PA Senate Polling: Burn After Reading?

By Nathan L. Gonzales

With the proliferation of polling this cycle, political junkies, journalists and party strategists are swimming in a sea of numbers. With each new survey that is released, the party that is ahead touts the results while the party that trails disparages and discounts the pollster. Rinse and repeat.

But divergent poll results aren’t necessarily the result of a partisan agenda. An examination of seven polls over six weeks in the Pennsylvania Senate race demonstrates varying methodologies and, more importantly, a difference of opinion on the makeup of the electorate in November.

Instead of just reading the top-line results, it’s necessary to examine dates and sample sizes and digest the poll in context. Unfortunately, context is often a casualty in the current 24/7 churn of the news cycle.

Beginning in late February, a Quinnipiac University poll showed Sen. Arlen Specter (D) ahead of former Rep. Pat Toomey (R) by 7 points in a general election matchup. A week later, Susquehanna Polling and Research (R) showed Toomey with a 6-point advantage. A couple days after that, a Research 2000 survey done for the liberal Web site Daily Kos gave Specter a 6-point edge. Five days later, Rasmussen Reports had Toomey up by 9 points, and then Franklin and Marshall College showed the Republican with a narrower 4-point lead.

More recently, a Public Policy Polling (D) survey showed Toomey with a statistically insignificant lead and, in a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday, the former GOP Congressman was up by 5 points. Click here to see the chart of all seven polls and details of the samples.

So what happened? Why so much movement in a race seven months away from Election Day?

Even though the polls were taken against the backdrop of the escalating health care fight on Capitol Hill, the Senate campaigns were not engaged in heavy paid media campaigns that often affect poll results.

Instead, the varying results were likely because of a difference in methodologies, and if the margins of error are applied correctly, the polls are not that far off from each other.

At this stage of the cycle, pollsters are still looking at different samples of people. Susquehanna, Research 2000, and Rasmussen surveyed likely voters while Quinnipiac, PPP, and Franklin and Marshall polled registered voters. Comparing the two different groups is wrong.

“I don’t know why people pay attention to polls of people who aren’t going to vote,” said Jon Lerner of Red Sea Communications, who is polling for Toomey.

“Registered samples, as you get closer, are useless,” according to Research 2000’s Del Ali, who added that they aren’t necessarily a problem months out from Election Day.

“The importance of likely voters gets greater as Election Day approaches. [But] it seems a stretch that [the likely voter pool] you’re envisioning today will hold up to Election Day,” explained Berwood Yost, head methodologist of the Franklin and Marshall College poll. “Voters aren’t sure about the campaigns and aren’t paying attention.”

Franklin and Marshall and Quinnipiac will be switching to likely voter samples later this cycle.

So, how does this affect the survey results?

“I believe that the likely voter model will be more favorable to Republicans,” Scott Rasmussen told Roll Call, noting the increased enthusiasm of the GOP and general historical midterm trends against the party in power. “I don’t believe that there is a Republican resurgence,” added Rasmussen, whose polls are often criticized as being GOP-friendly. “It’s a resistance to Democratic rule ... the inverse of 2006 and 2008.”

But that doesn’t explain Research 2000’s poll of likely voters, which had Specter with a significant lead. The age of the electorate is becoming a critical point of contention.

“That’s the magic question,” laughed Ali of Research 2000, whose March 8-10 survey had 18-to-29-year-olds making up 14 percent of the sample and Specter leading by 6 points, 47 percent to 41 percent. Younger voters (18-29) made up 18 percent of the electorate in 2008 and 11 percent in the 2006 midterm elections, according to exit polling.

“I don’t look at exit polls as gospel,” Ali said. “I’m not so much etched in stone that every midterm electorate will be the same.” The pollster has seen the number of younger voters decrease over the past year in other polls he’s conducted. Younger voters made up 16 percent of the sample in Ali’s August poll in Pennsylvania.

Republicans believe the midterm electorate will be significantly older than the one that showed up to vote in 2008, and consequently more friendly to GOP candidates. Steven Shepard of National Journal recently compared R2K’s sample with Susquehanna, which had 18-to-29-year-olds making up just 5 percent of the sample and Toomey with a 42 percent to 36 percent advantage.

