The Internals

A conspicuous component of American politics is poll results. It is what everyone refers to as the "horse-race": who's up, who's down, what's important? Polls themselves are important. They take the general pulse of the American people, and they have the power to change the political narrative—what is the media going to concentrate on? Most polls, sadly, only give the big numbers, concentrating on the president's job approval rating, the leader in a matchup, or the all-important wrong-direction, right-direction numbers. A lot of politicians, 43 most famously, often say that they don't govern based on the polls. I sort of agree with that. Many times the American people don't have all the facts, all the information needed, to form a substantive opinion on most anything. But politicians look at polls. They live and die by them.

One of my favorite things to do when polls are released is to look at the internals. The internals are comprised of the more in-depth questions asked in polls, where the respondents are given different statements to see where they stand on them. The internals also provide information such as the demographic make-up of the respondents. Poll internals are much more important to me than the big numbers. (And yes, one takes into consideration the margin-of-error, the way the statements were written, etc.) And one of my favorite polls is the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, which is done almost monthly. I've gone through the 31 pages of the poll. Here are my observations:

• 1,000 Respondents, 3.1% margin of error, 200 reached by cell phone: Pretty standard sampling. There's been some evidence to suggest that there's somewhat of an under-poll count for people reach by cell phones, especially when a cell phone is all they have—they tend to be younger, slightly more educated, slightly more affluent than the general population: they tend to vote Democrat. The undercount has suggested in the past that numbers for Democrats or Liberal causes might be 1-3% higher (yes, within the margin of error, so I guess it's fine.)
  
• 48% Male, 52% Female, most respondents between 30-59, more senior respondents than the young: Seniors are more likely to answer the phone and stick with the interview which lasts awhile. Demographics change. Sometimes the seniors are voting Democratic, sometimes Republicans. I believe that seniors in the last two cycles have trended Republican. Women slightly vote more Democratic than Republican.
  
• 88% Not Hispanic, 11% Hispanic, 75% White, 11% Black: Almost mirroring the demographics of the nation as a whole.
  

 

And here are the questions:

• Right Track: 29%, Wrong Track: 62%: Pretty bad wrong track numbers. The economy isn't helping. A full 12 points higher from last month after the "Osama Bump." But these numbers mirror what the numbers were in April. Getting Bin Laden temporarily made Americans feel that the country was on the right track.
  
• Obama: 49% Approve, 46% Disapprove: Not terrible. Again the numbers went back to what they were in April. After Bin Laden's death, Obama got a 3 point bump. It's now back. But these are his best numbers since January.
  
• Obama's Economic Handling: 41% Approve, 54% Disapprove: His approval number actually improved from last month, but the disapproval remains high. Again though, his economic numbers are better than they were in May. Gas prices coming down may be causing these. But they're still dismal numbers. The Republicans are going to run on the economy next year. Politically speaking, it's in their best interest for the economy to still be in the toilet. Maybe that's why they're causing so much uncertainty with the debt ceiling, etc…?
  
• O's Foreign Policy Handling: 50% Approve, 44% Disapprove: Back to what they were in April. Again Obama got a temporary OBL bump last month. Most are okay with O's handling of Libya and believe the U.S. should remain engaged. (Side note: It's amazing how fast the bump evaporated.) Good enough numbers for foreign policy.
  
• O's handling of Afghanistan: 54% Approve, 39% Disapprove: Since OBL, best numbers for O in over a year on Afghanistan. Also most people agree with O's timeline for withdrawal as opposed to removing them all now. Half think that OBL's death has little or no effect on terrorism.
  
• Congress: 18% Approve, 74% Disapprove: Their numbers are the worst they've been in fifteen months. The debt ceiling debate isn't helping for them. And I think there's also buyer's remorse.
  
• Feelings:
  
  • O's: 49% Overall Positive, 37% Overall Negative.
    
  • Democrats: 38% Overall Positive, 39% Overall Negative.
    
  • Republicans: 30% Overall Positive, 44% Overall Negative.
    
    • Looks like the Republicans are in trouble…goes back to them over-reaching since the Mid-Terms.
      
  • Tea Party: 28% Overall Positive, 41% Overall Negative.
    
    • Less positive, less negative than the GOP. Interesting.
      
  • Mitt Romney: 27% Overall Positive, 26% Overall Negative: Even as front-runner still has name recognition problem. But the people who know him don't feel positive about him.
    
