Political Consultants vs. Political Scientists

Self-described "political operative" Les Francis, with real-world experience as former executive director of both the Democratic National Committee:

I don’t need any polls to tell me that Republicans will do well in November. The “out” party almost always shows significant gains in the first midterm election of a new President.

Political scientists Joe Bafumi, Bob Erikson, and Chris Wlezien, from elite, out-of-touch, ivory-tower institutions Dartmouth, Columbia, and Temple Universities:



Game over.

P.S. I tried to keep this one short because sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words. But, after reading the first few comments, I think I need to explain a bit. So here goes:

Les Francis wrote, "I don’t need any polls to tell me that Republicans will do well in November."

Bafumi, Bob Erikson, and Wlezien's graph show that the generic ballot polls (these are what's shown on the horizontal axes of the graphs above), even months before the election, yield a very good prediction of actual congressional voting (these are what's shown on the vertical axis). So, whether or not Les Francis "needs any polls," they can be very useful for the rest of us. See here for further thoughts on the political implications of the predictability of early generic ballot surveys.

Francis's anecdotes and insights about Obama, Pelosi, etc., can be valuable but he's doing himself no favors by dismissing the polls--just because he personally doesn't understand their value, not having seen, perhaps, the Bafumi et al. graph displayed above--or by making statements such as "Barack Obama’s 2008 winning margin was somewhat out of synch with the political alignment of the country at the time," which is unsupported by any data I've seen. (See, for example, this discussion, from nearly two years ago, on how the Democrats' gains in House voting in 1008 were in fact as large as their gains in the presidential vote.)

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Automated Poll Produces Starkly Different Results on Gay Marriage Question

Not so fast, ladies and ladies (and gentlemen and gentlemen). On the heels of a CNN poll earlier this week which was the first ever to show majority support for gay marriage, Public Policy Polling has come out with a survey showing a clear majority of their respondents still opposed to it: 57 percent of registered voters who responded to their survey think gay marriage should be illegal, and 33 say it should be legal. This contrasts sharply with CNN's results, which showed either a 52-46 majority in support of gay marriage or a narrow 48-50 plurality opposed to it, depending on the question wording. In fact, the 33 percent PPP shows in support of gay marriage is the lowest of any poll since 2006.

There are several factors that might account for the differences:

Different sample frames. PPP's poll is of registered voters, whereas CNN's was conducted among all adults. Since adults who are not registered to vote tend to be younger, and younger people tend to be more supportive of gay marriage, that might account for a couple points' worth of difference. However, this might be counteracted to some extent by the fact that minorities are also more likely to be unregistered, and African-Americans tend to show demonstrably less support for gay marriage (it is not clear that this is true of Hispanics or Asians.)

Different question wording. PPP's poll asked whether gay marriage should be legal or illegal; CNN's asked whether there is currently, and whether there should be, a Constitutional right to it. These are somewhat different questions both in theory and especially in practice given the strong feelings that Americans have about the Constitution.

Sample variance. In other words, random noise. PPP's poll consisted of 606 voters, a relatively small sample; CNN's consisted of 1,000 adults, which is not much larger, and their sample was split into halves by the two forms of the question that they posed. Before the CNN and PPP polls came out, the trendline pointed to around ~44-45 percent support for gay marriage: it is possible, and perhaps somewhat likely, that both polls are statistical outliers on either side of this trend.

There is, however, somewhat more evidence that the PPP poll has suffered from sample anomalies. In particular, the age distribution they show is rather flat: just 44 percent of 18-29 year-old respondents said they supported gay marriage, versus 31 percent of registered voters aged 66 and up. By contrast, a Pew poll in August, 2009, which had a much larger (~2,000 person) sample and for which comprehensive cross-tabs are available , had 58 percent of 18-29 year-olds in support of gay marriage, but just 20 percent of those 66 and older. Likewise, the Proposition 8 exit poll in California in 2008, which also had a larger sample, had 61 percent of 18-to-29 year olds opposed to Prop 8 (that is, supporting gay marriage) versus 39 percent of those 65 and up.

Moreover, the PPP poll has only 11 percent of its respondents between ages 18-29, whereas 19 percent of actual voters in 2008 were. And they show essentially no racial split in support for gay marriage, which contradicts virtually all other research on the topic.

Part of this probably reflects the low response rates associated with automated surveys, as well as the fact that they don't call cellphones (although, to my knowledge, CNN does not currently poll cellphone voters either). Young people are hard to get on the phone, and the ones that you do get on the phone may not be especially representative of their cohort. It is hard to believe that a majority of Americans under the age of 29 think gay marriage should be illegal.

Automated versus live-operator. PPP's was, to my awareness, the first automated survey ("robopoll") that took a fair shot at asking the gay marriage question, notwithstanding a Rasmussen poll in 2006 that asked somewhat leadingly about the "definition of marriage". CNN's poll, by contrast, used live operators. There has been some speculation that people are apt to answer more honestly on delicate issues like gay rights when probed by a robopoll rather than a live-operator survey. Since it has become somewhat "politically incorrect" to oppose gay rights, it's possible that the automated surveys are relatively more immune from social desirability bias.