Rasmussen evaluates exit polls and adjusts the sample compared to trends in his monthly national tracking survey, among other factors. Younger voters made up 9 percent of the Rasmussen poll, which had Toomey ahead 49 percent to 40 percent.

However, age does not always determine the outcome of the ballot tests. The February Quinnipiac and March Franklin and Marshall surveys pegged younger voters similarly making up 12 percent and 11 percent of the vote, both sampled registered voters, and each poll had a different leader. The Franklin and Marshall poll was taken at the height of the health care debate and could have picked up GOP enthusiasm.

In some cases, divergent poll results can be explained by the partisanship of the sample. In the Massachusetts special election, partisan pollsters disagreed about who would show up to vote. But the partisan makeup of the sample may not matter as much in the Keystone State.

“The high level of two-party registration masks the divisions within the party,” Lerner said. Party registration usually reflects base support, but the two-party registration is so high that there are many “soft” partisan voters in those numbers.

Pennsylvania has an extremely high rate of two-party registration: 51 percent Democratic, 37 percent Republican and 12 percent others. In comparison, even though Massachusetts is a Democratic state, it’s only 37 percent Democratic, 12 percent Republican and 51 percent unenrolled or others. Identifying the number of independents is critical because those voters helped vault Republicans to victory in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections in 2009 and in Massachusetts.

There are other considerations when evaluating polling such as random digit dial versus polling off a voter file, question wording and interactive voice response versus live callers.

Even though party operatives handling polling results like hand grenades, the pollsters themselves are much more deferential.

“It troubles me from an industry standpoint that when polls come out, people instantly decide who to root for,” Rasmussen said. “I believe you learn from all the polls out there.”

By the end of the month, Rasmussen will have polled in every Senate and gubernatorial race in the country and plans to poll at least once a month in the competitive races through Election Day.

“He’s accurate based on his weighting. I feel good about our numbers based on our weighting,” Ali said about Rasmussen. Like any election, this year’s results will boil down to who shows up to vote. “The jury is still out,” Ali added about the November electorate, “How does anyone know that?”

This story first appeared on RollCall.com on CQPolitics.com on April 8, 2010. 2010 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Can Polling Memos Change the Narrative About 2010 Races?

By Stuart Rothenberg

Here’s a bulletin for you: Anytime a campaign releases a polling memo, it is making an argument, not merely offering survey data for your information. Polling memos aren’t written to make you smarter.

This shouldn’t need to be said, of course, but when I see reporters swallowing spin as if it were information — as one Louisiana Gannett reporter did recently in writing about the state’s Senate race — I get very uncomfortable.

A number of Democratic polling memos from reputable polling firms have been circulating over the past couple of weeks — two from Anzalone Liszt Research about the Louisiana Senate race and about Rep. Bobby Bright’s (D-Ala.) re-election prospects, and one from Harstad Strategic Research about the Colorado Senate race — and readers should understand what’s going on with them.

I am not, I must emphasize, challenging the data. These are credible polling firms, and almost every pollster I know has released these kinds of memos in the past. I am only using Anzalone Liszt and Harstad as examples.

The purpose of the Louisiana poll memo is to alter the developing narrative that the state’s Senate race is essentially over and that Sen. David Vitter (R) won’t be seriously threatened by Rep. Charlie Melancon (D). The Alabama memo seeks to create a sense of inevitability about Bright’s re-election prospects and undercut GOP challenger Martha Roby’s credibility (and fundraising and buzz).

The Colorado memo seeks to rebut polling that shows appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (D) trailing in his race and to help him build momentum for his primary and the fall election.

I recently asked a pollster, not for attribution of course, about these kinds of memos and received a gloriously forthright answer: “Anyone who does a survey for strategic reasons isn’t going to release strategic information.”

Pollsters say that their surveys present only a “snapshot” of a race at a particular moment. That’s true. But often the snapshot presented in a memo is misleading, and the pollster knows it. Memos include numbers intended to build an argument that seems empirically based but isn’t. They don’t present the whole picture, because the whole picture isn’t in their client’s interest.

