You can trust Gallup’s numbers … for now | Harry J Enten

Method changes last year have substantially improved Gallup’s polling accuracy. That’s good news for early trend spotting

Gallup screwed up in 2010 and 2012. They called for a much wider Republican House victory in the former than what actually occurred, and they polled a Mitt Romney victory in the latter. That put them on a blacklist of sorts with some polling analysts. And while I am just one person, I want to say that I trust Gallup’s presidential approval numbers as much as any mainstream pollster at this point.

Why? The main question when looking at a poll is whether or not the numbers accurately reflect the current state of the country. Methodology is important, but without accuracy, methodology is rather useless. In Gallup’s case, solid technique has led to Gallup’s approval track being reliable since last October.

While Gallup was losing a lot of creditability in the presidential horse race, they were making adjustments to their presidential approval methodology. They added a higher percentage of cell phones, changed weights for the geographic distribution of Americans, and many other minor changes starting on 1 October 2012. These alterations made all the difference in the world (or, at least, the country).

From the beginning of August through the end of September 2012, Gallup pegged President Obama’s approval at only 47.1%. All other pollsters who also used live interviews and called all adults found an average presidential approval of 49.7%. Given undecideds, the difference between the two percentages is that of a president who is in major re-election trouble and one who is probably going to win a tight race.

From 1 October 2012 through the election in early November, Gallup all of a sudden was projecting Obama’s approval at 50.8%. We’re talking over 17,000 interviews in October and nearly 30,000 in the eight weeks prior, so that movement in Gallup’s Obama’s approval rating was outside any margin of error.

The change was not seen by other polling outfits. Although most pollsters switched to a “likely voter electorate”, the ones that continued to poll all adults discovered an average Obama approval of 49.7% – exactly the same as they had produced in the two months prior.

Thus, the movement seen in Gallup’s weekly numbers can only be ascribed to its change in methodology. A change that produced an approval rating indicating President Obama’s re-relection, unlike horserace numbers. The anti-Obama house effect in approval rating essentially disappeared overnight.

Since the election, Gallup has continued to keep the reliable work up. HuffPollster aggregates approval ratings from all pollsters and allows the ability to sort by population (adults, registered, and likely voters) and mode (live telephone, automated telephone, and internet). I have selected adults and live telephone, like Gallup, from all non-Gallup pollsters and compared this plot of local regression to Gallup’s trend* since October 2012.

What we see is what we’d want to see from a trusted pollster. Gallup’s numbers have tracked very well with the aggregate of the other pollsters. Both groups gave Obama post-re-election boosts. Both have shown Obama’s approval rating dropping since January. Both have Obama’s approval fall accelerating since the NSA story broke in early June.

The only difference you’ll notice is that Obama’s approval and disapproval ratings are slightly higher in the overall group. The disparity is only about a point for both. All it means is that other pollsters have designed questionnaires that end up pushing undecideds a little harder. The net approval of both pollster groups is the same.

So what’s this all mean? It means we have the ability to catch trends more quickly thanks to Gallup’s daily and weekly tracking data. Gallup also has very good crosstabs, which thanks to high sample sizes, have relatively small margins of error.

Of course, the major question going forward is whether or not Gallup can translate this success with all adults to registered and likely voters for elections. If they can’t, Gallup will continue to earn a bad rap. If they can, then Gallup’s reputation may be restored.

*Note: An average may produce slightly different results from the averaging technique spoken about earlier.

Harry J Enten

Cory Booker: set to be the next senator from New Jersey | Harry J Enten

Any idea that Booker’s Republican rival, Steve Lonegan, has momentum is wishful. Polling says the Democrat is a banker

There seems a belief in some quarters that Republican Steve Lonegan has gained momentum against Democrat Cory Booker in the US Senate special election in New Jersey this Wednesday. Beyond the fact that a Tea Party candidate stands little chance of defeating a Democrat in a state that went for President Obama by nearly 18pt in the last election, the numbers really don’t suggest any trouble for Booker.

Booker holds a 12pt lead per the Real Clear Politics average, with a little over two days to go. I can’t think of a single campaign polled this extensively in the past decade, in a non-primary, major statewide election, that had a greater than 12pt error. That’s hundreds and hundreds of races. But this is a special election, you might say, where turnout is going to be low.

We can look back to the 2013 Senate special election race in Massachusetts, just a few months ago, for a similar example. Turnout in Massachusetts was low. The polls, however, remained accurate. Democrat Ed Markey led by 12.3pt in the Real Clear Politics average and went on to win by a little over 10pt.

It’s not that low turnout doesn’t increase the chance of a polling error; it’s that any error is not likely to be large enough to allow a Lonegan victory.

The reason is that any good pollster (pdf) is already accounting for the low turnout typical of an election taking place on a Wednesday in the middle of October. They are projecting who is going to vote and who isn’t. That’s potentially a part of the reason why Booker is leading by 12pt, instead of 15 or 20pt.