  • Tim Pawlenty: 14% Overall Positive, 15% Overall Negative: No one knows who he is.
    
  • Newt Gingrich: 16% Overall Positive, 48% Overall Negative: Higher negatives than either political party. What's he still doing in the race? No one likes him.
    
  • Jon Huntsman: 7% Overall Positive, 9% Overall Negative. No one knows who he is either. And actually, he's not that bad.
    
  • Palin: 24% Overall Positive, 54% Overall Negative: Woah! High Negatives. I really wish she gets the nomination. There's no way to turn those negatives around.
    
  • Takeaway: O has higher positives than either party, the tea party, and Republican candidates or maybe candidates (Christie, Ryan, Palin).
    
• 51% Gov't should do more, 46% Gov't doing too many things: I guess the small-government message that the Republicans are playing isn't synching. People want a more activist gov't to create jobs, turn the economy around, etc.
  
• 45% Obama, 40% Generic Republican: Obama beats a generic Republican in 2012. Same numbers all year.
  
• 44% Republican-Controlled, 44% Democrat-Controlled: Evenly split on who should control congress next year. (Only 1 in 10 has good confidence in congress, 40% no confidence at all.
  
• Republican House: 13% Brought Right Change, 23% Brought Wrong Change, 60% Brought No Change: An image of a do-noting Congress. 10 points higher on brought wrong change though.
  
• Republicans in order: Palin, who's not in the race is second. And Cain in third? The only other who pulled out double-digit? Perry and Paul aren't even in the race. It's extremely fluid.
  
  • 45-45 Satisfied Dissatisfied with the Republican Field: At this point during the last campaign, 73% were satisfied with the field.
    
  • Romney 30
    
  • Palin 14
    
  • Cain 12
    
  • Perry 8
    
  • Paul 7
    
  • Gingrich 6
    
  • Pawlenty 4
    
  • Santorum 4
    
  • Bachmann 3
    
  • Huntsman 1
    
• Head to Head:
  
  • Obama 49 Romney 43
    
  • Obama 50 Pawlenty 37
    
• Positions:
  
  • 54% more likely to vote for a candidate who imposes requirements to curb greenhouse gases: Oddly enough, this was the position with the most positive salience. I had no idea this was such a big deal.
    
  • 47% more likely to vote for a candidate who supports repealing the health care law,
    
  • 47% more likely to vote for a candidate who favors allowing undocumented immigrants who are in the country to stay here if they pay a fine, learn English, and get "to the back of the line,"
    
  • 44% more likely to vote for someone who voted for the health care law. Interesting that there's only a 3-point difference from repealing the law.
    
• More Internals:
  
  • Romney has a Romneycare issue but it's not as big as the current narrative states: 50% don't care, 35% take less favorable view once they learn about it.
    
  • Slightly more believe that the Republican Party is more influenced by special interests and lobbyists than the Democratic Party. When the question asks if they're equally influenced, most say both are equally influenced.
    
  • Same percentages of people say the economy will get better as well as worse (1/3). The rest say it'll stay about the same. Around 50% say their personal finances have stayed about the same.
    
  • Stimulus: Most people believe it didn't do anything to help the economy.
    
  • More people blame Bush than Obama for the economy, still. Most (62%) believe Obama inherited this problem.
    
  • 63% are more worried about keeping the deficit down, while 31% say that more should be done for boosting the economy, rather than the deficit. More people also believe that cutting federal spending helps rather than hurts the economy.
    
  • More people (44%) believe that we're headed into another recession.
    
  • Biggest Personal Economic Indicators: Increase in gas prices, increase in food prices, decrease in home values, increase in unemployment rates, increase in number of home foreclosures.
    
  • 28% say debt ceiling should be raised, 39% say it shouldn't. When told of the consequences of not raising it, 46% say it should be raised. (42% still won't raise it even when told.)
    
  • Most people think Medicare is fine the way it is. More people say Ryan's changes to it are a bad idea. So much for Ryan's plan.
    

More Make-Up Questions:

• 35% get the news from the big three (NBC, ABC, CBS). 22% from Fox News, 17% from CNN, 8% from MSNBC.
  
• 26% of the respondents consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party.
  
  • Of those they see themselves as mostly moderate.
    

 

Interesting poll.