Survey Says . . . ?
I expressed frustration about this via Twitter, but I may as well take to the blog to point out that by far the most ridiculous thing about the impulse to point toward VA/NJ/NY-23 as indicators of the national mood is not so much the historical unreliability of these indicators, it’s the fact that we have statistically valid surveys of national public opinion available for our perusal.
For example, how do people feel about Barack Obama? Well:
And what are people’s intentions with regard to congressional voting? Well:
By the same token, you don’t actually need to know the outcome of the NJ gubernatorial election to know what New Jersey residents think—the polls are very clear that most people don’t like Corzine and most people don’t like Christie. The question of who wins the election in the end (which will come down to turnout issues, tactical voting, and second-choice preferences) is very important to the future of public policy in New Jersey but it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about underlying sentiments.
27 Responses to “Survey Says . . . ?”
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November 3rd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
But the narrative, Matt! why won’t someone think of the narrative! Do you expect Politico to do JOURNALISM? You sadistic creep!
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Virginia is an especially terrible place to take the pulse since the voters have tended contrarian since – I think – 1977 by voting in the governor of the party opposite of the party in the White House.
I support my beloved Commonwealth, but I do not look forward to the next four years of Bob McDonnell’s horseshit policies that close to being enacted.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
If you were Spencer Ackerman, you would have titled this post, “Survey Says, You’re Dead!”
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:15 pm
This is why you’ll never be a pundit, MY.
And what Aqua said.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
the fact that we have statistically valid surveys of national public opinion available for our perusal
True enough, although such polls are mostly taken of all adults (or at best registered voters). Seeing as how the people who vote today are *actual voters*, that makes them qualitatively different than the people represented in the polls.
Let’s also remember that all 3 of the jurisdictions we’re talking about NJ, VA and NY-23 voted for Obama in 2008. Of course, Obama is not on the ballot, but the point is that this can be used as decent proxy for races in 2010 (also when Obama is not on the ballot).
I also note that Matthew posted Obama’s favorable rating, not his job approval. There is a significant difference between the two.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Job approval on pollster.com minus the sketchy Rasmussen data is 52.4%. Disapproval at 41%. Significant but not extremely so.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
IOW, Job approval minus the polls that turn badly for Obama is good for Obama! QED!
Job approval including all the polls is at about +5.
Anyway, I don’t think that it really matters much for 2010 what happens now. A year in politics is an eternity. However, I will note that what happens now could affect the health care debate, since that’s a lot closer than November 2010 elections.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Its not because its bad for Obama, its because they are well-known not to be trustworthy in off years. I also took away the internet polls that were good for obama because internet polls tell us nothing.
You are right about 2010, though. What happens now will not matter in 2010. Also, Obama’s approval now will not be related to his approval in 2010. What will matter in 2010 is unemployment. If it’s down, democrats will win easily, and Obama’s approval will be higher than it is now. If it’s at 10%, I would expect a republican shift.
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Obama is not on the ballot, so LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!
I know Obama’s staff took over the management of Corzine’s campaign, but if he loses, that won’t mean anything. LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!
I know Obama is so unpopular in Virginia (a state he won by 7 points a year ago), that Deeds was afraid to do any joint appearances with him lest it knock more holes in the bottom of his sinking ship. But that’s irrelevant. LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!
Can’t you see how personally popular Obama is, as long as we ignore polls that show how unpopular his policies are or that most people thihnk he isn’t doing a very good job? LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:53 pm
IOW, Job approval minus the polls that turn badly for Obama is good for Obama! QED!
Al, I’m sure you can look at the chart and see that Rasmussen is consistently 10-15 points off from literally every other poll on there.
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I know Obama is so unpopular in Virginia (a state he won by 7 points a year ago), that Deeds was afraid to do any joint appearances with him lest it knock more holes in the bottom of his sinking ship. But that’s irrelevant. LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!
Can’t you see how personally popular Obama is, as long as we ignore polls that show how unpopular his policies are or that most people thihnk he isn’t doing a very good job? LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!
“Barack Obama’s approval rating among Virginia voters stands at 51 percent (just under the 52.6 percent of the vote he received in the state last November) and 57 percent in New Jersey (almost exactly the same as the 57.1 percent of the vote he earned in that state last November).”
Yeah, keep trying. Deeds didn’t tell Obama not to come, Obama saw the godawful campaign he was running and stayed away lest it tarnish him.
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Campesino,
Except for the joint appearance the two had last week when Obama joined Deeds for a rally at Old Dominion University.
Now, while you buffer that information and before you can throw out some catty, “Well, of course it was at a university, they’re known for their liberal bias,” let me stop you by letting you know ODU is the most conservative university I’ve ever visited or attended by far. This is partially the result of the military presence at the school (ROTC, active military attending from nearby bases, retired military transitioning to civilian life), partially the result of being located near Pat Robertson’s stomping grounds, and partially the result of “day-tripper” students from nearby rural locales who wanted to get farther away from home than Christopher Newport University, but found Richmond too black or Virginia Commonwealth University too liberal. By way of an anecdote regarding ODU’s hostility, I recently spotted bathroom graffiti of a guillotine with “Obama’s head goes here.”