Isn’t there a chance the pollsters are way-off? But even when pollsters don’t do a good job modeling the electorate, 12pt is still too big a hill to climb. Consider the 2010 Nevada Senate race, where it was clear pollsters simply couldn’t figure out what was going on with Latino voters. The final polls had Harry Reid down by a little less than 3pt. He won by 5.5pt – an 8pt polling error. That’s still far short of 12pt.

What about pollster accuracy when a candidate is cutting the lead, as Lonegan has (from 16pt to 13pt, to 10pt, in the last three Monmouth surveys)? We can look to the case of Scott Brown in 2010. That was also a special election taking place at an odd time (the middle of January) and in which the Republican candidate in a blue state came up dramatically from behind.

The problem for Lonegan is that the late movement for Scott Brown had already occurred by this point. Every poll conducted by a legitimate pollster in the final week of that campaign had Brown leading. There hasn’t been a single poll in the 2013 New Jersey Senate race that has had anything but a Booker margin of at least 10pt.

The biggest obstacle for the Lonegan comeback story, though, is that any “momentum” he has gained isn’t coming at the expense of support for Booker. The last four Monmouth surveys have Booker holding steady at 53%, 54%, 53%, and 52% respectively. There is no statistically significant difference between these percentages. The last two Quinnipiac polls of likely voters also have Booker at 53%.

The only percentage that has changed is Lonegan’s, which is nice and all for him, but it doesn’t cut it when your opponent is over 50%. Even if Lonegan picked up every undecided voter (and my guess is many won’t vote), he would lose by half-a-dozen points. Chances are, however, that Steve Lonegan is not going to pick up every undecided voter.

The smart bet here is to average the Monmouth and Quinnipiac surveys to project an 11pt Booker win. That’s certainly disappointing to some Booker supporters, as is a campaign that has revealed Booker as more neoliberal and less accomplished than some of his supporters like to believe.

Yet, a win is a win. And Cory Booker is poised to win a spot as the next United States senator from New Jersey.

Harry J Enten

Has gerrymandering made politics more partisan? Ted Cruz argues not | Harry J Enten

Redistricting is blamed for polarising Congress. But Ted Cruz shows the cause is red-state voters’ choice of strict conservatives

I have written about gerrymandering before, but the issue is back to the fore because numerous commentators have posited a link between gerrymandering and the shutdown. Gerrymandering is now commonly given as the reason why congressional districts appear to be producing more conservative and/or Tea Party-allied Republican representatives.

I still believe the supposed effects of gerrymandering on political polarization in the House of Representatives are being overstated. And fine work from Nate Cohn and Sean Trende explains the point very well. I just have one more thing to add to the argument: what about Ted Cruz?

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is seen as a figurehead for Tea Party conservatives. It’s even been reported that House Republicans have been taking directions from him in refusing to pass a clean continuing resolution without defunding or delaying Obamacare. So did gerrymandering create Ted Cruz, too?

The answer, of course, is no. Ted Cruz was elected to the United States Senate; he has never served in the House. Senators are voted for in state-wide elections, which means that redistricting and gerrymandering logically can’t apply. Yet, Cruz is as conservative as, if not more conservative than, the House GOP members who, many believe, are keeping the government shut down and flirting with debt default.

Admittedly, Ted Cruz is just one elected official, but he’s played a larger-than-life role in the current crisis. And, more importantly perhaps, he is part of a larger trend in the United States Senate, in three ways.

First, Cruz is from the state of Texas. And Texas is a deep red state, which makes it characteristic of a pattern of states becoming more polarized. As I’ve noted before, there used to be a great many states that were very competitive in national elections. In 1976, almost half the states in the union came within 3pt of the nationwide vote in the presidential election. A more impressive 30-plus states were within 5pt. Today, the numbers aren’t even close to that.

There were only eight states that came within 3pt of the national vote in the 2012 presidential race. That number only rises to ten when we include states where the margin was within 5pt of the nationwide margin – only a third of the number there were in 1976. Even if you expanded the list to include those within 10pt, you’d still only get to 14 states.

It’s fairly clear, then, that people are “self-sorting” on the state level. As Sean Trende shows, this filters down to the congressional district level rather well. The number of districts that most would call “competitive” under even the Democratic-written district lines of the 1990s would have been about the same.

Second, Cruz’s election was one of many where voters decided that they wanted their senatorial vote to reflect their presidential vote. Just 20 years ago, a similar party allocation in the Senate featured many more blue state Republicans and red state Democrats. In 1993, 49% of the Democrats’ Senate caucus came from states that had voted more Republican than the nation as a whole in the prior presidential election. That percentage has been cut in half, to only 25% in 2013.

It’s the same story with the Republican Senate caucus. Republicans from blue states were 28% of the Senate Republicans in 1993. Today, the percentage is only 16%.

So, what we have is increased polarization in the voting patterns of states on the presidential level, which has translated down to the senatorial level. Note, as Nate Silver has shown, this is the same phenomenon that is occurring on the congressional district level – even when controlling for changing districting lines.