Even highly regarded, methodologically legit pollsters tell me to call them up privately if I want to get their real assessment about a race — don’t go by the memo they release. I get this from both Republican and Democratic pollsters, and I have received the same advice for years.

Actually, most pollsters hate to write these kinds of memos, but their clients want them to create a more favorable narrative, so they write them, usually using their words very carefully.

The Bright memo begins “Congressman Bobby Bright is well positioned to win re-election in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional district. Bright’s personal popularity and positive job rating are extremely high.” The memo looks at the Congressman’s excellent favorable/unfavorable ratings, respondents’ answers to questions about Bright’s qualities and his leads of 24 to 32 points over possible November opponents.

The memo ends with the following paragraph: “Bright leads Roby among virtually all gender, race, and geographic subgroups. Bright earns double-digit margins with white voters, African American voters, Independent voters, and in both the Montgomery and Dothan media markets.”

Bright, a conservative Democrat, won election to Congress because of the Democratic wave in 2008. He beat a politically damaged GOP nominee who had emerged from a bruising primary by six-tenths of a point (50.2 percent to 49.6 percent), winning by 1,790 votes out of more than 286,000 cast.

However highly regarded Bright is, this is a Republican district. President Barack Obama drew only 37 percent of the vote in it in 2008, losing it to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) by more than 25 points.

Bright does start off well-positioned for his re-election bid, but he is almost guaranteed to have a razor-close race against Roby, a Montgomery city councilwoman and the likely GOP nominee. Maybe he’ll win; maybe he won’t. Whatever the outcome, he won’t win by 20 points or carry white voters by double digits.

If Bright holds on to win re-election, he’ll win by a point or two. Given that, the Anzalone Liszt poll tells us little about November. Voters apparently don’t know anything about the Republican candidates, and it’s so far from Election Day that most voters haven’t given much thought to what their vote might mean or who they really will vote for in the fall.

The Bright memo reminds me of a June 15, 2009, Anzalone Liszt polling memo that listed all of Democrat Creigh Deeds’ advantages in the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial race.

That memo asserted: “Deeds has a high favorable rating, and a lower unfavorable rating, even though McDonnell spent more on television [during the primary]. Deeds also holds critical issue advantages that will make it difficult for McDonnell to make up ground.”

The memo said that Deeds held a 4-point lead in the race and was able to win votes across the state “including traditional Republican strongholds.” “At the same time, McDonnell will have a difficult time making inroads in increasingly Democratic Northern Virginia,” it asserted.

Of course, McDonnell won 59 percent to 41 percent, turning a 4-point deficit in the poll into an 18-point victory. Deeds didn’t do well in “Republican strongholds,” and McDonnell carried Fairfax County, the state’s largest county and the epitome of what is meant by “Northern Virginia.”

Polling memos sometimes contain useful nuggets of data, but they often leave out other important data and stress the narrative the campaign wants to create. Don’t take them at face value.


This column first appeared in Roll Call and on CQPolitics.com on March 18, 2010. 2010 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Don’t Believe the Hype ... or Everything That You Read

By Stuart Rothenberg

Periodically (it seems more often these days, actually), I come across some really silly political stuff that screams out for attention. Here are four examples. Caveat emptor!

Exhibit No. 1: A Feb. 17 survey of 500 likely Wisconsin voters by Rasmussen Reports.

Rasmussen is an automated poll that does not include live interviewers, and, as anyone who follows polling knows, it’s highly controversial, in part because of the large number of surveys conducted by the firm and the widespread belief that the firm favors Republicans.

The numbers in the Wisconsin survey that stuck out like a sore thumb were the favorable and unfavorable ratings of Republican Senate hopeful Dave Westlake. According to the survey, 33 percent of those polled had a favorable view of Westlake, while 31 percent had an unfavorable opinion of him.

What’s so weird about that? Well, Westlake isn’t exactly a public figure.

The self-described “entrepreneur and small businessman” went to West Point and earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, but as far as I can tell, he has no political experience and hasn’t spent any money to get known. His year-end Federal Election Commission report showed that at the end of 2009 he had raised $33,000, spent $31,000 and had less than $3,000 in the bank.