Now, while you process that information and prepare a witty retort about it being a “nobody school from nowhere,” I’ll say that ODU is the fifth largest university in the commonwealth nestled comfortably in a metro area with a larger population than Austin, Jacksonville, or the entire state of Alaska.
Until you get better information, I’d appreciate it if you kept your ignorant opinions about the Old Dominion State to yourself.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Obama Popularity Declining in Virginia
Raleigh, N.C. – A new Public Policy Polling survey looking at how likely voters for this
fall’s election view Barack Obama finds his approval rating at just 48%, with 46%
disapproving.
Obama’s reviews are highly polarized with 95% of Democrats but only 9% of
Republicans giving him good marks. His overall numbers are weak due to poor numbers
among independents- 52% of them say they disapprove of Obama’s performance with
only 38% giving him favorable ones.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
@clark, Mister who is that? Eyyo, the Wu is back!
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds said Monday that he hadn’t distanced himself from President Obama, even as senior Democrats in the state complained about the difficult political winds blowing in from across the Potomac River.
“I absolutely did not push the president away,” Deeds said before addressing a vote-rich retirement community in the northern Virginia suburb of Springfield.
With polls showing Deeds trailing by a significant margin to Republican Bob McDonnell just over a week before the election, White House officials and other national Democrats are grumbling about the quality of the state senator’s campaign and some of the steps he has taken to appeal to Virginia’s moderate electorate.
Asked Monday if the White House was happy with the Deeds campaign, Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs pointedly declined to offer a vote of confidence.
“That’s not for me to pass judgment on,” Gibbs said.
As he has been throughout the campaign, Deeds is torn between wanting the assistance of a president who is still very popular with the party base and a Southern Democrat’s fear of being too closely associated with the more liberal national party. He equivocated during a debate when asked if Barack Obama was his kind of Democrat, has opposed the federal energy bill and said he would consider opting out of a public health insurance option.
Deeds’ dilemma has been brought into even starker relief in the final days of the campaign, as his campaign pins its dwindling hopes on rousing the so-called “surge voters” who turned out to help elect Obama carry the state last year but are often uninterested in state politics.
When pressed by a local TV reporter about some of the steps he’s taken to avoid being pegged as a progressive Democrat in the Obama mold, Deeds seemed uncertain how to respond and let out a nervous chuckle.
“I’m not going to visit my sins on anybody else,” he said. “I think for myself and I try to reflect that at all times.”
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:01 pm
With democrats like Yglesias endorsing far right positions such as hegemony theory just 2 posts below and upper class born Obama running arround giving it is all your fault if you are poor and working till you drop dead to get rich is the sense of life speaches to everyone from African third world countries to schoolchildren (which are then criticed for not blameing the poor enough by Republicans), those numbers tell us a lot about how Democrats are doing good at getting a majority for their party. Not so much about how good they are doing with getting a majority for substancial policy changes for the better.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Campesino, pro tip: try to avoid citing data that demonstrate the exact opposite of what you are trying to prove. Showing that Obama has positive net approval in Virginia does not help your case.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:19 pm
[...] pick up the other, closer governor’s race. As I said earlier the outcome obviously has important policy implications for the state of New Jersey but even if [...]
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:47 pm
So, Obama remains wildly popular with his base, wildly unpopular with the opposite side, mostly unpopular with independents, but remains more favorable than unfavorable in the commonwealth. Oh, and the president did come down and campaign for Deeds. There’s even pictures of the two hugging!
What were all those unsourced articles supposed to prove, again?
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:55 pm
It is crude to say that NJ-GOV and VA-GOV are referenda on Obama, but they do say something about the GOP. They show that the GOP can win elections in moderate states, that they can win with independents, and that the conservative base is not some basketcase that will stay home rather than vote for its own party. Deeds ran a horrible campaign but he was a moderate Democrat from western Virginia and he got beat by a hard-right Republican who got little benefit out of his NoVA roots. So much for the theory that the VA GOP strategy of nominating hard conservatives will never work.
You wouldn’t know all this stuff if you listened to liberal analysis of GOP woes, and you might be surprised at all this if you looked at GOP approval numbers over the summer.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 pm
[...] cosa – y aún no sabemos (casi medianoche) los resultados de la mitad de las elecciones relevantes. Obama sigue siendo bastante popular, al fin y al cabo. Mañana, [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 12:33 am
Average American Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:47 pm
So, Obama remains wildly popular with his base, wildly unpopular with the opposite side, mostly unpopular with independents, but remains more favorable than unfavorable in the commonwealth. Oh, and the president did come down and campaign for Deeds. There’s even pictures of the two hugging!
What were all those unsourced articles supposed to prove, again?
=========================================
Deeds lost, Corzine lost, Obama lost, you lost, hasta la vista, baby.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:34 am
[...] say that, because it’s their job to make the trivial bullshit more important than it is. Like Yglesias points out, if you want to know what people think about Obama, instead of looking at the election between 3 [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 3:30 am
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November 4th, 2009 at 3:32 am
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November 4th, 2009 at 10:37 am
[...] in CA-10 and NY-23, it’s a bit more of a story of ousting the incumbents. What’s more, as Matt Yglesias notes, national polling is actually a better way of gauging the national mood, and that unequivocally [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I lost? Why didn’t anyone tell me I was running? I could have at least thrown a decent kegger…