While there may be some truth to this, I don't think it entirely explains PPP's results. The reason is that their poll also showed fairly low levels of support for marijuana legalization: 34 percent in favor and 52 percent opposed. While that's not an enormous outlier, the average of the four live-operator polls on marijuana legalization since the start of 2010 have shown an average of 41 percent support for its legalization.

As I explained at length here, you'd expect social desirability bias on the marijuana question to run the other way, i.e., people might be more willing to express support for legalizing marijuana to an automated script rather than to a real person on the other end of the line who might be a mother, an impressionable teenager, etc. And indeed, there is some evidence that marijuana rights poll better on automated surveys. But this one was an exception, which leads me to wonder whether it simply drew a non-representative sample.

***

I mentioned yesterday that the graph we produced, which appeared to show accelerating support for gay marriage, was quite sensitive to new polling data on the endpoints. If we include the PPP poll in the graph, and re-run the LOESS regression, we no longer show an accelerating trend toward support for gay marriage but instead, a steady-as-she-goes one, with support currently on the order of 43-44 percent and opposition at about 52 percent. The lines are converging at a rate of about 1.5 points per year which means that they would cross at some point in 2013, 2014, or thereabouts.



In a lot of ways, this is probably the more neutral hypothesis on support for gay marriage, particularly given that, as PPP's Tom Jensen notes, gay marriage initiatives recently failed, albeit narrowly, in blue states like Maine and California. (Although bear in mind that the California and Maine results reflect only people who voted, and not all adults in those states.)

At the same time, the graph I posted yesterday is arguably a more apples-to-apples comparison, since PPP's is the only automated survey on this subject. If we look at trendlines in the individual surveys, by contrast, CNN and Gallup have both shown increases in support for gay marriage of about 4 points over the past year. While I have nothing against automated surveys in general, and there is something to be said for their capacity to avoid social desirability bias, they are far less tested when it comes to measuring support for policy questions, rather than producing "horse race" numbers. Meanwhile, some of the cross-tabs in the PPP poll are dubious.

Here's what I think it's safe to say: it is dangerous, and probably even a little irresponsible, to say "Americans think so-and-so" based on the results of one individual survey -- especially when it's your survey. Jensen, for instance, headlined his article "Americans still opposed to gay marriage". That's a little presumptuous, particularly when you are not calling unregistered voters, and are not calling anyone who uses a cellphone rather than a landline, which will disqualify around 45 percent of the American population -- and when most of the remaining 55 percent will hang up once they recognize its a pollster calling. Statements like these are even more dubious when they come from a pollster like Rasmussen, which takes far more shortcuts than PPP does and probably excludes 75 or 80 percent of Americans from even having the opportunity to answer one of their surveys.

By all means, there should be more polling on gay marriage, including from automated survey firms. But particularly when your survey produces results that are "different" from the consensus -- this is arguably true of the CNN poll, and certainly true of the PPP poll -- you should perhaps go back and do some additional diligence, whether that means going into the field with a larger sample size, asking the questions in a different way, or paying for a cellphone sample, rather than proclaiming what may be a bug to be a feature.

UPDATE: A FOX News poll, also out today, shows increasing levels of support for gay marriage since 2009. Giving their respondents a three-way choice of marriage, civil unions, and no legal recognition, they find numbers of 37/29/28, with marriage getting the plurality. A year ago, their numbers were at 33/33/29.

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Schaller's Law of Constitutional Amendment Politics

If you are not already familiar with Godwin’s Law, it refers to the phenomenon of extended if not heated arguments eventually devolving to the point where somebody compares an idea or person to Hitler, the Nazis, or Nazism. The corollary to the Law is that, by doing so, the person who brought the discussion to that point thereby lost the argument.

I’ve coined a few terms in my day. In the weeks leading up to the 2002 Maryland governor's race, I forecast that the “New Big 5” counties of suburban Baltimore would be pivotal for Republican Bob Ehrlich, and that the so-called “Big 3” Democratic jurisdictions of Baltimore City, Prince Georges and Montgomery counties would be insufficient to pull Kathleen Kennedy Townsend across the finish line. And I suppose I'm the progenitor of the “non-southern strategy,” even if that term has failed to catch on as much as I had hoped. (The strategy itself worked.)

So herewith, my gambit to burnish my name into Wikipedia-dom forever with “Schaller’s Law.”

Schaller’s Law: In American politics, the eventual call for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to solve a problem that some exasperated individual and/or group has deemed otherwise unsolvable absent a constitutional amendment.

Corollary 1: Calling for the amendment almost never results in its adoption, and may in fact undermine the policy agenda or reduce the political capital of amendment-seekers—particularly if an individual, group or groups repeatedly claim that amendments are the only or best way to solve public policy controversies.

You might have already guessed that I have proposed Schaller’s Law and its first corollary in response to the recent calls--including a soft endorsement by House minority John Boehner--to amend the 14th Amendment for the purpose of removing or at least clarifying the so-called “birthright citizenship” provision.