The third factor is that the increased polarization of the states seems to be reflected in the senators’ voting records. The Senate (as well as the House) is now more polarized than it’s been in the past 135 years. How do we know?

The people over at Voteview score each roll-call vote: -1 is most liberal, while +1 is most conservative, per Voteview’s “DW nominate” score. They then were kind enough to map the average difference between the Senate’s Democratic and Republican caucus. This shows that there have been increasing differences in the average voting scores of the Republican and Democratic Senate caucuses, respectively, since the 1976 election. The polarization accelerated after the 1992 election.

It’s simply not possible that gerrymandering was the sole cause of this trend. It’s not as though anyone can, all of a sudden, start moving around state lines.

Now, none of this is to say that gerrymandering isn’t responsible for some part of the polarization in Washington. The median Democratic and Republican House district is more polarized than the median Democratic and Republican Senate seat. The House caucuses have more extreme voting records than the Senate’s. Some of that is, again, due to self-sorting on the state level more locally, but not all of it can be accounted for that way.

The Senate shows, however, that the sharp upswing in polarization we see today is largely the product of natural voting patterns. And these manifest themselves on the state level without any gerrymandering. Texas put Ted Cruz in the Senate not because someone redrew Texas’ state lines, but because Texas voters became, on average, more conservative.

Harry J Enten

What the Virginia governor’s race tells us about the 2014 midterms | Harry J Enten

Against trend, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is set to win. After running a strong conservative, Republicans should take a hint

I’m hesitant to read too much into elections that don’t occur during the midterms or presidential election years. If off-year elections were all that predictive, Democrats would have done well in the 2002 midterms. Still, Republicans should pay attention to what’s looking increasingly like a Democratic win in the making in the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial election; that ought to make them at least a little worried for the 2014 midterms.

Historically, whichever party is in the White House loses the Virginia gubernatorial election, just as the White House’s party loses House seats in midterm elections. The last time this did not happen was 40 years ago, in 1973.

Moreover, Virginia’s voting patterns these days mirror the nation’s nearly perfectly. President Obama won nationally and in Virginia by 3.9pt. Democrat Tim Kaine won his 2012 senatorial race with 53% of the vote, while Democrats nationally took 54% of the senatorial vote. Both elections featured electorates in which whites now make up 70%, or a little more, during presidential years, and closer to 75% in non-presidential years.

That’s why we’d expect, all other things being equal, the Republican candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, to win Virginia’s gubernatorial election. And voters in Virginia did appear, at first, likely to follow the historical pattern. The first two polls which accounted for the higher white turnout in off-year and midterm elections had Cuccinelli leading Democrat Terry McAuliffe by 3pt and 10pt, respectively.

Then, something started to happen at the end of spring: voters got to know Ken Cuccinelli. Groups supporting McAuliffe and McAuliffe himself, aided by his background as a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee and for Bill and Hillary Clinton, pounded the airwaves – pointing out Cuccinelli’s very conservative positions on contraception, gay rights, and now, the government shutdown.

The result is that McAuliffe has jumped ahead to a mid single-digit lead with a little less than a month to go before the election. Polling at this point has generally been reliably predictive of who will win.

Now, it would be one thing if McAuliffe were winning because of some factor or factors unique to the state of Virginia, but I don’t think we can claim that. The incumbent Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has faced criticism on grounds of ethics, yet his approval rating is relatively high. McDonnell also led McAuliffe in a pollsters’ hypothetical matchup, if he could have run again.

McAuliffe himself isn’t exactly Mr Popularity. His net favorable ratings are, at best, even, though most polls have his favorable rating below his net favorable rating. In other words, he’s not exactly the type of candidate you’d expect to break an election history pattern in a positive way for his party.

No, the real problem for Republicans in Virginia is Cuccinelli. While McAuliffe may rank slightly below a net positive favorable rating, Cuccinelli’s net favorable is 15-20pt in the red.

Voters simply think Cuccinelli is too rightwing: 43% of voters believe he is too conservative, which is up significantly from when he led in the polls in spring. That compares with only only 35% who believe McAuliffe is too liberal (and that’s more or less where it had been earlier in the campaign).

Therein lies the issue for Republicans nationwide, Cuccinelli embodies their present identity in many ways. Both are becoming deeply unpopular for conservative positions, and both are partying with Ted Cruz – even though they probably know that it doesn’t look good from the general electorate’s point of view.

Meanwhile, McAuliffe looks a lot like Democrats nationally. Both are not well-liked (you could even say, disliked), but they’re not seen as extremist – and, crucially, they look great when compared to the other guy.

None is this is to say a McAuliffe win means Democrats in the 2014 midterms are going to break the historical loss trend – as McAuliffe looks as though he’s going to do in Virginia. In fact, I don’t think Democrats will win seats in the House and will almost certainly lose some in the Senate. It would be a victory of sorts, though, if they can keep any losses to a minimum.

