Via Harris Polling:
The latest Harris Poll shows Democrats slightly increasing their modest lead over the GOP in party identification to six percentage points, up three percentage points from 2004. According to Harris, this is the largest Democratic lead since 2000, when it was eight percentage points.
See here for the news release with additional details, expected within 24 hours. Below are some other stats from the poll:
Almost two-thirds (63%) of both Republicans and Democrats consider themselves “strong” supporters of their parties.
Independents comprise 22 percent of all adults, down slightly from 24 percent in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
Conservatives continue to outnumber liberals by a wide margin (34% to 20%), but this is down slightly from a 36 to 18 percent margin in 2004.
Moderates continue to exceed conservatives (42% to 34%).
The Democratic lead over Republicans has fallen from 21 percentage points in the 1970s, 11 points in the 1980s, seven points in the 1990s and has averaged five percentage points in the 2000s.
The proportions of conservatives, liberals and moderates have not changed significantly since the 1980s. However, there was a clear up tick in conservatives between the 1970s and the 1980s (32% to 36%).
(h/t newslinker)
Not being an expert in the kinds of statistics that don’t involve batting averages and earned run averages, I’m not be prepared to comment to weightily on the poll, except to point out that a quick glance reveals nothing more than an increase in party identification—with a solid majority of party identifiers calling themselves “strong” supporters.
Several things could account for this—being perpetually out of power in recent years, some of the left-leaning idealists (Greens, Naderites, etc) who may have identified with third parties (or even as “independents,” as they love the idea of presenting themselves as intellectually open minded) have decided for logisitical support reasons to rejoin the ranks of Democrats, whose leadership has moved more left anyway, at least for the present, with high-profile Dems tacking left liberal (Reid, Pelosi, Dean, Kennedy, Kerry, and—lately, Gore; while the Lieberman has been marginalized, and southern Dem reprsentatives like Zell Miller all but excommunicated. The wild card for the national Democrats is Hillary, who continues to triangulate—staying strong (but largely silent) on national security, while still using Dr King’s birthday to propogate demonstrably false charges of nature’s racially-charged animus (via Katrina, which storm, the charge goes, hated blacks or at the very least, took its vengeance on racist levees), and to suggest that—had only we as a country invested in MORE Great Society and social engineering programs, we’d not find ourselves today still fighting “oppression” and “institutionalized racism”. Dem social firebrands—as is there dogged wont—refuse to acknowledge that their programs have largely failed beyond some initial consciousness raising successes, and are now, in fact, the main source of tension between various identity groups who have been inculcated with the belief that every grievance they can point to has an outside, usually classist / racist cause.
This is self-perpetuating victimhood—and so invested are liberal/progressive Dems in the narrative that they’ve all but succeeded (until a recent growing backlash) in making any discussion of alternate explanations for the stasis (or, in some cases, a worsening) in racial attitudes over the last 40 years de facto racist—is a powerful electoral tool (for reasons I’ve tried to articulate elsewhere: namely, that Americans are compassionate, and should they believe that somewhere some other is suffering, their guilt will force them to do whatever is within their power to alleviate injustice; and liberal Dems who engage in strategic identity politics play on such an attitude). In fact, on some college campuses, the mere intellectual proposition that race-based affirmative action is a net negative for a society claiming interest in achieving Martin Luther King’s dream of character-driven valuative system—or the scientifically supportable proposition that women and men share different traits (an argument progressive feminists have insisted for years was the case, differentiating between vertical and horizontal logic, etc; but one that, when raised by Harvard’s Larry Summers resulted in a high profile public lynching)—are proof that sociology, in it most experimental utopian socially engineered form has taken control of higher learning, particularly in the humanities, to such a point that theories that push back against various hypotheses about “social construction” (of race, of “gender,” etc) are to be quashed at all costs.
Hardly the stuff of the storied university commitment to intellectual query, sadly.
