percent) in the number of Americans who say we should withdraw our military forces from Iraq “even if that means that civil order is not restored there”.
Bush’s approval ratings outside of the situation in Iraq are also unimpressive to downright poor. His overall approval rating has remained at 47 percent over the last month, according to the poll, while his disapproval rating has risen slightly to 51 percent.
That’s bad enough for a president who had hoped to start recovering politically. But the real shocker is the drop in his approval rating on handling the US campaign against terrorism: down from 58 percent approval/39 percent disapproval last month to 50 percent approval/48 percent disapproval today.
Of Bush’s other approval ratings, only one, education, breaks 50 percent, coming in at 51 percent approval/45 percent disapproval. The others are just plain bad: the economy (46/53, barely changed from the last two months); international affairs (43/55); taxes (42/54); prescription drug benefits for the elderly (40/50); the federal budget deficit (39/56); and health care (39/57).
Doesn’t the public approve of anything? Sure: Bill Clinton. His approval rating is up 7 points in the last year to a healthy 62 percent rating today. It would seem that the public’s increased misgivings about Bush’s performance are making the Clinton era, despite Clinton’s personal foibles, look pretty good by comparison.
I think they’re onto something.

Back Monday.

Mother Jones magazine today released an interesting new poll that shows, in more detail than any other recent poll, just how negatively voters feel about the progress the country has made in the last three years and how ready they are for a change.
For example, the poll asked voters about a series of issues and whether the country is now better off, or worse off, on that issue than it was three years ago. The most lop-sidedly negative response was on the deficit where just 8 percent said the country was doing better than three years ago, compared to a stunning 80 percent who said the country was doing worse.
Perhaps the deficit rating is not a surprise, but it is impressive how negative voters were on a wide variety of other issues: job security (19/65, for a -46 net rating); incomes keeping up with the cost of living (20/65, -45); access to affordable health care (19/59, -40); personal privacy (19/59, -40); moral values (22/58, -36); creating good-paying jobs (27/62, -35); the economy (31/62, -31); public schools (27/51, -24); tolerance for people not like us (27/51, -24); special interests (20/43, -23); and even the tax burden (29/54, -25). (Note that the poll asked the same set of questions about progress in the last three years, but applied to the respondent him or herself, not the country as a whole. Somewhat surprisingly, the answers, while a bit less negative, were very close indeed to the responses for the country as a whole.)
No wonder only 30 percent of voters in this poll felt the country was going in the right direction, compared to 62 percent who felt the country was seriously off on the wrong track. Similarly, just 38 percent wanted to continue in the direction Bush is headed, compared to 57 percent who wanted to go in a significantly different direction.
In terms of winners and losers in the last three years, voters have negative views that are consistent with their views about the country’s lack of progress. Voters felt overwhelmingly that the wealthy were winners, not losers (85/9), as well as big corporations (71/22) and CEOs (65/25). The poor, on the other hand, were viewed as losers, not winners (15/75), as were American workers (30/63) and the middle class (37/56).
Other interesting findings from the survey:
1. Kerry is ahead of Bush among RVs 49-44, including leads of 27 points among moderates, 23 points among young voters (18-29) and 9 points among independents.
2. Bush’s approval rating is net negative in the poll (47/49) and is only 42 percent among independents.
3. Almost without exception in the poll, the views of independents and Democrats are relatively close together and the views of independents and Republicans are quite far apart. That includes views of how much progress the country has made in the last three years, who the winners and losers are and attitudes toward the Iraq war.
4. Attitudes toward labor unions were strikingly positive. Only John McCain scored better in a series of thermometer readings included in the poll (Sweeney-McCain: the dream ticket?)
5. Registered voters who were not deemed likely voters (LVs) were heavily skewed toward the Democrats in everything from party ID and vote intention to their views on how much progress has been made under the Bush administration. That suggests that if turnout is high this November–as almost all campaign interest measures so far suggest–that will be a boon to the Democrats.
6. If you include leaners, Democrats have a 10 point party ID advantage among RVs in the poll. Take that, Matthew Dowd.