So, Republicans should have a bit of a sinking feeling when looking at Virginia. When presented with the choice between ugly and uglier, Virginians seem to have decided to go with ugly. This may not end up being predictive of next year’s midterms, but it should be unsettling, to say the least, to Republicans nationally.

Harry J Enten

Democrats won’t win a ‘blame the GOP’ game on the shutdown and debt ceiling | Harry J Enten

Consumer confidence is crashing. If the economy goes south because of default fears, President Obama will be the big loser

So, people currently blame the Republicans more than anyone else for the government shutdown, but predicting the long-term political fallout is not as easy as that suggests. For one thing, the latest CBS News poll shows that while slightly more people believe the Republicans are at fault, a majority of them are upset with both sides for the inability to avert this crisis.

The real story is not revealed by people’s view of the politicians; it’s contained in the indices of economic sentiment. Gallup finds that Americans’ confidence in the economy has dropped like a rock, from -20pt just before the shutdown, to -35pt now. And it would not be surprising to see that measure continue to fall over coming days, with the deadline for raising the debt ceiling looming in ten days’ time.

What we’re seeing is a time-lag in consequences for the politicians. Gallup has President Obama’s approval rating still within its normal range of 45%, plus or minus a few points.

But remember the debt ceiling battle of April to July 2011: the politicians solved that crisis without the US actually defaulting, yet the mere idea of a default hurt tremendously. S&P downgraded the United States’ credit rating, while Gallup’s economic confidence rating fellby 30pt, to -55.

Regardless of whom the public blamed for the 2011 crisis, President Obama’s net approval rating did drop, by up to -4.3pt, per the Real Clear Politics average. True, that was not a catastrophic fall, but consumer confidence tends to be a leading economic indicator; it moves before the rest of the economy does.

Sure enough, Obama’s net approval rating didn’t bottom out until the end of August 2011 – a month after he, House Speaker John Boehner, and congressional leaders had reached a deal. Obama’s net approval stayed at about -10pt through early October, and was still lower at 1 November than it had been on 1 August. And it stayed depressed even though consumer confidence recovered slightly during the same period.

In fact, the political arguments over the shutdown and debt ceiling fight may not matter that much at all. As University of North Carolina political scientist Jim Stimson found (via Mark Blumenthal of the Huffington Post), it’s consumer sentiment that tends to have the greatest impact on approval ratings and hence elections.

After the last go-round on the debt ceiling, the economy had started to pick up by the end of October 2011, and Obama’s approval rating followed. But the lesson for Democrats who may be thinking smugly that the Republicans will take the biggest hit for the federal shutdown and government default angst is that if the economy goes south as a result, then it’ll likely be the Democratic president who sustains the most damage.

Harry J Enten

Yes, Americans do blame Republicans most for the government shutdown | Harry J Enten

But it’s very relative: practically everyone thinks Congress, the Democrats and President Obama all stink, too

Many analysts and pundits are trying to figure out who the public is blaming for the shutdown. All the pre-shutdown polling indicated that people were more likely to hold Republicans accountable than Democrats, but it also shows a majority of Americans think both sides are doing a bad job. Put another way: no side is winning, one side is just losing by less.

More Americans disapprove than approve of the job being done by all three actors in the dispute over the federal budget. President Obama comes out “ahead” in the ABC News/Washington Post poll with a -9pt approval rating. Both parties in Congress are much lower. Democrats in Congress manage to maintain a net approval of -22pt, while Republicans in Congress fall to a -37pt approval rating. These are all awful.

CNN/ORC tries to get at the question slightly differently, yet their data yield a similar result. When given the opportunity, Americans don’t like either side. Of Americans who would blame either President Obama, or Republicans in Congress, or both, in the event of a shutdown, 62% blame Republicans. President Obama is on slightly better ground, but still 52% afford him some blame.

This extends to the overall political atmosphere in Washington, DC these days. Just a quarter of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction per a recent Bloomberg poll – the lowest recorded by Bloomberg’s pollster since the company’s first poll in 2009. With both parties holding sway in at least part of a branch of elected government, it’s no wonder that Americans seem at a loss for which side to chastise. Now, with the shutdown, both parties are spiraling to new lows in the minds of the public.

A new CNN/ORC poll puts the net favorability rating of the Democratic party at -9pt: its lowest since CNN started asking the question in 2006. Republicans, too, are at their lowest level since 2006 as well, with -30pt favorability. A large portion of the difference between the parties’ favorability is that Tea Party supporters are less likely to hold a favorable view of Republicans than Tea Party opponents are of Democrats.

The numbers are much worse for members of Congress. A new Quinnipiac survey has the Democrats in Congress sporting a -28pt approval rating. Republicans are even worse, at a -57pt net approval rating. Again, much of the difference between the two parties’ ratings is that much of the conservative base doesn’t think that congressional Republicans are conservative enough.

Putting together the disapprovals of both sides, it leads to a congressional net approval rating of -77pt in the latest CNN survey. That’s down 19pt since the beginning of the month, and it’s the worst CNN has recorded since 2006.