Dave Westlake probably is a nice guy, and I wish him well. But there is no way that two out of three likely Wisconsin voters know enough about him to have an opinion of him (unless Rasmussen provided other information, such as party). And that’s what the favorable/unfavorable question is intended to produce — information about the person’s name identification and image.

In November, Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling company, surveyed the Wisconsin Senate race and found Westlake’s ID at 2 percent favorable/9 percent unfavorable. Could Westlake’s name ID have skyrocketed from 11 percent to 64 percent from November to February? No, not without a statewide media blitz.

Exhibit No. 2: A Feb. 8 e-mail from Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff’s campaign touting his standing in recent Rasmussen polls.

Romanoff, a former Colorado Speaker, is challenging appointed Sen. Michael Bennet in this year’s Democratic primary, and given the political environment, anything is possible.

But there are two things about the e-mail that are ridiculous. First, Democratic strategists spend a good deal of time discrediting Rasmussen as a Republican pollster whose results rarely reflect reality. Yet, here is the Romanoff campaign basing its entire argument about Romanoff’s alleged electability on two Rasmussen surveys. Incredible.

And second, the argument that Romanoff is the stronger general election candidate because of the Rasmussen polls comes from Romanoff consultant Celinda Lake. Since Lake is herself a pollster, you’d think that she might refer to one of her own surveys, rather than the survey of another pollster. She doesn’t.

Exhibit No. 3: Rep. Joe Sestak (D) claims the White House offered him a job to get him out of the Pennsylvania Senate race.

Sestak’s assertion that he was offered a job by the administration isn’t shocking at all. It’s the media reaction to it that is.

What’s the big deal? This kind of thing happens all of the time. There is nothing immoral or unethical about it. It’s politics. The White House embraced Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) when he switched parties, and now they are trying to clear the primary field for him.

As news goes, it’s interesting but hardly shocking or outrageous. But it was treated as a big deal, not only by the Philadelphia newspapers but by the Associated Press and other newspapers and blogs.

Exhibit No. 4: All the hype about the Nevada Tea Party getting on the ballot and the likely candidacy of businessman Jon Ashjian.

News of the Tea Party’s ballot status in Nevada spread like wildfire. PoliticalWire reported on a Public Opinion Strategies poll by asserting that Ashjian “changes” the Nevada race, with Ashjian “helping” Sen. Harry Reid (D).

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quoted highly regarded Nevada political analyst Jon Ralston as tweeting that Ashjian “could have huge impact” on the contest, and National Journal reported that Ashjian “could split conservative votes.”

CQ-Roll Call got caught up in the hype too, I must add.

First, as everyone who watched the New Jersey gubernatorial race last year should remember, Independent Chris Daggett received 5.8 percent of the vote, underperforming every survey from mid-September to Election Day.

Early polls always exaggerate the strength of third-party candidates, and there is every reason to believe that this is the case with the POS poll. (This is not a criticism of POS, which I continue to regard as one of the absolutely best survey research firms in the business.)

Second, only somebody with little background in polling would spend a lot of time at this point looking at general election ballot tests of candidates with dramatically unequal name identification.

A huge 94 percent of Nevada voters know enough about Harry Reid to have an opinion of him, while the comparable figure for the leading Republicans in the race is much lower. Sue Lowden is at 56 percent, Danny Tarkanian is at 52 percent and Sharron Angle is at 26 percent.

No matter what Ashjian draws in the hypothetical ballot tests, Reid is stuck between 37 percent and 39 percent of the vote in most polls, in the POS survey and in others. Until that changes, Ashjian will be a nonfactor in the race, and spending time on his potential is little more than wishful thinking by Democrats and media hype by reporters.


This column first appeared in Roll Call and on CQPolitics.com on March 1, 2010. 2010 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

N.C. Controversy Reveals Perils of Reporting on Polls

By Stuart Rothenberg

One of the growing problems with political reporting is the explosion of polls and the tendency — particularly among local TV reporters and editors, cable TV hosts and bloggers — to report all of them as if they are equally reliable and newsworthy, and to draw dramatic conclusions from small subsamples and from statistically insignificant changes.