Now, let me clarify at the outset that, on the policy dispute itself, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about birthright citizenship: I can see merit in (some of) the arguments made by those who want to clarify its meaning or remove the provision altogether, as well as those--including Mike Huckabee--who want to leave the 14th Amendment alone. And although I'm sure there are some dishonest brokers who want to tinker with the 14th Amendment because of their expressed or latent xenophobia and even racism toward immigrants and their children, the fact is we do have very serious border problems, including the subset of problems that arise when illegal immigrants give birth to children within the physical borders of the United States.

I’ve written previously here at 538 about the dangers of attempting to solve policy disputes via constitutional amendment. I wrote my doctoral dissertation at UNC about Article V, the constitutional amendment process, and specifically the fascinating, if at times ugly, Prohibition-Repeal episode. (An episode which also had its own, rather unfortunate racial aspects: Some prohibitionists couched their arguments using scary language about the dangers of rape, violence and insurrection that non-whites, “black” or “red,” posed to decent society when they had access to alcohol.) In general, I believe it’s dangerous to use the Constitution other than to define the basic rights of citizens; the prescription and proscription of the powers and parameters of government; and the means for s/electing or removing the official who run that government.

I’m not a legal scholar, and so the legal question of whether there is a viable, non-amendment legal solution that Congress, the president and the courts can devise is something I’m unqualified to answer. But the issue of citizenship clearly falls within this constricted space: Defining who is a citizen rises to the level of constitutional resolution, as opposed to merely statutory or regulatory decision-making.

The political question, however, is whether the very act of calling for amending the 14th Amendment advances the cause of those who most worry about the negative impacts of children born to illegal immigrants, or of illegal immigration more generally. To use another coined term, I suppose calling for an amendment can expand the Overton window—that is, because amendments are a rare and, arguably, an extreme measure, advocating for them may compel politicians to take non-amendment action. And, indeed, note the coincidence that just yesterday Congress passed and President Obama signed a new Southwest Border Security Act that appropriates $600 million to ramp up security along the US-Mexico border. But there is also the cry-wolf effect of Corollary 1: A person or group that repeatedly calls for amendments for this and that can undermine their larger cause by appearing capricious about the proper use of the amendment process.

The children of immigrants are a small, but not insignificant part of the immigration policy debate. And maybe the language of the 14th Amendment--which by most accounts I’ve read was intended to constitutionalize the citizenship of freed slaves rather than children physically born in-country to illegal immigrants--does require further clarification by court rulings or, yes, even by a constitutional amendment. Like I said, the legal and constitutional aspects are above my pay grade.

But the political and strategic aspects are not. And the very fact of calling for an amendment suggests that some opponents of illegal immigration have reached the Schaller’s Law point of political exasperation.

UPDATE: Friends have pointed me to what conservative critics of the 14th Amendment movement are saying, including Erik Erikson of Red State, who calls it a "non-issue, will not happen, and is unnecessary anyway to deal with the issue"; Slate's Dave Weigel, who seems to confirm the Overton view when he writes that the "restrictionist hope is not that the Constitution will be amended. It's that Americans will start thinking about birthright citizenship; and the American Spectator's Jim Antle who concludes that if "conservatives have a different set of priorities [on immigration or other issues], constitutional amendments with little chance of passage should be very low on that list."

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In Which I Find Myself In Agreement With Jack Kingston

So my column this past Tuesday for the Baltimore Sun was about whether and to what degree former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is an asset or liability to the Republican Party in general, and the Republicans she endorses in specific GOP primary races. The column was prompted by Palin’s conspicuously Heismann Trophy-like treatment of former Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich with her Facebook-announced endorsement of Ehrlich’s virtual no-name primary opponent, Brian Murphy. A quick excerpt:*:

Mr. Ehrlich is fortunate that Ms. Palin poked her nose into Maryland's political tent to endorse Mr. Murphy. In doing so, the ex-governor who last year abandoned her post in Juneau became a useful foil for the former governor who would like this year to recapture his post in Annapolis....

Mr. Ehrlich said the snub didn't matter, but he knows better and ought to be giddy. Ms. Palin would have done far more harm to his candidacy by endorsing him, and if anything she gave Mr. Ehrlich the opportunity to polish his preferred image as a non-ideological pragmatist...

Ms. Palin has done Mr. Ehrlich a great favor. Whatever support he may lose from Palin-loving conservatives during September's primary will be more than compensated by votes he stands to gain in November from Maryland voters who distrust her.

With some of the highest negative approval ratings of any national politician, the unavoidable truth is that Sarah Palin is more of a curse than a blessing for most Republicans.

A day later, conservative Republican congressman Jack Kingston of Georgia spoke out about Palin's meddling in GOP primaries. "Why Sarah Palin decided to get in the race is beyond me," said Kingston, regarding the Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary race in which Palin endorsed a female candidate who eventually lost. "I don't know why she feels compelled to get into primaries all over the country. But, you know, fortunately Georgia voters are doing their own thinking on things like this....[I]t makes Republicans say, well, maybe we do need to rethink ... Sarah Palin, as somebody who does shoot from the hip a little bit too much."