Another accounting for this is that polling phenomenon is that, hyperbolic shrieking from the hard left to the contrary, the current GOP—spenders, “compassionate conservatives” (who believe in government-mandated social expenditures with no track record of effectiveness; who support, for pragmatic reasons, race-based programs; and who overspend, while allowing Ted Kennedy to play a large hand in creating an education policy)—is not conservative enough for the conservative base; and some newly-minted moderates who might have at-one time called themselves conservatives are put off by the arch social conservatism of some religious hardliners (for instance, conservative-leaning libertarians, while they would likely never vote democrat, will, in fact, recoil from an ideology that tries to defeat or delay advances in medical research, or that tries to introduce ID into the sciences, etc.).
Of course, these are all preliminary thoughts—but the main point here is that the uptick in self-identified can be accounted for simply by the rolling together of ideological fellow travellers who have previously distinguished themselves by classification over individual issues; similarly, the modest drop off in GOP self-identification can have similar explanations—from a tradeoff among undecided moderates between moving away from social conservatism and toward a more muscular centrist Democratic position.
Your explanations, however, may shed more light on this than mine—party fatigue, a desire by the electorate for change, etc, all play roles—but I wonder if any of this will translate in the ballot box; it will depend, I suppose, on questions of security (which supports Republicans), vs how well the Dems are able to disguise their nannystatist ambitions and present them as fixes to uncaring, greedy rethuglican croneyism—part of the “culture of corruption” that has keep the stock market stable after 911, has increased housing, has consumer confidence relatively high, and has unemployment below 5%.
Harris’ methodology (I haven’t seen the internals on party breakdown):
The Harris Poll® was conducted by telephone within the United States between January 6 and 9, 2006 among a nationwide cross section of 1,003 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race, education, and region were weighted where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population.
In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the overall results have a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points of what they would be if the entire U.S. adult population had been polled with complete accuracy. Sampling error for the various sub-samples listed in the tables above is higher and varies. Unfortunately, there are several other possible sources of error in all polls or surveys that are probably more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. They include refusals to be interviewed (nonresponse), question wording and question order, interviewer bias, weighting by demographic control data and screening (e.g., for likely voters). It is impossible to quantify the errors that may result from these factors.
Love to hear your thoughts, though.
Last time I checked, political parties don’t stand for election, people do. Once you attach a name to the party affiliation in a head to head race, the numbers change. Gerrymandering has eliminated all but a few competetive districts.
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. The only poll that has any meaning is the one resulting from actual votes cast on election day.
All recent polls have “over-sampled” Democrats—i.e., Democrats are more likely to cooperate when the pollster calls, thus the raw poll result over-represents Democratic sentiment. Pollsters correct for this by asking the respondents their party affiliation, and then re-weighting the results accordingly (using some hopefully-reliable indicator of the “true” proportions, such as party registrations or recent election results). However, it is logically impossible to perform this sort of correction when the very question you are asking is party affiliation. If this poll over-sampled Democrats, they will stay over-sampled, and if the pollster (or its employer) is dishonest, it will use these new numbers to calibrate its next substantive poll, exaggerating the Democratic slant even further, and ultimately leading pollsters to express shock when the actual elections are held, and giving rise to Diebold-type conspiracy theories and lessening general trust in the democratic process, etc.
Jeff,
You contend that the Democrats’ owe their increase in popularity to offering a greater appeal to the hard left. But wouldn’t this conversely chase away a lot of the party’s moderates who seemed so ever present in the ‘90’s?
Really, I think the explanation for these poll results have more to do with the Republicans and their failings. Not only have they dismayed so many of their supporters with their corruption (both legal and idealogical), but their idealogical corruption has hurt them by also removing economic conservatism from public discourse. Why are any more people going to rally behind the idea of small government if those we’ve elected to enact it don’t dare even talk about it?
TW: “problems” abound when those who seek to challenge the excesses of governmental power are so easily seduced by them.