A front-page article in The Washington Post today detailed Democrats’ concerns that:
[Kerry] has not crisply articulated what a Kerry presidency would stand for beyond undoing much of the Bush agenda.
So far, these concerns have not slowed Kerry. But if Kerry cannot change this perception coming out of next month’s Democratic convention in Boston, it could prove much harder for the party to maximize turnout, win over Ralph Nader voters and keep independents from swinging to Bush, they say.
I agree with Noam Scheiber that the real problem here for Kerry is less maximizing turnout/exciting the base than it is keeping swing voters on Kerry’s side. But, as Scheiber acknowledges, the fact that “Kerry hasn’t yet stumbled onto a compelling, affirmative pitch” could eventually be a real problem with these voters.
A compelling, affirmative pitch for Kerry is needed on both domestic and international issues, but that need is perhaps clearest on the international side, particularly on Iraq. Consider these data from the recent Los Angeles Times (LAT) poll.
According to the LAT poll, Bush’s approval rating on Iraq is just 44 percent, with 55 percent disapproval. By 53-43, the public now believes the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over. And by 61-35, they believe the US is getting bogged down in Iraq, rather than making good progress. Finally, just 35 percent believe Bush has offered a clear plan on how he would handle the Iraq situation, compared to 44 percent who believe he has not.
Pretty negative, huh? Trouble is, just 15 percent think Kerry has offered a clear plan on the Iraq situation, compared to 34 percent who believe he has not and 43 percent who say they haven’t yet heard enough from Kerry to form an opinion. In addition, 55 percent say they generally know not too much or nothing at all about Kerry’s proposals on foreign affairs. These are not encouraging figures.
Moreover, one of the key components of Kerry’s Iraq plan, such as it is, meets with a tepid response. Just 46 percent say they agree with Kerry’s assessment that “President Bush has lost credibility around the world and that only a new president can rally the support of U.S. allies to help stabilize Iraq”, compared to 47 percent who disagree.
In an intriguing manifestation of this possible problem for Kerry, a recent Time magazine poll of Catholics, a swingish constituency, found Kerry ahead among these voters by 49-38 on who has a plan for the economy, but behind Bush by a point (44-45) on who has a plan for Iraq and trailing by 12 points (38-50) on who has a plan for fighting terrorism.
So Kerry has some work to do to convince voters, especially swing voters, he has an affirmative, compelling plan for bringing the Iraq war to a successful conclusion–in other words, that he has a plausible and responsible exit strategy for the US. While he’s probably right that just announcing an exit date won’t work, either as policy or politically (by 73-24, the public, according to the LAT poll, opposes simply setting “a deadline for the withdrawal of all American troops in Iraq”), that doesn’t mean what he’s put on the table so far is an adequate plan–especially in terms of impressing swing voters. Whether it’s sooner or later–preferably sooner–he’s eventually got to confront that problem.

As a public service, I reproduce the reply (originally in ABC News’ The Note) of Susan Pinkus, Director of the Los Angeles Times Poll, to Matthew Dowd’s allegations. Note her point about not weighting by party ID, as well as the useful time series data on party ID in the LAT poll. And note that the Democrats’ current 13 point lead is not out of line with the previous LAT poll data.
After reading Matthew Dowd’s assessment of the Los Angeles Times Poll in ABC News’ The Note, I feel that I have to respond to his assertion that the poll is a ‘mess.’ His negative spin of this poll is, quite truthfully, not unexpected. The Times makes every effort to use sound methodological techniques that are used by most reputable research and polling organizations. The questionnaire and methodology is available for anyone to see and conforms to the guidelines set forth by the National Council on Public Polls and the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Although Dowd does not like the results of the Times poll, I stand behind the poll’s results and the sound statistical methods used.
If Dowd doesn’t like the Times results, did he have a problem with the latest Gallup and CBS/New York Times polls? The horserace numbers are similar to the results of these two latest polls. Gallup had Kerry ahead by 5 points in the two-way race and CBS had Kerry up by 8 points.
The Times does RDD (random digit dialing) sampling which reaches households with listed and unlisted telephone numbers. The poll weights slightly (for minor corrections) based on census data for sex, race, age and education and does not weight for party ID. Party ID is a moving variable that changes from one election to another, and weighting by party registration makes no sense nationally because many states don’t have their voters register by party and some states don’t have voters register to vote until the day of the election.
Here is the breakdown of party affiliation in Times polls going back to September 2001:

As you can see, the numbers are pretty similar to one another (all within the margins of error).
It is also interesting to me that if the poll is ‘a mess,’ why is he reporting data from the poll — results that hopefully make his point? Why doesn’t he report that the job approval ratings are very similar to those that other polling firms are finding? For example, a new Fox poll released today shows Bush’s job approval 48 percent to 45 percent disapproval. Annenberg’s numbers show Bush’s approval to disapproval ratings at 48 percent to 49 percent. The Times poll has Bush’s positive to negative ratings 51 percent to 47 percent. Annenberg also had Bush handling the situation in Iraq at 40 percent approve and 56 percent disapprove; the Times poll shows 44 percent and 55 percent. Annenberg has Bush handling the nation’s economy at 41 percent to 55 percent; the Times had 43 percent to 54 percent.
However, if you look at all the questions, not just the horserace there is uneasiness about what is happening to the country (56 percent think the country would be better off if it moved in a new direction, 58 percent think the country is seriously off on the wrong track — which most polls are showing) and doubts about President Bush’s presidency. On the other hand, Kerry needs to do better than he is about what his proposals are. Which will win stability or change — we’ll know on Nov. 2.

First, on the controversy that has emerged about the new Los Angeles Times (LAT) poll. In essence, the criticism of the poll comes down to this: there are too many Democrats in the poll, which explains how Kerry can be leading Bush by 7, despite losing to Bush among independents and having a smaller margin among Democrats than Bush has among Republicans, and how the Democrats can be 19 points ahead in the generic congressional ballot.
And it is true, as LAT poll Susan Pinkus has admitted, that the current LAT poll has has an unusually large 13 point Democratic advantage on party ID (the sample is 38 percent Democrats, 25 percent Republicans and 24 percent independents). It could be true that there is some problem with the poll that led to oversampling of Democrats (though, since this is an RV, not LV poll, there is no obvious culprit for this problem). Or it could be plain old sampling error–the mean of this poll just happens to be unusually far away from the true population figure. Or it could be there is a surge toward the Democrats that is driving up the number of Democratic identifiers among voters and enhancing the Democrats’ party ID advantage. (Or it could be a combination of the second and third explanations: there is a surge toward the Democrats and sampling error in the LAT poll produced an unusually high number of Democrats, even given that Democratic surge.)
Of course, no one can “prove” anything here. But I, for one, find these figures (the Democratic party ID advantage and generic congressional ballot advantage) generally plausible, if perhaps a bit on the high side. There are ample grounds for thinking there is, in fact, a surge toward the Democrats and their positions and away from the Republicans and their positions among the broad electorate. A growing Democratic party ID advantage is a logical consequence of that surge, since party ID does not remain stable as political conditions change.
Indeed, the Democratic party ID advantage has been growing ever since the post-9/11 surge in Republican party ID ended sometime in 2003, so the LAT 13 point Democratic advantage, while seemingly high, fits well with trend. Note also that it is not without recent precedent: a recent ABC News poll gave Democrats a 10 point party ID lead and a January CBS News/New York Times poll gave the Dems a 13 point lead (though note that this included leaners). The same is true of the Democrats’ big advantage on the generic Congressional ballot; public polls have been showing that advantage growing steadily for quite awhile and a number of polls have shown the Democrats with double-digit leads (though, admittedly, none has shown a lead as high as LAT’s).
Conclusion: there is no good reason to ignore the results of this poll (unless you’re Matthew Dowd, of course, who has his own reasons for doing so). Like all polls, it should be taken with a grain of salt and considered in relationship to other polls. But there’s no need, in my view, to be any more stringent that that.
So back to the data. I promised to discuss the Bush-Kerry comparisons on traits and issues, which were generated by giving respondents a series of statements of the form “he…….” and asking them whether the statement applies more to Bush or Kerry.
It is interesting to compare Kerry’s worst area (“he flip-flops on the issue”) to Bush’s worst area (“he is too ideological and stubborn”). By almost 2:1 (48-25), voters felt flip-flopping applies more to Kerry, but by well over 3:1 (58-16), voters felt being too ideological and stubborn applies more to Bush (57-14 among independents and 64-11 among moderates). Given the pragmatic, problem-solving orientation of American voters, that seems like an exceptionally poor position for Bush to be in.
It’s also worth noting that Bush’s numbers in his second-worst area (“he has better ideas for handling the problems of cost and access to health care”) are also worse (51-24 against him; including 50-19 among independents and 63-11 among moderates) than Kerry’s numbers in the flip-flopping area.
Other good areas for Kerry are “he has better ideas for strengthening the nation’s economy” (48-37 in his favor, including 46-31 in Ohio) and “he cares about people like me” (47-35, including 45-31 in Ohio), while good areas for Bush are “he would be best at keeping the country safe from terrorism” (50-31 in his favor) and “he shares my moral values” (45-36).
Finally, note that Bush has no advantage at all on “he will be a strong leader for the country” (44-44) and only a one point advantage on “he has the honesty and integrity to serve as president” (41-40). For a president whose stock in trade used to be the strong leader who told it like it was, that’s not very encouraging news.
But more encouraging than this: by 52-22, voters say the country is worse off, rather than better off, due to the economic policies pursued by Bush in the last three years. And it’s an essentially identical 52-23 verdict on that question in Ohio.
Perhaps instead of wondering whether there’s a surge toward the Democrats, we should be wondering why it took so long!