My criticism of Palin as a liablity to her party tends to proceed from the assumption that Palin's endorsements will have the effect of helping candidates win primaries who might be too conservative (or simply too unknown or untested) to win in the general election. This was the case in Maryland, where she touted Murphy's conservative credentials in a very blue state where Ehrlich, the party's only real statewide figure of substance--former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is slowly destroying his reputation at home as well nationally--needs to position himself as close to the center as possible. But in the GA case, apparently the woman she endorsed, Karen Handel, was more moderate than the man she lost to, Nathan Deal.

So, on one hand, it would appear that Palin's impact is not necessarily to balkanize the party between hard right and center-right. But on the other, if Palin in fact drove some Republicans toward Deal, it just means that Palin is a liability no matter the ideological orientation of the candidate whom she chooses to endorse. To be fair, we can't know with absolute certainty whether and to what degree Palin's support for a candidate in fact hurts or hurt that candidate, like the Tennessee House candidate (CeCe Heil) she endorsed who lost last week. The evidence in cases like this is always to some degree circumstantial.

And then there is the related matter of Palin's own ambitions, whatever they may be. Now, perhaps I seriously misunderstand the method behind Palin's meddling madness, but her behavior looks to me like that of a politician liberated from seeking the Republican presidential nomination, rather than one with her eyes on that prize. Most smart pols avoid making primary endorsements unless the intra-party primary fight is:

(a) uncontested;
(b) features an obvious and safe favorite the whole state and/or county party leadership is backing over a bunch of wannabee cranks and yahoos;
(c) the endorser has some personal connection to a particular candidate; or
(d) the endorsee can do something unique for the endorser [e.g., the endorsee happens to be, say, the governor or state party chair of Iowa].

The Murphy-over-Ehrlich case meets none of these standards, which makes it all the more puzzling to me. Or maybe it makes perfect sense once one assumes that Sarah Palin quite simply is not running for president in 2012--which has been my contention all along. Palin poking her nose into state and local GOP races only reinforces my belief that she won't run.

Whatever she does in 2012, and however much she is hurting or helping Republican primary candidates this year, one thing is for certain: Jack Kingston isn't the first Republican Sarah Palin has frustrated, and he damn sure won't be the last.

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In the Battle Over a University, The Struggle for Iran's Future Begins

President and Leader in Happier Times

In recent months, Iranian politics has taken a back seat to developments in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Western media, with only the interminable discussions over Iran’s nuclear program eliciting much comment. But this does not mean that politics within the regime has stopped. The last three months have been dominated by a clash between President and Parliament, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bid to take over Iran’s largest private university has provoked a clash with the Principalists (the term the Fundamentalists use for themselves) majority in the Majlis , Iran’s Parliament. This clash in turn, may well foreshadow a major struggle over the succession to his office.

The battle over Azad University, a loosely affiliated system of campuses that educates more than a million students, is anything but an academic matter as its assets have a net worth of nearly 250 billion dollars. Because the university is closely linked with former President Rafsanjani, the dispute is partially an effort by Ahmadinejad to attack his powerful rival, and partially an attempt to crack down on student unrest by taking control of the largest University in the country – a university that until recently has acted as a safe haven for opposition. More importantly, however, the clash represents the changed political positions of the President and the Leader in the world created by the 2009 Presidential election

Central to the new order of things, is the independence of the President from the Leader. News reports at the time of the elections focused heavily on the person of Khamenei, something that was in many ways encouraged by the President himself, who seemed to go out of his way to separate himself from the events. Ahmadinejad left the country a day after the results were announced, and even criticized the crackdown which followed. Contrary to suggestions that the nature of his reelection would weaken him, Ahmadinejad has emerged stronger, not least because Khamenei, in the course of the elections, lost his power by becoming partisan. In reality, the Leader’s authority has always depended on mediating between factions, and while often aligned with Ahmadinejad, the very fact that he could intervene on behalf of the President’s opponents kept him vital to the President’s cause. With those opponents powerless, Khamenei influence has declined accordingly, and he has been forced to desperately move to set up new countervailing force which he can play off against the ambitions of the President.

This explains Khamenei’s increasingly desperate appeals to figures like Rafsanjani urging them to remain within the system, as well as his recent declaration that Iranians had a religious obligation to obey the Leader. While he may be many things, a fool is not one of them, and Ahmadinejad is clearly aware of where the remaining obstacles to his personal power are found. In fact, he began moving against them even before the elections last year when he sacked his Interior Minister, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, after the latter made a confidential report to the Leader involving irregularities in the 2008 Majlis elections. Traditionally Presidents defer to the Leader on appointments to the Interior Ministry, and Khamenei made his displeasure plain by making Pour-Mohammadi a personal adviser on security issues. The current clash has made the struggle explicit, as rather than being between a group of “dissident conservatives” and the President, is with Ali Larijiani, the Speaker of the Majlis, who is a former member of Khamenei’s staff, and represented him internationally. That Larijiani, a man previously close to Khamenei, is now heading a coalition stretching from the remaining Reformists in the Majlis to mainstream Principalists, is symptomatic of the degree to which Ahmadinejad is feared in powerful circles.