I would have guessed that the “the internals on party breakdown” would be fairly obvious for a poll attempting to determine “party breakdown.”
One dude’s opinion.
Carry on.
This poll was conducted over a weekend.
Weekend polls are not good for the GOP. Rasmussen shows the same effect for President Bush approval.
Also note—review the track record for Harris Polls in a similar area:
Who won the election?
Who gained seats in mid-terms?
Each of these quotes from Harris show a trend with Dems leading in generic polling, that doesn’t appear to extend into elections.
Why the difference – generic vs regional, generic vs named candidate, generic vs issue, and day of the week? Personally, I don’t give much consideration to these types of polls.
I’m put off by the RRs and the big spenders. The WoT is all that keeps me from leaving the GOP outright. I miss Barry Goldwater.
It might be a fluke of the places and fields I’ve lived and worked in, but I’ve known quite a few secret Repubicans (and libertarians, and others of quasi-“right” political leanings) but no secret Democrats (or socialists, or anything however crazily “left,” so long as they vote, and are therefore functionally pro-Democrat). Any expression unorthodoxy beyond knowing glances and pointed silences would jeopardize their social standing and livelihoods.
It’s funnyâ€â€I disagree with them *much* more, and much more fundamentally, than *any* Democrat does, but many Republicans I know have felt safe “coming out” to me, because they know I won’t cause them any hurt, even though I’m often in a position to deny them work. Their relief suggests that that’s rare.
And these pollsâ€â€even exit pollsâ€â€*never* match people’s voting behavior. QED? Could be.
The term was ridiculous when it was invented, but there seems now to be something like a real Silent Majority (or Plurality, at least).
Makes betting on elections easy money.
Chairmen e —
I’m just suggesting more folks are self-identifying as hard left, not that they have a greater appeal (its a result of fringe parties joining a Democratic party they no longer despise as too centrist).
I am probably going to give non-commital answers if asked because of my disgust with both parties. But the D’s have alot farther to come to get me than the R’s do right at the moment.
So, Larry Summers was, per Jeff, “lynched”. My condolences to Larry’s family.
I look forward to Jeff not taking exception to other blogger’s use of loaded signifiers. “Ghettoization of Academics”, The Right’s ongoing Pogrom against” .. it’s all good.
As to the topic at hand, the number that now self-identify as ‘Democrat’ is hindered by the reality that the Democrats don’t even know what that term means.
.
Point taken, BS. I haven’t been sleeping, and I’m a bit off my game. I should have thought more carefully about the paradigmatic equivalent: Summers was “burned at the stake for being a witch and not floating when called upon to do so by the non-witches who control the definition of witchery.”
When (a) John Ashcroft spends the weeks after 9/11 planning to compel the State of Oregon to submit to his opposition to assisted suicide, (b) Bush countenances Ashcroft successfully telling the people of California that they may not legislate what medicines may be used in their state, (c) the GOP-controlled federal government goes into panicked derangement to intervene in a Florida probate court’s legally proper rulings about a plug-pulling decision that millions of Americans have insisted on for themselves both formally and orally (d) Bush is getting rebuked by Michael Luttig (!!) for playing games in the serious matter of holding an American citizen without counsel and without charges and planning to do so apparently indefinitely, and (e) Bush publicly acknowledges that he is in wholesale violation of a duly enacted Congressional statute and is surveilling citizens with no judicial oversight, because he has expansive authority to do as he pleases if he invokes a war that will go on for decades…when all of this is happening I become ready to bolt.
I’ve supported Bush’s foreign policy, but like Hitch I’m quite alarmed at GOP power grabs. Give me the old time religion the Goldwater GOP preached, back when they didn’t endorse that the Commerce Clause lets Congress trump virtually any state law, and when attention to excessive Executive power was not dismissed as a lefty fixation. If the Dems move closer to that picture (they’d have to jettison Pelosi & etc), they get me.