The executive branch is in a somewhat better position, though only because the White House’s disapprovals don’t stink quite as much. President Obama has a -9pt net approval rating per CNN. That’s tied with his worst levels during the debt ceiling debate in 2011, and marks a continuation of his year-long decline.

So, our hypothetical voters are left with a choice between undesirables. It’s possible that these unwanted choices become even more intolerable over the course of the shutdown, though history suggests otherwise.

Even if the shutdown proves not to move public opinion significantly, the current atmosphere is far from sunny. Now, does this mean that voters will fight back and elect third-party or independent candidates? Almost certainly not. The United States is a two-party system. There have been other instances where Americans weren’t happy with one or both parties, yet the structure held.

The fact is, we have a choice between Democrats and Republicans. Voters don’t like either side, but this distaste will likely continue to manifest itself only in their opinions, and not in their underlying voting habits.

Harry J Enten

The US healthcare paradox: we like the Affordable Care Act but fear Obamacare | Harry J Enten

No wonder Republicans can campaign against the ACA when a plurality of Americans still believes it includes ‘death panels’

President Obama’s healthcare law is hated and loved by some so much that they are willing to shut down the government over it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much passion over an issue about which so few (myself included) know as much as we should.

I wrote about this divide when Obamacare was in front of the US supreme court. Americans were opposed to “Obamacare”, or the Affordable Care Act, yet they were in favor of many of its provisions. Not surprisingly, Americans lacked knowledge of what exactly the law did.

So, as the political fight has intensified, on the eve of implementation of one of the ACA’s key provisions, the creation of new health insurance pools, how much has changed? Does the noisy debate on the ACA mean Americans are better-informed than before about Obamacare? Here are five ways Americans’ opinions about Obamacare have and have not evolved over the past year.

1. Americans have grown more negative in their views

The HuffPollster chart tells the story fairly well. It includes polls that ask about Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Last June, the split was about 47% opposed to, and 40% in favor of, Obamacare. That gap narrowed, after the supreme court upheld the law’s constitutionality. The difference between those for and against the law dropped to only 2pt by the election.

Since the election, however, US public opinion has changed drastically: 52% of Americans now oppose Obamacare – that’s tied at the record high. A little less than 38% are in favor of it, according to the HuffPollster aggregate.

2. The Obamacare v the Affordable Care Act difference still exists, though may be overblown

A few weeks ago, a CNBC poll purported to show major differences when asked about the law in different manners: 46% were against Obamacare, while only 37% were opposed to the ACA. Importantly, support for the healthcare law also dropped from 29% to 22%. What’s happening is that Americans have heard a lot about “Obamacare”, but not much about the ACA. The key is the difference between those who favor and those who oppose for each question, which is about 15pt.

Most of the polls that show the best numbers for Obamacare (that is, the margin of opposition at 10pt or less) don’t mention Obama’s name. These include the Kaiser and ABC/Washington Post surveys. A Fox News poll found the gap was slightly wider, with the margin between favorable and unfavorable towards Obamacare at 26pt, and just 16pt for the ACA. Some, such as the UConn/Hartford Courant poll, use similar wording and find the largest gaps.

The bottom line is that many Americans oppose Obamacare no matter the wording. But Obama’s name probably makes them even less likely to like it.

3. There is a percentage of Americans who oppose the law for not going far enough, though this, too, is likely overblown

Democrats like to point out that even as a majority opposes Obamacare, a certain percentage of Americans think it’s because the law is “not liberal enough”. A new CNN poll puts that percentage at 11%. When you add those who favor Obamacare to those who regard it as “not liberal enough”, you have a near-majority.

The problem with this finding is that I don’t believe that Americans necessarily know what “too liberal” means in this context. My evidence for that is that the group with the highest percentage of those who say they are against the law because it is “too liberal” are, in fact, Republicans.

The actual percentage who don’t like Obamacare because it’s not liberal enough is probably closer to 7%, if not lower. That’s the percentage Kaiser found when they asked if Obamacare went “far enough” in changing the healthcare system. I caution, however, that some of that may be those who want radical conservative change – such as yearning for government to get completely out of healthcare.

4. Americans continue to like the individual provisions, except for the individual mandate

While only 37% of Americans viewed the ACA favorably in a March 2013 Kaiser poll, most liked what the healthcare bill is scheduled to do. Over 55%, and up to 88%, of Americans regard the following facets of Obamacare at least somewhat favorably: tax credits to small businesses to buy insurance, closing the Medicare “doughnut hole”, creating insurance exchanges, giving rebates to customers of insurance customers that spend too much on administrative costs, and the employer mandate. Even Republicans like all of them except the Medicaid expansion, increase in Medicare tax, employer mandate, and individual mandate.

Indeed, the only requirement of Obamacare most people didn’t like was the mandate for all people to join it.

5. Americans still don’t seem to know what Obamacare means for them

Given the discordance between Americans’ feelings on the individual parts of Obamacare and the law as a whole, it’s not that surprising that a striking 41% of Americans don’t feel they have enough information about the ACA, per the UConn/Hartford survey. Only 19% say they are very familiar with the law.