The question of succession looms large in these fears. With Khamenei already 75, maneuvering over the succession has been ongoing for some time. It is widely rumored that Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the current Leader, is interested in the position, and that this interest has driven his efforts on behalf of Ahmadinejad in both 2005(when he urged the Revolutionary Guard to campaign in Ahmadinejad’s favor) and 2009(when it is argued he went much farther). Mojtaba however is not an Ayatollah, and has few clerical credentials, and while this may make him attractively weak to the President’s circle, any effort to elevate him would be fraught with difficulty for the same reasons. As a consequence he seems to be the only one to take his candidacy seriously. More plausible as a candidate is Ayatollah Taqi Misbah-Yazdi, Ahmadinejad’s religious mentor. Seen as the religious ideologist of the hard right in Qom, Misbah-Yazdi has repeatedly advocated the use of violence as justifiable in political disputes, and it was rumored last year that he went so far as to issue a religious edict endorsing the killing of protestors. He has defended suicide bombing, stating that “when protecting Islam and the Muslim `Ummah depends on martyrdom operations, it not only is allowed, but even is an obligation.”

The prospect of Misbah-Yazdi as Leader is something that should not frighten only Iranians. An Iranian regime freed from even the fiction of a commitment to democracy would be a close ally of dictatorships throughout the third world, while the internationalist revolutionary zeal of Misbah-Yazdi and his circle, missing in the Iranian elite since the 1980s, would be given free reign. The consequences for the West in issues ranging from the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the struggle over nuclear proliferation would be enormous with a regime that not only does not care about the international isolation sanctions bring, but would welcome it. Misbah-Yazdi has indicated that he views foreign influences as the driving force behind the alienation of Iran’s youth from Islam, and the prospect of foreign investment as the driving force behind the “apostasy” of figures like Rafsanjani. It would seem doubtful that he find much to fear from President Obama’s threats of sanctions.

The Would-Be Heir: Taqi Misbah-
Yazdi

Given the importance of the position to Iran’s future, it is unlikely that the remaining non-Ahmadinejad forces in Iran will roll over and play dead. The Assembly of Experts elections in 2006 were one of the few occasions when the normally compliant Council of Guardians roused itself against the President, disqualifying a host of pro-Ahmadinejad candidates including Misbah-Yazdi’s son. When the Assembly convened, Rafsanjani defeated Misbah-Yazdi by a vote of 41-31 for its chairmanship, with the hard-line head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Jannati taking 14 votes. Rafsanjani’s victory has proved limited however. His powerbase failed to hold together in the face of Basij intimidation last summer, and there is reason to doubt it would do much better when the stakes are potentially higher.

As a consequence, while Rafsanjani would prefer his own candidacy, and the Reformists would prefer any non-Principalist, the most likely alternative to Misbah-Yazi is likely be an anti-Ahmadinejad Principalist, with the name of Hashemi Shahroudi, the former Head of the Judiciary rising to prominence. One of the leaders of the judicial crackdown on Khatami’s Reformists,, Shahroudi hardly appears a moderate, but he has been a strong critic of Ahmadinejad, attacking the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the Revolutionary Guard and criticizing the state media for coverage of the previous election that he argued was biased in favor of the incumbent. It is a testament to the political weakness of the Reformists and even the moderate Principalists that they are likely to be in the position of supporting a man who jailed thousands of journalists and pro-democracy activists, but it is opposition to Ahmadinejad and not ideology that holds together the Iranian opposition, at least those parts of it that remain within the regime.

That is if they follow the rules. In the current dispute, Ahmadinejad showed few signs being willing to let the opposition of the Majlis stop him. Shortly after the vote, the Basij staged a major protest outside of the Majlis, castigating its members as thieves, and the following day they prevented enough deputies from entering to achieve a majority for reversing the earlier vote. Shortly thereafter, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani the head of the Judiciary, invalidated a court ruling which had struck down the new bill. While the Supreme Leader stepped in on July 25th to urge both sides to step back, an Iranian political analyst told the Turkish Weekly that “The Supreme Leader no longer wields the power to determine fate. Very soon, another round in the struggle for Azad University will begin.”

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Obama's "Problems" With the Left

I want to follow up Nate’s comments about the tensions between liberals and President Obama in the wake of press secretary Robert Gibbs' comments. Peter Daou, who is a veritable one-man panopticon of what's published online, provides a nice summary of general disgruntlement (prior to Gibbs' outburst) from the president's left. In a recent column that also predates the Gibbs episode, my good friend Paul Waldman of the American Prospect weighed in on how liberals are "falling out of love" with the president. Meanwhile, since the Gibbs' remarks, none other than Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison--an African American and [the lone*] one of two Muslim members of Congress--has called for Gibbs to step down; his bombastic colleague, Alan Grayson, agrees. In short, this controversy is heating up.

During a press briefing yesterday, the ever-glib Gibbs was asked about the matter by White House beat reporters:

Q: Just on another topic, what do you think the consequences should be of the comments that you made about this “professional left”?

MR. GIBBS: The consequences?

Q: Yes.

MR. GIBBS: Do you have anything in mind? (Laughter.)

Q: No supper.

Q: One House member suggested resignation, so I’m asking what you think your view is.

MR. GIBBS: I don’t plan on leaving, so--and there’s no truth to the rumor that I’ve added an inflatable exit to my office. (Laughter.)