(Can’t figure out link tags here; this is url for Hitch’s take on the NSA thing: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-hitchens/what-reason-do-we-have-to_b_13985.html)
Jeff,
This comment is an interesting signifier because it is one of the real fault lines on the Right. There has been a marriage of convenience between conservatives and Libertarians for the sake of electoral victory. However, the antipathy shown by Libertarians to conservative Christians has the potential to become an opening that can be exploited by a Democrat who is demonstrably strong on defense.
I think it’s a shame because I believe our culture is living on the legacy left to it by previous generations that were a great deal more devoted to religious faith than we are. We are like children living on our parents’ trust fund, but who disdain their habits of decency and restraint that generated the patrimony we have been left. At some point that trust fund will be exhausted, as I have exhausted this metaphor.
And, Jeff, while I have no strong conviction on the issue of stem cell research, I resent the overblown rhetoric that supporters of government funding o f this research are using. To hear stem cell fans go on you would think that certain Christians are designing a detour on the road to the medical millennium because we want to see people die. In the history of science and medical experimentation there have been any number of things that have been found morally repugnant. We need only go back – oh – 60 years for a whole host of medical experiments that were condemned. And now it appears that the worlds most successful experiments in stem cell research were outright frauds. I would think that Libertarians would oppose government funded research when there are literally dozens of private drug companies that would be happy to make a fortune developing the medical miracles that supporters of stem cell research tell us are in our future.
Get well soon.
Way to sneak in that last. But I’m not wrong on the NSA / FISA business. And I will maintain that until you show me something that rises above worse-case hypotheticals.
Meanwhile, I’m more concerned about grabbing people’s homes for new industrial parks to increase revenue for the “public good” than I am a legally interesting (though I believe wrong) attempt to extend commerce. Scalito screwed things up with Raich. And as I mentioned in my post on the subject yesterday, I think the characterization you use of the Oregon case is wrong; unlike you, however, I’m not a lawyer. So screw me. But it seems to me that the proper use of “medicine” and he function of licensing under the hippocratic oath (and what that entail in terms of administering fatal dosages of medicines) are important—though technical—legal questions.
I think Oregon voters (and individuals in particular) have every right to decide on end of life issues; but I also believe the the chief law enforcement officer of the US has an obligation to make sure all the procedural questions are tested and answered.
Moneyrunner –
The passage of mine you note was intended to be descriptive, not evaluative; I believe in the marketplace, but I think Bill Ardolino and others have made compelling cases that without govt. funding underpinning things such as stem cell work and drug development, there is no great medicinal advance.
I don’t hold antipathy toward Christian conservatives; I’m reluctant on choice, skeptical on opening government sanctioned “marriages” to any but traditional couplings (though I have no problem with civil unions), and I believe ID can be taught alongside evolution as a way to distinguish, for the good of students, between first cause, faith based arguments and theories (in the scientific sense) that rely on the scientific method.
Similarly, if anyone recalls, I was much more inclined to see a nuance in Bush’s position on ID, and even on stem cell research, I think the hysterics by some on the adventuresome side are more hyperbole than fact.
My problem with social cons, when they do arise, are generally over the same issues that raise my ire with progressives: attempts to take away individual liberty because one presumes to know better (be it smoke-free zones, Twinkie taxes, speech codes or what constitutes “offense” on prime time TV, or who’s salty language should preclude them from playing an inaugural ball).
So don’t misunderstand me. I’m libertarian on most issues, but my libertarianism is based around a history of traditionalism that comes from several hundred years of sovereignty. Which is why you won’t hear me callng for changes in the Pledge, or removal of Christmas trees or monetary slogans.
Jeff, please do not misunderstand me either. I believe you are one of the “good guys.†My comments were direct toward a more generic Libertarian.