Polls receive so much attention that they become the focus of races — even if the actual races haven’t really started. This is true right now in North Carolina and Nevada, where Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.) look weak in early surveys even though they have not drawn heavyweight opponents.

Recently, Republicans have started complaining long and hard about polling conducted this cycle by Public Policy Polling in the Tar Heel State. They note, quite correctly, that PPP is a Democratic polling firm and that too many reporters fail to note their partisan bent. GOP insiders also complain about the firm’s sample, arguing that it often is too urban and too Democratic, and that its surveys understate Burr’s strength and his prospects for re-election.

If readers don’t know that PPP is a Democratic firm, they are reading the wrong publications. At the Rothenberg Political Report, we’ve regarded PPP as a Democratic firm, and identified it as such, since it has been around. In February, Roll Call reporter John McArdle wrote a lengthy article about PPP, calling it “a Democratic firm based in Raleigh” and referring to the company’s “controversial” methodology. National Journal’s Hotline also identifies PPP as a Democratic firm, as does the News & Observer (Raleigh).

It’s true that some newspapers don’t always note PPP’s Democratic credentials — including the Charlotte Observer, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the News-Topic (Lenoir, N.C.) — but that’s not PPP’s fault. Obviously, any reporter who fails to note the firm’s partisan bent is making an error, and Republicans have a legitimate gripe with them.

GOP efforts to discredit PPP because it is a Democratic firm are a different story. Yes, it’s important to note the firm’s partisan connections, and it’s not unreasonable to be wary, at least initially, of its numbers. But the fact that the polling firm works for Democrats doesn’t make its poll numbers inherently flawed.

In fact, the handful of us who have been reporting on and handicapping House and Senate races for many years tend to believe that partisan pollsters generally produce more reliable numbers than colleges and some newspapers. The key, of course, is to get them to share those numbers and to discuss them free of spin.

I personally have been slow to give PPP’s surveys a lot of credibility because of its interactive voice response methodology. Pollsters who are relatively new to political polling need to prove that they have a successful track record before they deserve to be taken seriously, and I haven’t been convinced that PPP has met that standard.

But PPP’s polling in this year’s Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary was good, and a pollster whom I respect highly tells me that the firm’s poll numbers in North Carolina last year were good, as well. So dismissing PPP’s data out of hand seems unwise.

PPP puts its polls up on its Web site, including the demographics of each survey, so anyone who is interested can view those data and evaluate the sample. Of course, many people who talk about polls don’t pay any attention to the mechanics of polling or to individual samples, but that’s part of the broader problem that I already mentioned.

Ironically, in reporting on the North Carolina controversy recently, Politico mistakenly treated a seriously flawed Republican “poll” as if it were a legitimate public opinion survey. The Hotline made the same mistake, proving that even careful, politically astute journalists can miss things.

Politico’s article on PPP refers to Burr consultant Paul Shumaker and a “survey” conducted by his firm, Carolina Strategy Group, which appears to show the Senator somewhat better positioned for re-election than does PPP’s polling.

The problem is that many of the questions in that particular “poll” are loaded, discrediting the entire survey and making it look much worse than PPP’s approach. (Interestingly, Republican strategists aren’t complaining about it — or Republican or Republican-leaning pollsters who also produce survey results that sometimes seem mind-bogglingly outlandish.)

For example, instead of asking a straight Congressional job approval question, Shumaker’s survey asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the job Congress is doing under the leadership of Senator Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi?”

National surveys increasingly show Pelosi is a divisive figure, so including a mention of her in the question could well distort the results about respondents’ attitudes about Congress. It could also poison the rest of the survey.

Two questions later, respondents are asked which Senate candidate, Burr or North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (D), would “better serve the people of North Carolina as a check and balance on the policies of President Obama.”

That question is followed immediately by a straight ballot test between Burr and Marshall. Unfortunately, the results from this question — which showed Burr ahead 52 percent to 37 percent — have been polluted by the previous questions, two of which included the “check and balance” language.

Rather than whining about PPP, Republicans might want to try to set the record straight in North Carolina by releasing their own poll by a credible, full-time polling firm. That would go a long way to helping develop a more balanced, more thoughtful narrative about the race.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on June 29, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Obama's Poll Numbers: Stu on Hardball

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Polls, Press Releases and Partisanship: Let the Reader Beware

By Stuart Rothenberg

Nobody is under oath, so I suppose that it’s too much to expect “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” especially when it comes to press releases, headlines and even reputable pollsters.