There are a lot of moving parts to this issue of Obama's problems with and from his left flank. I basically have four, related points to make. For the benefit of organizing and presenting my ideas, and to allow readers to more conveniently respond to one or more of them by number, let me set them out as bullet points:

1. The “professional Left” and the fuller set of people who are self-identified “liberals” are different entities--and the former isn’t necessarily a representative sample of the latter. But even if the so-called professional Left were some perfect subset ideologically, the reality is that liberal supporters of the president who are working and raising their families in Peoria or Portland or Plymouth aren’t in the day-to-day business of raising political objections to this or that part of the policy agenda. On the other hand, that’s what political professionals, whatever their ideological persuasion, do every day. So it should be no surprise that, whatever complaints or grumbling may arise, support for the president among self-described, rank-and-file liberals hasn’t much changed of late and remains strong.

2. There are policy decisions and then there is the matter of policy saliency. I just finished reading Jonathan Alter’s book about Obama's first year, The Promise, and there is a moment recounted in there where the president and some of his advisers say “Shhh!” after a staffer notes that some piece of legislation (I think it was his education reform bill--man, my memory is going) will actually provide a lot of help the poor and underprivileged. The point of relaying this episode is that what a president accomplishes and what he trumpets are not always the same thing, and often for good reason(s). People with health care, for example, vote and contribute to campaigns at much higher rates than those who do not, and they were also more opposed to reform than those without health care. Though it’s not necessarily a mutually exclusive choice, if liberals had to choose between a president who passes centrist policies but talks like a tough liberal, and one who passes liberal policies but positions himself as a centrist, I presume most of them would choose the latter. Indeed, any principled liberal would have to prefer the latter. This is not to say it’s wrong to want the president to proudly proclaim himself and his policies as liberal. It’s just to say that, no matter how important words and labels are—and they are—deeds still trump them.

3. There is the intangible matter of how passionate a president gets—or rather, in this president’s case, how dispassionate Barack Obama so often remains. The book on this president's temperament is pretty simple: He’s one cool cat. But maybe too cool? To be fair, there is value in any president, and particularly the first African American president, not looking too mercurial, whimsical or uneven tempered. That said, I think some--but certainly not all--of the growing tension between the “professional left” (again, whateverinthehell that is) and the White House is a matter of optics and emphasis—that is, saliency. They’d like to see the president prioritize some of their agenda, boast about it, and express a bit more passionate advocacy for those causes. Rather than the posture of an anemic, Spock-like defender of the latest, split-the-difference policy compromise, they want to see him get his back up every now and then--you know, like an angry cat does. And yes, they want to see him sometimes reject the half-loaf and do so as a warning signal that he won’t always compromise or search out the politically practical solution. Maybe I’m wrong about all of this, but my hunch is that little gestures—like an occasional “elections have consequences” statement, or a metaphorical nose punch for conservatives or the GOP—would make a big difference. It’s not like Obama doesn’t have the capacity; anyone who saw him live on the stump in 2008, as I did, knows what he is capable of.

4. If one listens closely, you notice that the president's rhetoric and tone has started to change lately. Obviously, as the November election draws nearer the president will more often switch hats from commander-in-chief to partisan-in-chief. Hence, Obama's recent shot across the bow about how the Democrats have been governing the past 18 months while the Republicans have been politicking. If you read recent speeches he’s given at fundraiser/rallies for candidates or to raise money for the party, you’ll notice a different tone. (Read down in the middle the part of the speech he delivered Monday at a DSCC fundraiser where Obama used the car-in-the-ditch metaphor to slam the GOP.) Yes, these speeches must be contextualized because they are delivered in an environment of high-level partisan supporters. But the words are public: The White House releases full text versions that anyone can read.

In sum, does Obama have a problem on the Left? Yes. Did Gibbs' comments exacerbate those problems. Definitely yes. But is it a big problem? No--although that doesn't mean this problem won't hurt Democrats in the midterm if liberals are discouraged from turning out. I suspect we will hear some dog-whistle rhetoric and hear about some private gestures from the White House to the Left in the coming months.

*I stand--or rather, sit--corrected: Until alerted by a colleague, I was unaware that Andre Carson of Indiana is the other of two Muslims in Congress. Apologies to readers--and to Rep. Carson.

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Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage Appears to Shift at Accelerated Pace

In April, 2009, when we last took a survey of gay marriage polls, we found that support for it had converged somewhere into the area of 41 or 42 percent of the country. Now, it appears to have risen by several points, and as I reported yesterday, it has become increasingly unclear whether opposition to gay marriage still outweighs support for it.

Here is a version of the graph we produced in 2009, but updated to include the dozen or so polls that have been conducted on it since that time, as listed by pollingreport.com. I have also included opinions on gay marriage from the General Social Survey, which asked about gay marriage as long ago as 1988.



The LOESS regression line now shows 50 percent opposed to gay marriage and 49 percent in support -- basically too close to call.

One caveat is that LOESS regression tends to be fairly sensitive on the endpoints, and so yesterday's CNN survey, which showed the pro-gay marriage position leading 50.5-48.5, makes a fair amount of difference. But even if we ignored that survey, support for gay marriage would instead be in the range of 45-46 percent (and opposition between 51-52 percent): that would reflect acceleration in the rate of support for gay marriage, about a 4-point gain over the past 16 months, faster than the long-term rate of increase, which has been between 1 and 1.5 points per year.