The individual provision questions strike the same chord. More than a third of people are unaware of the health insurance exchanges, subsidy assistance to individuals, or the Medicaid expansion. The latter two provisions of the law have actually seen a decrease in the percentage of people who knew these policies were in the bill, since it first passed. The only part of Obamacare that Americans seem to know really well is the individual mandate, which has also seen the largest percentage-point increase in awareness.

More worryingly, more people than not thought that Obamacare includes a public option, undocumented immigrant insurance, “death panels”, and cuts to Medicare. The Affordable Care Act contains none of these.

The fact is most of Obamacare is liked by the public. The issue is that the provision that is not liked is the best-known.

Conclusion: Americans are confused on Obamacare

There are lots of confused and confusing data here, and it’s difficult to say anything definitive about how Americans feel about the healthcare law signed by President Obama in 2010. As I found more than a year ago, they don’t like the law overall, even while they approve many of its measures.

Some Democrats may say that this points in their favor, but the same dynamic of a differential between the backing people will give for a broad proposition as opposed to their support for individual policies could be said to operate in the case of gun control. Thus two Colorado state senators were recently recalled over a gun control law whose individual provisions many said they liked.

Overall, Americans clearly don’t know enough about Obamacare. Of course, they know just as little about the Affordable Care Act – but to the extent that they are less hostile to a law that doesn’t bear President Obama’s name, it does appear that the embrace of the term “Obamacare” by Democrats and the White House was a tactic that has not worked out.

Harry J Enten

Facing government shutdown, Obama’s party can’t bank on 1996 mythology | Harry J Enten

Convention says Republicans got blamed for the last shutdowns, helping Clinton win in 1996. In reality, it was the economy, stupid

We are less than a week from a possible government shutdown, thanks to the inability of congressional Republicans and President Obama to reach a budget compromise. Much of the disagreement stems from the determination of some Republicans use the budget bill to defund Obamacare. Given the imminence of the threat, much reference has been made to the previous government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996.

For those who don’t remember, 1995-96 featured congressional Republicans led by Newt Gingrich taking on Democratic President Bill Clinton. The conventional wisdom now is that Clinton won the political battle over the shutdowns. Some have taken that a step further and believe Gingrich’s “defeat” cost Republicans in the 1996 election.

The former is definitely true. Republicans clearly took more blame for the shutdowns 17 years ago. Today, though, the “margin of blame” is 16pt smaller – with Americans surveyed only 3pt more likely to blame congressional Republicans than the president (the margin was 19pt in 1995-96). That suggests that Republicans are much in better shape now than they were then.

But even if the polling today did look like 1995-96, I would argue that this looming shutdown will offer nowhere such a clear win for Obama and the Democrats as it did for Clinton. The 1996 elections didn’t differ at all from what you’d expect – given the state of the economy and the outcomes of congressional elections in presidential years when there is split government.

Take a look at presidential and congressional approval from 1995-1996. This allows us to see what impact the budget had on the different parties’ overall stature because of the shutdowns.

You would have expected Congress to see a steep decline in 1995-1996 because of the budget shutdown, but that simply didn’t happen. Check out this graph from Charles Franklin, with the key points of budget shutdown included.

As now, congressional approval was already in the can back in 1995. There was perhaps a slight decline in congressional approval going into 1996, but it’s a point or two at most.

The same pattern held with President Clinton. Here’s a chart from the same time period, created by the Monkey Cage‘s John Sides.

Clinton’s approval rating just after the shutdowns was, if anything, slightly lower than before it. In other words, he really didn’t win much in terms of his standing. He didn’t gain ground in his approval rating, and didn’t lose less than Congress.

Clinton’s major increase in presidential approval occurred in the months after the shutdown. Those ratings corresponded very well with a major increase, also, in congressional approval. That’s not surprising, given that both approval ratings tend to move in unison with one another. Congressional and presidential approval in this case moved up – because the economy was improving.

Perhaps counterintuitively, both Clinton and congressional Republicans actually saw their standing improve in the ballot test for the November 1996 elections. Clinton opened up about a 6pt edge on Republican Bob Dole in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown, when he had been tied prior to it. Congressional Republicans closed a 5pt deficit, to a 1pt deficit, in the national House vote ballot.

Both of those margins pretty much held through the election. Congressional Republicans would gain a little bit on congressional Democrats. Both Clinton and Dole ran away from Reform party candidate Ross Perot (Clinton slightly more so). It looks as though most people did not determine their vote based on their view of the government shutdown.

Indeed, only 10% of Americans said the government shutdown was their greatest reservation about Republicans, following the 1996 vote, per a post-election poll. The exit polls didn’t even ask about it.

There just isn’t much sign that 1996 differed from what you’d expect, given the fundamentals. Clinton won the national vote by a little less than 9pt over Dole. One would think that if the shutdown had really hurt Republicans over the long term, then Clinton would have done far better than the economy would suggest. That simply didn’t happen.

