Policy Mood
Matt Bai proposes:
The cautionary note here, for jubilant Democrats, is that there is little reason to believe that the electoral trend in their favor actually reflects any widespread ideological shift. If you only look at numerical majorities, it might well seem that the story of the last 20 years in American politics is one in which voters have swerved erratically from one ideological pole to the next, embracing a harsh kind of conservatism in 1994 and then a resurgent liberalism in 2006. In reality, though, the American public doesn’t seem to move very much in its basic attitudes about government, which have remained mostly pragmatic and predictable; simply put, people tend to want a little more government when times are tough and a little less when things are going well. The number of voters who identified themselves in exit polls as conservative, liberal or moderate remained virtually unchanged between 2004 and 2008 — and in fact, those numbers have been more or less steady for decades.
Brendan Nyhan disposes:
But as I’ve pointed out before, UNC’s Jim Stimson has shown
using his “policy mood” measure (Excel file) that the American public’s demand for more or less government is (a) not static and (b) doesn’t simply respond to the state of the economy:
Instead, the public tends to move in the opposite direction from policy (after some lag), acting like a thermostat of sorts against government overreach in a liberal or conservative direction. Stimson has only updated his measure through 2006, but I’d guess that the public has continued to move in a liberal direction as part of a continued backlash against the Bush administration.
Bai’s second point is also uninformed by knowledge of the relevant research. Decades of political science scholarship have shown that individual self-identification as liberal or conservative is a weak indicator of actual policy preferences for most of the population. In fact, Stimson shows in later work that a significant proportion of self-described conservatives want more government spending in various issue areas.
I understand that people think this sort of Bai-style analysis is incredibly sophisticated, but the fact of the matter is that the facts are pretty much common sense — voting for Democrats is associated with a desire for the sort of policies Democrats offer.
28 Responses to “Policy Mood”
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November 20th, 2008 at 8:17 am
This business of self labeling as conservative is highly suspect. No doubt self-reliance and the right to make money on one’s own are cardinal American values. But the majority also like strong safety nets and and active, strong government. The idealization of the frontier tradition often obscures how amazingly cooperative and collective we really are. We inherit a strong group responsibility tradition from the English yeomanry; one we have perpetuated and elaborated in our voluntarys organizations from PTA to the Rotary. Someone once noted we are the most communist nation of all!
November 20th, 2008 at 8:17 am
You see, when Republicans win, it’s a huge, ideological, moral, and every other kind of shift, which means all Americans want Republicans to embark on changing the nation in fundamental right wing ways.
But when Democrats and liberals win, and win repeatedly, in increasing margins, it means that America is mainly a Republican, right wing nation, and merely intended to hire Democrats to do what Republicans want to do.
It’s obvious.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I think the hard lesson that both Democrats and Republicans are about to learn is this: the money no longer exists for any of the big projects anyone wants, whether we’re talking about keeping the military as busy (in dozens of countries) as it has been, or whether we’re talking about some large govt entitlement plan (like universal health care).
The debt load we are carrying now is enormous – we’re basically in the same position the UK found itself in after WWI, when they had transitioned from being the financial center of the world to being a rather small player. Sure, it took them another 25 years (and a war) to really grasp the new reality, but it was real nevertheless.
I suspect we’ll hit the wall a lot faster than they did, because we’ve been spending a lot more money on a lot more frivolous things for a lot longer.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:30 am
voting for Democrats is associated with a desire for the sort of policies Democrats offer.
How ironic, then, that trust fund scumbag Matt Yglesias and his pals at GE secretly long for the summary execution of all voters who feel a desire for left-leaning policies. Hope the new condo Marty Peretz payed for was worth selling your soul, you bottom-feeding slime!
November 20th, 2008 at 8:31 am
That graph would be a lot less dramatic if the min and max were 0 and 100.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:36 am
This is beyond irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the mood of the country is, as if such a thing could be measured. It matters what the mood of the Congress and the President are, because they make the laws. A country with a progressive majority in Congress and a progressive in the presidency will get progressive policies, however reactionary the population might be.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:36 am
It’s great to see that now even policy journalism has to be cast in the form of horserace coverage.