The Los Angeles Times (LAT) has released a major new national poll that includes oversamples in three battleground states, Ohio, Missouri and Wisconsin. And it provides little evidence that the GOP’s fervently-desired “Reagan death bounce” is materializing; in fact, Kerry’s 7 point lead among RVs in this poll (51-44), conducted entirely since Reagan’s death, is actually larger than Kerry’s lead in a recent Gallup poll that only partially overlapped the period since Reagan’s death.
The breakdown of the horse race data provides some interesting results. Bush’s current advantage among men is almost non-existent (49-48), while he is behind by 13 points (40-53) among women. Kerry is ahead by 10 points among 18-29 year olds, consistent with the lead he has had among young voters in most polls. And he has a 2:1 advantage among moderates (60-32), though, interestingly, and in contrast to other recent polls I’ve seen, he runs slightly behind among independents (46-49; note, however, that among moderate independents, Kerry has a huge 63-31 lead). In terms of the three battleground states where LAT oversampled, Kerry is losing 42-48 in MO, dead-even in WI (44-44) and ahead 46-45 in OH).
And here’s a startling result from their generic congressional ballot question: Democrats are favored over Republicans by an amazing 54-35 margin, including 3:1 among moderates (60-20) and even 51-38 among male voters.
In terms of direction of the country, the classic right direction/wrong track question is heavily negative (34 right direction/58 wrong track). And a related question, “…do you think the country is better off because of George W. Bush’s policies and should proceed in the direction he set out, or do you think the country is not better off and needs to move in a new direction?”, also returns a resoundingly negative 39/56 verdict, including 26/61 among moderates and 35/58 in Ohio.
Bush does get an approval rating that is high by his recent standards (51 percent). He is, however, net negative among independents (48/50) and moderates (44/52) and only 48/48 in Ohio. His other approval ratings are unimpressive, if a tad higher than in other recent public polls: 54/42 on the war on terrorism; 44/55 on Iraq; and 43/54 on the economy (as LAT notes, essentially unchanged since their last poll in late March, despite the last several months of pretty good job growth).
In the poll, almost half the country (49 percent) now says they have an unfavorable impression of Bush, compared to exactly half who say they are favorable, for a razor-thin +1 net rating. Kerry, in contrast, is only viewed unfavorably by 32 percent, compared to 51 percent who view him favorably, for a +19 net rating. Note that that relationship is replicated in Ohio, where Bush is +1 on favorability and Kerry is +16.
I’ll cover the Bush-Kerry comparisons on specific traits and issues tomorrow.