Of the seven economic fundamental models displayed by Brendan Nyhan, two underestimated Clinton’s vote, three overestimated it, and two pretty much nailed it. That’s what you would expect to happen if there were no big event that overrode the 1996 election.

The same holds for the House. House Democrats gained two seats over their 1994 showing, but that’s well within expectations. The result was less of a loss than Republicans went on to suffer in 2008 or 2012, or then Democrats sustained in 1992, for instance. It’s equal to the loss Republicans took in 2000. Only once since 1952 has the majority party gained more than three seats in a presidential election year, when the other party controlled the White House.

In short, there’s just no clear evidence that House Republicans suffered, even if they were largely blamed for the shutdown.

In fact, Senate Republicans actually picked up two seats in 1996. Some might say that Democrats would gladly settle for a two-seat Republican gain in 2014. While that’s true, you have to know the baseline going into the 1996 elections: Republicans controlled 56% of the class up for re-election; they ended up winning 62% of the class thanks to wins in the south.

The reverse will be true in 2014. Democrats will control 60% of the seats up for election in 2014. Republicans have a lot more opportunity to pick up seats. They are playing offense mostly in the south, as they were in 1996. If Republicans were to win 62% of the seats in play in 2014, they’d pick up eight seats.

Now, I don’t think Republicans will gain eight seats in 2014. To me, one would be wise not to project too much correlation between the 1995-96 shutdown and a possible one in 2013. This is a midterm election, not a presidential election year. Congressional and presidential approvals are both in worse shape now than they were then. And polling puts Obama in worse shape than Clinton was at this point, as he faces a possible shutdown.

For those who look to the 1995-96 shutdown as a sign that it will have major electoral implications, look again.

Harry J Enten

The approval rating of Congress is up. Yes, you read that right | Harry J Enten

Their stand against a war in Syria has pushed their approval up to 20%, which could make a difference in the midterm election

Trying to find an American who likes the job Congress is doing is like trying to find a parking space in New York City. A few months ago Congress’ approval rating was at historic lows. Today, it still stinks, but there are signs that, as President Obama flounders, Congress may be making a slight and potentially important comeback.

The HuffPollster aggregate has Congress’s approval rating up to 20%. It’s not just one outlier poll, either. CBS/NY-Times, CNN, Gallup and Reason-Rupe have Congress’ approval at its highest this year.

To be sure, 20% is quite low. It is, however, higher than congressional approval going into the 2012 election. Just 12% approved of Congress per the HuffPollster very sensitive trend among adults aggregate, which is used for consistency and to catch any last minute movement in the polls.

The reason for the increase could be any number of reasons, but the sudden increase is most likely from Syria. Congress has expressed a lot of skepticism over a possible war. This stance is in line with the American people, while President Obama’s initial position on attacking Syria was not. While Obama has changed his stance, a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of the situation.

There’s no way to know if this is a temporary blip or the start of a new trend, though it certainly underestimates how well individual congress members are doing.

When we look at approval of a person’s own representative, polls show 30pt or higher approval than that of the Congress as a whole. Democrats generally like their Democratic congress member, and Republicans the same for their own. Republicans and Democrats may not even like their own caucus, yet still will vote for their own congressman. It’s why re-election rates for congress members are so high.

That’s not to say the 8pt improvement in overall congressional approval isn’t important. It definitely is.

David Jones and Monika McDermott found that, once controlling for a host of factors including the president’s approval and the state of the economy, a 10pt decrease in congressional approval costs majority party incumbents about 4pt in their re-election margin, while helping minority incumbents by about a point. Overall, a 10pt drop in congressional approval would lead on average to a 17 seat loss for the majority party.

Usually, this rise in congressional approval would be mitigated by a rise in the president’s approval. The president’s and Congress’ approval ratings tend to run in concert with each other, as demonstrated by Jim Stimson. That’s why it’s odd to see major gains for either party in Congress when the two branches are controlled by different parties (even if the US senate has a slim Democratic majority).

When one rises and the other falls, it can lead to historical anomalies. Consider 2012: President Obama’s approval was decent, even if not great. Congressional approval was at its all time low of 12%. And while a host of variables such as gerrymandering and urban packing kept Republican seat losses to a minimum, they lost the national House vote by over a point. It was the worst loss for the majority party in the national vote for a presidential year House election since 1948.

For 2014, it may be the opposite. Congress’s approval seems to be rising, while the president’s is dropping. Presidential approval is, in my opinion, more instrumental in determining the results of congressional elections, so a low Obama approval would be worse for the presidential party than a dropping congressional approval. But with congressional and presidential approval in concert against the Democrats, it could provide quite the punch back in the other direction from 2012.

Of course, we don’t know if the current congressional approval rating rise will hold. It could sink back into the deep abyss by 2014. If it does stay up, it doesn’t guarantee anything. Again, 20% approval isn’t great.

Still the rise in Congress’s approval rating, even if it is only to 20%, does in conjunction with the usual movement against the president’s party in midterms make Republican gains more likely.