Something to bear in mind is that it's only been fairly recently that gay rights groups -- and other liberals and libertarians -- shifted toward a strategy of explicitly calling for full equity in marriage rights, rather than finding civil unions to be an acceptable compromise. While there is not necessarily zero risk of backlash resulting from things like court decisions -- support for gay marriage slid backward by a couple of points, albeit temporarily, after a Massachusetts' court's ruling in 2003 that same-sex marriage was required by that state's constitution -- it seems that, in general, "having the debate" is helpful to the gay marriage cause, probably because the secular justifications against it are generally quite weak.

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CNN Poll is First To Show Majority Support for Gay Marriage

A landmark of sorts was achieved today as CNN just came out with a poll showing a 52 percent majority of Americans agreed with the statement that "gays and lesbians should have a constitutional right to get married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid." Some 46 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement.



CNN also asked the question in a slightly different way to half its respondents, omitting the term "should" from the question above, i.e. "Do you think gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to get married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid?". Using that phrasing, 49 percent said yes and 51 percent said no.

Combining the two subsamples has 50.5 percent of Americans in support of gay marriage and 47.5 percent opposed: just about the barest possible majority. But a majority nevertheless, something that no previous poll had shown. An ABC/Washington Post poll from April 2009 had come the closest, showing a 49/46 plurality in support of gay marriage rights; a few other polls had also shown gay marriage to the plurality position when respondents were given a three-way choice of marriage, civil unions, and no legal recognition. But no national poll, save for one debatable case with highly unorthodox phrasing, had shown it to the the majority position.

Polls, of course, have a margin of error, and needless to say it is not yet safe to say that support for marriage equity has become the plurality, let alone the majority, position. At the same time, it is probably also no longer safe to say that opposition to same-sex marriage is the majority position, and it is becoming dubious to call it the plurality position. Opinion on the issue, instead, is close to evenly divided, with results varying somewhat depending on things like question wording. It may be noteworthy that CNN tends to find slightly higher levels of support for gay marriage with a question that is explicitly framed around constitutional rights, echoing arguments that are very much at the center of the ongoing legal case against California Proposition 8.

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Some Cliffhangers, Some Surprises: Primary Night Update

In the four states holding primaries today (one of them, Georgia, is actually a runoff), the results are still rolling in, but some judgments can be made. Winners include Dan Malloy, Tom Foley, and Linda McMahon in CT and Michael Bennett in CO. The other big statewide races are still up in the air.

In CT, Malloy came from behind and soundly defeated Ned Lamont in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. With over 80% of precincts reporting, Malloy is leading 58-42.
In the Republican gubernatorial primary in the Nutmeg State, the self-funding front-runner, Tom Foley, seems to have won a narrow victory over Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, leading 42-39 with nearly 90% of precincts in.

Unsurprisingly, Linda McMahon won the CT GOP Senate primary, but didn't set any popularity records; at this point she's got 49% of the vote, to 28% for Rob Simmons, and a surprising 23% for underfunded Tea Party/Paulist candidate Peter Schiff.

Down in Georgia, as polls suggested might happen, Nathan Deal and Karen Handel fought to a draw in the GOP gubernatorial runoff. With all precincts reporting, Deal leads by 2581 votes out of about 580,000 cast, with some absentee ballots in urban counties still to be tallied, which will probably cut Deal's lead even more. There will also almost certainly be a recount. Deal did surprisingly well in metro Atlanta outside Handel's home county of Fulton, and Handel did surprisingly well in non-metro cities and in southeast Georgia, but it all came out in the wash. As expected, Tom Graves won the GOP nomination for a full term in the 9th congressional district; Rob Woodall dispatched Jody Hice in the 7th District; and in a less predictable race, Ray McKinney won the right to take on Blue Dog John Barrow in the 12th.

In Colorado, Michael Bennet rode big majorities in the Denver suburbs, and in Northern Colorado, to defeat Andrew Romanoff by a robust 54-46 margin (at least that's the margin with more than two-thirds of the vote in). In the GOP Senate primary, Ken Buck is holding a 52-48 lead over Jane Norton, mainly because of a huge margin he ran up in his Weld County base and in adjoining Larimer County. But the race hasn't been called yet.

In the Colorado GOP gubernatorial primary, just over one thousand votes separate Dan Maes and Scott McInnis, amidst speculation that the winner will ultimately withdraw and let the state party choose a less damagned candidate. In highly competitive GOP congressional primaries in marginal districts, Scott Tipton has a solid 56-44 lead over Sarah Palin endorsee Bob McConnell in the 3d, while Ryan Frazier (a rare African-American GOP congressional candidate) easily defeated John McCain staffer Lang Sias in the 7th.

Up in Minnesota, Mark Dayton's expected gubernatorial primary win is in doubt. With about 70% of the precincts in, DFL state convention endorsee Margaret Anderson Kelliher is holding a 41-40 lead over Dayton, fueled by big wins in her Twin Cities base. Dayton has, however, been cutting into her lead as other parts of the state check in, and he could still win.