I gave my basic views on this question a few days ago. But I couldn’t resist calling attention to this well-researched front-page article, “Economy Provides No Boost to Bush“, in The Washington Post. Here’s an excerpt from the article, starting with some salient data that I really wish the media would keep in mind when they write about this issue:
Bush is not the first president to suffer from a disconnect between objective economic indicators and voter perceptions on the economy. The economy began growing steadily in March 1991, when President George H.W. Bush registered a 49 percent approval rating on his handling of the economy. But by July of 1992, those approval ratings had slid to an abysmal 25 percent, presaging his electoral defeat three months later.
By October 1994, economic growth had climbed to a healthy 4 percent, and unemployment had slid from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 6.1 percent. Yet President Bill Clinton’s economic job approval ratings were stuck at 43 percent, with 52 percent disapproving. The GOP swept into power on Capitol Hill the next month. It was not until June 1996, more than five years into the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, that Clinton’s approval ratings on the economy turned solidly positive.
“Americans are a show-me people,” said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “They need to be shown that things have actually been changed, and I think in an economic recovery, this means seeing the guy down the street getting his job back rather than good jobs numbers.”
For President Bush, the disconnect has been far more pronounced. Over the course of this year, according to Gallup polling, disapproval of Bush’s handling of the economy has risen in lock step with the economy’s performance, from 43 percent in early January to 58 percent. “It may be hard to evince positive responses to anything we ask them,” conceded Frank Newport, Gallup’s polling director.
For Republicans, frustration is beginning to show. Last week, when the Labor Department announced that an additional 248,000 jobs had been created in May, House Ways and Means Committee Republicans e-mailed reporters, blaring, “It’s a Booming Economy, Stupid.”
But John R. Zaller, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, suggested that voters may not be stupid. They just may have considerably sharper antennae than economists.
In the fall of 2000, when most economic indicators continued to surge, anxiety among voters began to take a toll on Democrat Al Gore’s White House bid, Zaller said. That anxiety proved to be prescient: By the spring of 2001, the economy had slipped into recession.
This go-round, jobs are coming back, but Americans may sense that those jobs are not of the same quality as the work that was lost, Newport said. Any good economic news is being tempered by high gasoline prices, and a generally sour mood has made voters skeptical.

On May 17, I mentioned the state-level polls of Hispanic LVs done by the New Democrat Network and allowed as how the full results would be released shortly.
Well, they fooled me. NDN never did post the full results on their website–hopefully, they’ll get around to doing that at some point–but I did manage to secure a copy of the topline results and can now provide a bit more detail on these polls.
In that earlier post, I mentioned that:
While [Kerry] is behind among Florida Hispanics, apparently because of overwhelming suppport for Bush among Cuban-American Hispanics, in the southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, Kerry’s looking very strong. Among Nevada Hispanics, Kerry is ahead of Bush 58-31, a 27 point lead that is quite close to Gore’s 31 point lead in 2000. And Kerry is ahead by 59-30 among Arizona Hispanics, a 29 point lead that is closely approximates Gore’s 2000 margin in that state (also 31 points). Finally, in New Mexico, Kerry is ahead by an overwhelming 64-25; that 39 point lead is actually a bit larger than Gore’s very healthy 34 point lead in 2000.
Here’s the backstory to those strong Kerry leads among Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico Hispanics. Since the stories are pretty similar in the three states, I’ll provide data for all three states in uniform AZ, NV, NM order as I go through the findings.
Start with favorability ratings. Southwestern Hispanic voters are net negative on Bush (42 favorable/53 unfavorable, 41/54, 40/52), but quite positive about on Kerry (52/28, 50/27, 55/26). And they are very positive about the Democratic party (71/18, 62/22, 72/19), but tepid-to-negative about the Republican party (48/43, 35/51, 37/44). Note also that the Democrats have huge advantages in party ID in all three states (by 51, 34 and 51 points, respectively).
Turning to Bush’s approval ratings, they are poor to abysmal in all areas tested by NDN. (Note: these job ratings are not done in standard approve/disapprove format, but rather by giving respondents four choices: excellent, good, mediocre, poor, similar to the way Zogby does job ratings. “Excellent” and “good” are combined here to give Bush’s positive rating in the different areas.)
Bush’s overall job ratings are generally poor (37, 39, 40). His ratings on “upholding moral values” are better (43, 49, 46). But the rest of his ratings are substantially more negative than his overall job rating: keeping his promises to the Hispanic/Latino community (22, 26, 25); creating jobs (29, 34, 30); improving the quality of public schools (28, 32, 30); improving access to affordable health care (35, 30, 39); dealing with the immigration issue (27, 25, 34); protecting Social Security and Medicare (29, 33, 34); and funding social services for the elderly (30, 34, 39).
Turning to party images, the Democratic party is strongly favored over the Repoublican party in all areas tested by NDN save fighting terrorism the most effectively and helping businesses the most. These area where Democrats are favored include: helping you and your family live a better life (+36, +35, +35); upholding moral values best (18, 15, 23); being committed to public education (42, 25, 37); creating a large number of new jobs (41, 24, 41); helping working families the most (61, 37, 51); supporting universal health care (30, 42, 42); and doing a better job on immigration issues (10, 26, 15).
These states all look like they’re going to be close. Based on these data, the key to taking these states for Kerry would seem to lie in ensuring a high level of Hispanic mobilization and turnout in November.