But I was disappointed to see how some of the results of a March Public Opinion Strategies/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll of likely voters for National Public Radio were presented.

Yes, the two firms have very different partisan bents, but they collaborated on a national survey for NPR, a nonpartisan organization, so it’s reasonable to expect a certain level of analytical neutrality from both.

But if you only read about the NPR poll on the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Web site, you would have a seriously distorted view of the results of the survey.

“Latest NPR Poll: Democrats Besting Republicans in National Debate on Key Budget Issues” proclaimed the headline on the Democratic firm’s Web site.

The report on the Web site continued by saying the poll “shows [President] Barack Obama with high overall approval ratings and strong marks on handling the economy, but much more important, Democrats winning the big debates surrounding Obama’s first budget on taxes, energy, health care, and the deficit by significant margins.”

If you are looking for any bits of data that are more even-handed, you can find it in the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner statement only if you have a powerful magnifying glass.

For example, “On both energy and health care the Democratic message wins by 53 [percent] to 42 percent, a margin nearly twice the Democrats’ 6-point partisan advantage.” So Democrats have only a 6-point advantage?

Or this: “President Obama’s approval rating remains strong. Nearly six-in-ten voters (59 percent) approve of the job President Obama is doing while just 35 percent disapprove.” Just 35 percent disapprove? That’s a surprisingly high number compared to other polls and given the euphoria implicit in the Greenberg analysis.

You would think that analysis of a survey examining the national political landscape might note prominently that the Democratic Party’s 6-point advantage in party identification was down from a 10-point advantage in May 2008, the last NPR poll, or holding steady from November, when the national exit poll showed the electorate as 39 percent Democratic and 32 percent Republican.

And, you might think that it’s worth noting that the Congressional generic ballot in the new NPR survey showed the parties deadlocked at 42 percent, a surprising reversal from Election Day, when Democrats had a substantial advantage in ID, especially given the public’s low opinion of the Republican Party.

And while I wouldn’t disagree with the characterization of Obama’s poll numbers as “strong,” NPR correspondent Mara Liasson’s observation that the president’s job approval is “down from the mid-60s” and “just about where the past 4 presidents have been at this point in their terms” put the numbers in a far more realistic context.

The cheerleading of the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner release is all the more obvious and misleading because the NPR poll came just one day after the release of a Pew Research Center for the People & the Press national poll headlined “Obama’s Approval Rating Slips Amid Division Over Economic Proposals.”

That Pew survey found Obama’s job approval had slipped from 64 percent in February to 59 percent in March, while his disapproval rating rose from 17 percent to 26 percent. (That’s not a seismic shift, but it’s enough to get almost anyone’s attention.) Pew’s analysis accompanying the poll also noted that “the public expresses mixed views of his many major proposals to fix the economy.”

When I went over to the Public Opinion Strategies Web site, I found a brief item on the poll. The piece was headlined “New NPR Poll Released.” No spin, no bias.

The first substantive paragraph on the poll results was merely a reprint from the NPR analysis, noting that Obama’s job ratings were “still high” and that among likely voters, “the Democratic position on issues was favored across the board.” “Still, there’s some reason for Republicans to hope,” ended the paragraph.

NPR’s more matter-of-fact reporting and analysis — and Public Opinion Strategies’ use of the NPR language — stands in stark (and welcome) contrast to Greenberg’s very partisan presentation.

But NPR can’t be left off the hook entirely. NPR headline writers attached a curious headline to the release: “NPR Poll: More Voters Think U.S. Is On Right Track.”

Huh? More voters think the country is on the right track than think that it is going off in the wrong direction? Or more voters now think the country is on the right track compared to what they thought in the previous NPR poll?

The NPR story makes it clear that 63 percent still think the country is on the wrong track, so the improvement in sentiment is modest. And with a popular new president in the White House and Democrats talking constantly about change, wouldn’t you think that the “right direction” number would be higher than 31 percent?