I am in the investment business and am very skeptical about claims that without government funding, basic medical advances are stillborn. That is not how medical research works and breakthroughs do not depend on government funds. If the wonders promised to us by the fans of stem cells were realizable, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, Smith Kline, et al would be pouring billions into it. That is what they do.
I think Bill is the one to talk to about that. Sure, the market works, but there is also a need for government funding—or else everybody would be making Viagra rather than, say, drugs to help skin edema.
I’ll find some of his links later. On my way out the door now to buy s cowboy shirt and hick beltbuckle.
I’m very skeptical of this poll, just as I am skeptical of the polls showing Bush with a low approval rating. If you look at the robo-polls (Rasmussen, for example), Bush tends to score higher. I have to guess that the human poll takers skew liberally and that this affects the results.
Not too many Republicans would be surprised or disappointed if you told them that there doing better than they were in 2000, but worse than in 2004. It pretty much matches the CW.
And it’s not a very meaningful poll, especially considering the +/-3%. The advantage in party affiliation hasn’t helped the Democrats any more than the large conservative/liberal ratio has led to Republican landslides.
moneyrunner, i personally loathe ignorant non-scientists criticizing scientific direction. ASCR and ESCR are not competitive technologies, they are complementary. We use ESC cells to make pluripotent ASC cells that are rejection immune for the donor.
Jeff is right about basic research. Left to itself, the market will be working on viagra, orgasm-in-a-bottle, and weightloss technology. Follow the money.
Let me ask you something, bio-luddite that you are, what do you know about nanotech? Should the government fund basic research in that domain?
Dang, I wish I would have seen this thread when it was hot.
I’m not a statistician, but it seems to me that unless the movement is beyond the margin of error then it’s not significant in my book. And remember that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades; if a result is within the margin of error then it’s within the margin of error and it’s position relative to the margin doesn’t mean anything.
If you ask me, the most interesting thing about this poll is this:
<b>How Would You Vote:<b>
43% Democrat
34% Republican
14% Other
9% Undecided
Compared to this
<b>Political Philosophy<b>
34% Conservative
42% Moderate
20% Liberal
So the Dems allegedly would lead elections yet the left represents only only one in five Americans. That’s a pretty big honkin’ disconnect if you ask me. And look at that HUGE moderate base. The only reason that Dems win any elections is that half of the moderates vote for them while only a small chunk votes for the Republicans.
What we have here, I believe, is evidence that supports the following conclusions:
1. The Democrats are very vulnerable. Draw away the political middle from them and they turn into the Greens.
2. Most Americans are socially liberal and fiscally conservative and therefore poorly represented by our current parties.
The coalescence of a third socially liberal yet fiscally conservative party could spark a huge political re-alignment in this country that would result in the moderate party claiming a large plurality or a small majority over the Republicans and Democrats.
But that’s just my opinion.
yours/
peter.
Lotta Townhall Conservatives say “I’m a conservative, not a Republican.” This phenomenon could continue in the general population among people who disown the party but vote against Democrats when they don’t stay home.
Name identification, IMO, does not reliably predict voting behavior in the kind of one-to-one way that this poll uses as one of its assumptions.
BTW, does our host still have the Compte de St. Germaine look?
“Left to itself, the market will be working on viagra, orgasm-in-a-bottle, and weightloss technology. Follow the money.”
and this is due to the FDA, not market forces. Small diseases are left alone because the cost to pass the FDA cannot be made back due the small market size.
If there was a true free market, all manner of drugs would be being fielded. But we’d also have lots of bad side effects and less rigourous testing before they hit the market.
That is no way to persuade someone. That’s a way to turn them off.
Ethical concerns with respect to research are everyone’s business, not just the annointed priesthood. It would be best if you figured that out sooner rather than later.
cranky-d, do i even care?
i’ve completely accepted that it is totally Crazy Eddie of me to try to persuade any of you bio-luddites on any issue.
but you just wait.
nanotech is going to make your heads explode, if you ever are capable of underatanding its ramifications.