Harry J Enten

Marco Rubio’s immigration reform push wins GOP establishment loyalty | Harry J Enten

Immigration reform has enabled Senator Rubio, once a Tea Party poster-boy, to reposition himself deftly for a 2016 presidential run

On Monday, Politico reported that “With immigration, Marco Rubio risks DC insider label.” Rubio, of course, has put a lot of chips on the table in trying to push for immigration reform for undocumented immigrants. And I’ve got one piece of advice for Senator Marco Rubio on this issue: run to the establishment. Run to it as much as you can.

I have not been particularly on board the “Marco Rubio for president, 2016″ train. In fact, I wrote a whole article devoted to the five reasons why I wouldn’t bet on him. Two of those reasons, however, look a whole lot less applicable in the wake of Rubio’s leadership on the immigration issue.

Previously, I had worried that Rubio would not appeal to the establishment wing of his party. Rubio had won his Senate seat in 2010 by challenging the establishment candidate, and he has run up an anti-establishment record as a senator. This was perhaps my main worry about a possible run by him for the presidency: see, contrary sometimes to appearances, the grassroots is not where the power is in Republican politics.

Cohen, Karol et al’s The Party Decides tells us that the presidential candidate with the most establishment backing almost always wins the nomination in the modern era. Jerry Ford won over Ronald Reagan in 1976; Reagan over George HW Bush in 1980; Bush over Bob Dole and Jack Kemp in 1988; Dole over all in 1996; and George W Bush over John McCain in 2000. All of these winners had clear support from the party establishment.

Mitt Romney followed that tradition in 2012. He had by far the most endorsements from party leaders in the lead-up to and during the primary season. That’s why I was fairly certain he was going to win the nomination, even as he faced challenges from the “very conservative” wing in his party.

The only Republican candidate who has won the nomination in the past 40 years without clear party support was McCain in 2008. In that year, however, there was no favorite, and McCain clearly tried to make good with the GOP grandees, after his 2000 bid. In the end, it worked. After the first two primaries, McCain became the establishment candidate.

Rubio’s push on immigration reform is going to get him some insider credit. Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed looks favorably upon Rubio’s push. Most donors like Rubio’s new role. He’s also bound to win plaudits from the GOP establishment in the Senate, which is pushing for immigration reform. Overall, this is definitely the correct move for a person who might otherwise be seen as too “outsidery”.

Immigration reform has the additional advantage of being seen as a moderating force. It’s backed by most Americans and is generally supported by the party establishment because it’s seen (rightly or wrongly) as an electoral winner.

Rubio’s Senate record paints him as one of the most conservative senators. He was the seventh most conservative senator in the 112th Congress, sandwiched between Jim Inhofe and Ron Johnson. As I wrote before, it’s unlikely the Republican party will nominate a very conservative candidate in 2016. When it liked Barry Goldwater in 1964, and Ronald Reagan in 1980, the party had recently controlled the presidency. But when the party hasn’t been in the White House for eight years or more, it goes for a more centrist pick in order to win.

This isn’t to say that Rubio should become a moderate. Far from it. It’s neither the moderate nor the very conservative vote that dictates who wins Republican primaries for president. Rubio’s key is to win the “somewhat conservative” vote that tends to take into account what the establishment says, as well as wanting to pick the most electable. By the Buckley rule, the “somewhat conservative” bloc chooses the most electable conservative.

That’s the reason that McCain was able to win in 2008 when he lost in 2000. He lost the very conservative vote and won the moderate vote in both years. The switch was among the voters who considered themselves “somewhat conservative”. These are the voters that Rubio must win, if he wants the nomination.

So, I think Rubio is making a smart political play by supporting immigration reform so openly. It’s the type of issue that will garner him plaudits from the party establishment – which generally gets to pick Republican nominees. It’ll help to reassure Republicans that he can win, which will likely be a chief concern for primary voters in 2016, as it was in 2012.

At the same time, Rubio can point to other issues where he is an outsider conservative, such as the debt ceiling. Rubio is proving, perhaps, that he knows how to balance the wings of his party correctly.

Harry J Enten

Margin of Σrror

Category Archives: US Congress

You can trust Gallup’s numbers … for now | Harry J Enten

Cory Booker: set to be the next senator from New Jersey | Harry J Enten

Has gerrymandering made politics more partisan? Ted Cruz argues not | Harry J Enten

What the Virginia governor’s race tells us about the 2014 midterms | Harry J Enten

Democrats won’t win a ‘blame the GOP’ game on the shutdown and debt ceiling | Harry J Enten

Yes, Americans do blame Republicans most for the government shutdown | Harry J Enten

The US healthcare paradox: we like the Affordable Care Act but fear Obamacare | Harry J Enten

Facing government shutdown, Obama’s party can’t bank on 1996 mythology | Harry J Enten

The approval rating of Congress is up. Yes, you read that right | Harry J Enten

Marco Rubio’s immigration reform push wins GOP establishment loyalty | Harry J Enten