There are plenty of polls floating around and more analysis than anyone could ever need. But partisan analysis isn’t analysis at all. It’s message.


This column first appeared in Roll Call on March 23, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Optimism About Obama Is the Only Optimism Out There

By Stuart Rothenberg

Often, when a new president or a new political party takes control of government, an uptick in public sentiment follows.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that there is some evidence of a small spike in optimism about President Barack Obama and the future. What’s stunning, however, is the growing economic pessimism, both on Main Street and Wall Street, and it is that pessimism that could eventually add to the woes of most officeholders.

Numerous polls show the president with strong personal and job-approval ratings.

A CBS News poll conducted Feb. 2-4 found 55 percent approving of Obama’s handling of the economy, and a Feb. 4-8 Pew Research Center poll found an almost identical 56 percent approved.

A Feb. 7-8 CNN/Opinion Research survey found Americans see the president as a strong leader who so far has done a good job handling foreign policy, policies on terrorism and the economy. Even though the public is worried about the future, they like Obama and have confidence in him.

Polls also show more people are upbeat about the future. A Feb. 9-12 Research 2000 poll for the liberal Democratic Web site Daily Kos showed 35 percent of respondents saying the country is headed in the right direction — a significant increase from the 26 percent who gave the same answer in early January.

CBS News surveys also found an uptick in sentiment from December (12 percent “right direction”) to early February (23 percent “right direction”).

But optimism about the president and his economic agenda seems to be based solely on his communication skills, his personal appeal and the public’s hope for a turnaround.

When Obama promised an audience in Peoria, Ill., last week that “once Congress passes this [stimulus] plan, and I sign it into law, a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America,” he was merely cheerleading.

In fact, nobody knows if that is true. The stimulus package is something of a crapshoot, and whether it will work or ultimately add to the nation’s woes is a mystery.

Other than among Democrats who are delivering the party’s “message,” pessimism abounds about the economy.

Even Obama, during last week’s press conference, asserted that the country was in a “full-blown crisis,” echoing his previous warnings since he won the presidency in November. Indeed, that assessment is the basis for his insistence on quick passage of a stimulus bill.

The ABC News Consumer Comfort Index hit a 23-year low in early February. Over four weeks ending Feb. 8, 2009, only 4 percent of the 1,000 adults surveyed rated the U.S. economy positively, while 96 percent rated it negatively.

Unemployment continues to rise (with almost 600,000 jobs lost last month), and nobody expects that to change anytime soon. Nobody knows how high it will go, but with additional layoffs announced virtually every day, it looks certain to climb from its current 7.6 percent rate to well over the 8 percent mark soon. Many think unemployment will continue to rise at least into the fourth quarter of this year and probably into early 2010.

The stock market continues to tank. Yes, it has its up moments (the Dow Jones industrial average almost made up a 246-point drop in the final 60 minutes of trading on Thursday), but the Dow continues to flirt with the 7,800 level, and it is difficult to find veteran stock pickers who are recommending many stocks at the moment. Caution remains the word.

At his press conference last week, Obama had assured viewers that “my Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, will be announcing some very clear and specific plans for how we are going to start loosening up credit once again,” but most Wall Street observers found Geithner’s presentation neither clear nor specific.

Indeed, on CNBC on Thursday afternoon, veteran watchers of the economy and stock market concluded that Wall Street “has lost confidence in Timothy Geithner” just a few weeks into his tenure and just days after his widely panned financial rescue program was released.

All of this means that the public’s honeymoon with Obama is alive and well and likely to last for an extended period, but that not everyone in the public eye will be so lucky.

The underlying weakness in the economy, and the crucial growing pessimism both in financial circles and the country at large, will certainly take a political toll on some officeholders in the near term. The public will want its scapegoat before the end of the year if no economic turnaround appears.


This column first appeared in Roll Call on February 17, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Obama Begins Presidency With High Marks Across the Board

By Nathan L. Gonzales

Barack Obama begins his presidency with stratospheric marks among Democrats and the support of a fair amount of Republicans who voted against him.