UPDATE, 12:11 AM: AP has called the CO GOP Senate race for Ken Buck, which is a bit surprising since he only has a 13,000 vote lead with 23% of the precincts still out, including quite a few in counties where Norton's leading. But let's assume AP knows what it's doing.

In MN, Kelliher's lead over Dayton is now only 2528 votes with 85% of the precincts reporting. But as the folks over at Swing State Project are noting, a big chunk of precincts are out in St. Louis County (Duluth), where Dayton has a sizable lead.

UPDATE II, 12:57 AM: Mark Dayton has just taken the lead in the MN Democratic gubernatorial primary, with most of pro-Dayton St. Louis County still not reporting. In fact, with the exception of one precinct in Ramsey County, Dayton's leading in every single county with precincts still out. Looks like the CW and the polls were right after all.

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How Much Does Money Matter in Connecticut and Minnesota?

While the Colorado and Georgia elections have gotten more national media attention, there are primaries today in Connecticut and Minnesota as well. In the Nutmeg State, the gubernatorial primaries in both parties have turned into very close contests matching candidates with personal wealth with opponents receiving public financing. And while former wrestling executive Linda McMahon seems to have the GOP Senate primary in hand, it will be interesting to see what sort of protest vote her two challengers receive. In Minnesota, two self-financed candidates for governor, including front-runner and former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, are taking on the officially endorsed DFL candidate in a test of voter turnout strategies.

Speaking of turnout, observers in both CT and MN are speculating about the impact of holding a primary at the peak of vacation time. Even the best-financed campaigns in highly competitive races can wind up throwing resources into the void if voters are checked out.


Both of Connecticut's gubernatorial primaries feature wealthy front-runners who seem to have lost momentum. Among Democrats, 2006 Senate nominee Ned Lamont began the campaign with high name ID, a lot of progressive support, and plenty of personal money (he committed $9 million to this primary), but has actually campaigned as something of a centrist focused on dealing with CT's fiscal problems. Former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, who narrowly lost the 2006 gubernatorial nomination, has been on the offensive for much of the campaign, and has taken multiple shots at Lamont's links to the financial industry. Down the stretch Lamont has been firing back, drawing attention to an incident in Stamford when Malloy was alleged to have given a no-bid contract to a construction company that did work on his home (an explosive charge in CT, thanks to the scandal that enveloped former Gov. John Rowland).

A subplot in both gubernatorial primaries is Connecticut's public financing system, which is providing both Malloy and Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele with $2.7 million, an amount partially determined by their opponents' personal spending. The system is in trouble in the courts as part of the fallout from the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, but has survived through primary day.

A late Quinnipiac poll showed Malloy closing to within three points (42-45) of Lamont.

On the Republican side, the wealthy frontrunner is former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley, who won the state convention endorsement and had a substantial early lead. He hasn't spent as lavishly as Lamont, but has loaned his campaign $3 million. Coming on strong is Fedele, who in the final Quinnipiac poll has closed to within 8 points (30-38), with a lot of instability evident in public opinion on the race (a third candidate, underfinanced businessman Oz Griebel has 17%). The fate of a closed textile mill in Georgia onced owned by Foley's investment firm has become a major issue in the campaign, as a symbol of Foley's alleged indifference to economic suffering.

Both Democrats have double-digit leads over both Republicans in general election polls.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race, free-spending Linda McMahon, who upset former congressman Rob Simmons to win the state convention endorsement, is expected to beat Simmons (who dropped out of the race, then dropped back in) and Tea Party activist and former Ron Paul advisor Peter Schiff without too much trouble, but her percentage will be watched closely for signs of weakness in her uphill general election battle against Democrat Richard Blumenthal.

In Minnesota, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (the history-laden label for the Democratic Party in this state) gubernatorial primary is a three-way race involving two self-funders who skipped the state convention process for securing a party endorsement, and the endorsee, Margaret Anderson Kelliher. One self-funder, department store heir Mark Dayton, is obviously well-known as a former U.S. Senator and long-time progressive firebrand, while the other, former state legislator Matt Entenza, is known mainly as the founder of a progressive think tank. Each has put about $3 million in personal money into the campaign, while Kelliher has had to get by through raising just under a million.

Polls have shown Dayton holding a steady lead with Kelliher in a steady second place. The most recent poll, from Survey USA, shows Dayton at 43%, Kelliher at 27%, and Entenza at 22%. Dayton and Kelliher have basically split the major labor endorsements. Her chances probably depend on an aggressive ground game aided by low turnout.

With Tom Emmer certain to win the GOP gubernatorial nomination, the other primary to watch is that of the Independence Party (that third-party legacy of Jesse Ventura), where the state-convention-endorsed and better-funded candidate, former Republican staffer Tom Horner, is expected to defeat publisher Rob Hahn. In general election polls, Horner is definitely pulling some significant Republican votes, which is one reason that all three Democrats are leading Emmer by comfortable margins. That's significant; aside from the national political mood, the DFL hasn't won a gubernatorial race in Minnesota since 1986. Retiring governor Tim Pawlenty, who is running for president, would probably prefer not to have a Democratic successor firing shots at him from back home.

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