I hate to wish unemployment on anyone, but seriously, at this point traditional media outlets can’t go bankrupt soon enough.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Polls on voter attitudes are invalid when they ask the simple question “are you liberal or conservative?”, because Republicans have carried on a deliberate and partly successful campaign for many years to discredit the word “liberal”. Attitudes must be judged by support for specific policies or actions.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:39 am
DTM – I’m expecting a major restructuring of the US economy based on the reality that government has gotten too big, where “too big” means “cannot finance itself other than via deficit spending”.
I can’t say where the tipping point is, exactly. I think it’s been reached, but I could be wrong. At some point, our foreign creditors are going to decide that spending the money at home to create internal demand makes a lot more sense than buying up T-Bills. If China decided to slow or stop buying T-Bills – not to punish the US, just to reorient how it manages its own economy – then a whole lot of spending decisions get made for us, whether you, me, Matt, or Obama like it.
The situation we’re in is simply not sustainable. We rely on the kindness of others to manage our deficit spending. If they decide to make other arrangements (for any reason), then the game is up.
In such a scenario, raising taxes doesn’t help much – because raising taxes in a bad economy will make the economy slow down more, and bring in less revenue. To see actual examples of that, see nearly any city in the US northeast or midwest, and how they’ve tried to make up revenue gaps by raising various taxes (then lost more population), then tried again. It ends up having a very “rinse, repeat” kind of feel to it.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Matt Bai’s the house “liberal” or Democrat in a dreadful lineup of regular columnists for the Sunday Times Magazine. And his sole, repeated message is for the Democrats to move to the right. No media bias, you understand.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:06 am
DTM,
We already have a crushing corporate tax rate compared to the competition – I think we have a lot less room than you think we do. You want to create jobs? Get out of the fantasy thinking about infinite “green jobs” from windmills, and start thinking about what a guy who wants to build a factory is thinking. Right now, Ireland, China, India – they all look way, way more attractive.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:53 am
On health care, this is something people constantly claim hobbles the big three car makers. If that’s the case, I wonder how you explain the profitability of Honda, Toyota (et. al.) with their US based plants? They have all the same systemic issues.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am
On a related note, I just heard Ruy Teixeira speak on a panel this morning about the election and he laid out a huge amount of data showing the changes in the electorate. I don’t know about “ideological shift,” but the groups that are growing in prominence, seem to prefer the progressive agenda. Those groups are getting larger and the conservative demographics are getting smaller.
Bai claims that Virginia and North Carolina were only in play because of Republican mismanagement, as opposed to what analysts like Teixeira have been saying for some time.
Does Bai really think single women, white college-educated folks, Hispanics, African Americans, and young people are going to swerve erratically from one ideological pole to the next over the next ten years? They may be pragmatic on the whole, as opposed to being hard ideologues, but their inclinations seem clear.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I don’t know about this. Has anyone correlated the actual desires of the public with electoral outcomes? It seems to me that instead of any real connection, undecided voters ten to have a “grass is always greener” mentality.
In other words, people just vote for the other guy after eight years, regardless of policy, politics, etc. I’d be interested in anyone’s thoughts on this.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Man — I have a strong distaste for Matt Bai. The phenomenon Matt Y points out, ie narrative driven analysis without a lot of reference to existing consensus or research, is not a new thing for Bai. He’s Brooksian.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I agree with skeptonomist: Republicans have run a long and quite successful campaign to demonize the *word* “liberal”, but that has made little to no impression on the public’s *policy* preferences.
So you have people who self-describe as conservatives (because it’s what every self-respecting upright person is!) while supporting every liberal policy in the book.
That’s why Bai’s point is basically worthless: he’s measuring a variable that’s unrelated to reality.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:10 am
I would be interested to see the above graph superimposed over another graph that shows general economic indicators from, say, 1964 to present. With the exception of 1980 and Reagan, I think you’d see Republican presidents voted into office during times of prosperity (Nixon, Bushes I and II), and Democratic ones voted in during times of recession (Clinton, Obama). When I’m in a Thomas Frank kind of mood, I tend to suspect that the real underlying trend is Americans indulging in cultural resentments by voting Republican when the economy affords them the luxury, then voting Democrat when the resulting Republicans screw things up significantly enough to require electing politicians who are actually interested in governance. This is a simplistic and partisan conclusion, perhaps, but seems more creditable then random variation nevertheless.
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