According to a Research 2000 poll done for the liberal blog Daily Kos and released Friday afternoon, Obama enjoys 77 percent favorable/20 percent unfavorable ratings among all adults. Unsurprisingly, Democrats gave him a 93 percent favorable/4 percent unfavorable rating, but Obama’s numbers among Republicans weren’t terrible either (43 percent favorable/54 percent unfavorable). The survey of 2,400 adults was conducted Jan. 19-22.

While Obama cruised to a 365-173 Electoral College win, his popular vote victory of 53 percent to 46 percent was much narrower. More than 69 million people voted for the former Illinois Senator, but 60 million people voted against him.

Now, Obama voters and many McCain voters approve of the transition, are happy about the inauguration and feel as patriotic as ever.

According to a Jan. 12-15 Opinion Research Corp. poll for CNN, 84 percent of adult Americans approved of Obama’s handling of the transition, while only 14 percent disapproved. In 2001, 61 percent approved of former President George W. Bush’s transition from the Clinton administration after the contentious election, while 25 percent disapproved.

Sixty-eight percent of adults said they were thrilled or happy about the inauguration before it happened, while only 16 percent were unhappy or depressed. By comparison, 50 percent said they were thrilled or happy about Bush’s second inauguration in 2005, and 22 percent were unhappy or depressed.

And once again, Americans are feeling patriotic in this inaugural season. According to the CNN poll, 83 percent said they were extremely or very proud to be an American, the same percentage as in January 2005. In 2001, 87 percent said they were extremely or very proud to be an American.

Finally, Obama enjoyed a 78 percent favorable/17 percent unfavorable rating in the mid-January CNN poll. Bush had a 62 percent favorable/36 percent unfavorable rating when he entered the White House and left with a 35 percent favorable/60 percent unfavorable rating.

Although Obama starts his presidency with high approval numbers, these polls were conducted before he had to make concrete policy decisions that could alienate some voters. Only time will tell how long Obama can sustain this level of popularity.

This story first appeared on RollCall.com on January 24, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Wild Polling in the Wild, Wild West

By Nathan L. Gonzales

We’ve entered the season of dueling polls, and Montana’s gubernatorial race is no exception.

Earlier this week, the Montana Democratic Party released a poll showing Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) with a huge 39-point lead over his challenger, state Sen. Roy Brown (R). The poll, conducted Sept. 16-18 by the Mellman Group, showed the incumbent with a 63-percent-to-24-percent advantage.

The results may be on the upper end of Schweitzer’s advantage, but they certainly weren’t out of the realm of possibility in a race where the governor has consistently enjoyed the political and financial upper hand. A Mason-Dixon survey for Lee Enterprises in May showed Schweitzer with a 25-point advantage.

But the Brown campaign just couldn’t let it rest. A campaign spokesman ridiculed the poll in a Great Falls Tribune story on Wednesday, and released polling numbers to counter the Democratic results, which showed Brown leading Schweitzer by 4 points, 46 percent to 42 percent.

The problem is that those numbers, taken from a Sept. 11-12 Moore Information poll, were not the initial ballot test. That distinction was not made in the Tribune story and the numbers subsequently appeared in Thursday’s Hotline.

“The Montana gubernatorial poll numbers quoted from the Brown Campaign reflect the ‘educated’ ballot numbers after a series of statements about the candidates. The poll numbers quoted do not reflect sentiment before before respondents heard statements,” according to a statement by Moore Information to the Hotline.

“In political surveys, there is often an ‘initial ballot,’ followed by statements about the candidates, followed by an ‘educated’ ballot. The numbers you quoted reflect the ‘educated’ ballot. This is an important distinction when interpreting polling data.” As an informed ballot, the numbers would have never appeared in the Hotline.

The distinction does keep Moore Information’s well-earned credibility intact, since there is no evidence or reason to believe that Brown is winning the race. And Moore Information’s explanation reflects standard polling practices.

According to a Brown campaign aide, the Republican has no intention of releasing the initial ballot numbers, which give the truest picture of the state of the race. So it’s pretty clear that the Democratic numbers are not that far off because if Brown had dramatically different results, he would have released the numbers.

For better or worse, Schweitzer’s mouth tends to make things interesting, but for now, he’s well on his way to a second term.

This story first appeared on RollCall.com on September 26, 2008. 2008 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.