Tag Archives: Gallup

Socialist America

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John Nichols suggests that all the talk of creeping “socialism” during the Republican primaries and beyond may have actually increased Americans’ positive disposition towards socialism generally:

A new Gallup Poll finds that socialism is now viewed positively by 39 percent of Americans, up from 36 percent in 2010. Among self-described liberals, socialism enjoyed a 62 percent positive rating, while 53 percent of Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic gave socialism a thumb’s up.

Needless to say, this provoked the predictable fine whine of right-wing media. The conservative Washington Times newspaper declared: “Yes, Democrats, liberals favor socialism.” The Business Insider website announced: “Everything Republicans Fear About Democrats Is True.” William F. Buckley’s old magazine, National Review, allowed as how there is “much that is peculiar, and much that is worrying” about the new polling data.

That reactionary Republicans get a little hysterical at the mention of the word “socialism” is not news. But the reaction to there reaction is. No two groups of Americans talk so much about socialism in so many public settings these days as Republican candidates and conservative commentators. And this appears to be influencing the discourse.

Indeed, it is fair to say that nothing has done more to promote the cause of socialism than the ranting and raving of Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. It’s not just that the right has spread the word about socialism, raising the ideology’s profile to levels rarely experienced in recent decades—if ever—and associating the ideology with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, President Obama and a lot of other programs and people that Americans actually like. The fact that so many agitated, angry and—at least in some cases—politically toxic characters go apoplectic at the mere mention of the ideology has undoubtedly caused millions of Americans who don’t know much about socialism to say to themselves, “Anything that Paul Ryan does not like must have some merit.”

But I have to agree with the National Review assessment that the Gallup survey information “is worrying”—at least for conservatives. The most significant increases in sympathy for socialism over the past two years—since the last time Gallup polled on economic and ideological terms such as “socialism” and “capitalism”—have been among self-identified “conservatives” and “Republicans.”

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“Unskewed” polling?

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In light of recent attempts by Republicans to soften the blow of polling showing a solid Obama lead (attempts which have been widely mocked), I highly recommend this very detailed analysis by Mark Blumenthal from three months ago on how polling methodologies differ, and why these differences are so crucial this election year:

As a Pew Research Center study recently demonstrated, random-sample surveys continue to provide accurate data on most measures — but only when their samples of telephone numbers include both landline and mobile phones, and only when the completed interviews are weighted to match the demographic composition of the population. That means the weighting procedures that pollsters use are critical to producing accurate results.

The need to weight accurately by race and ancestry is particularly significant when it comes to evaluating the contest between Obama and Romney. As Gallup itself reported in early May, Romney led Obama among non-Hispanic white voters by 54 to 37 percent, while the president had the support of more than three-quarters of non-white registered voters (77 percent). Obama’s support among African Americans on Gallup’s tracking poll stood at 90 percent.

That gap makes the way pollsters account for race hugely important. When pollsters weight their samples to match population demographics, every percentage point increase in black representation translates into a nearly one-point improvement in Obama’s margin against Romney. The difference of just a few percentage points in the non-white composition of a poll can produce a significant skew in its horse race results.

Interestingly, many analysts — Andrew Sullivan, perhaps most notably — are very skeptical of Rasmussen’s polls, which consistently show much better numbers for Romney. Aaron Blake at The Fix has more on the firm’s historical record:

Rasmussen has had both good years and bad years, according to various pollster ratings. While its track record was pretty good in the middle of last decade (2004 and 2006) and average in 2008, after the 2010 election the New York Times’ Nate Silver labeled Rasmussen “biased and inaccurate.” Silver calculated that Rasmussen missed the final margin of the races it polled in the 2010 midterms by an average of 5.8 percentage points.

But Republicans note that Rasmussen did just fine in the last presidential race in 2008. They also note that Gallup, while its top-line number is different from Rasmussen, has shown similar movement in its daily tracking poll in recent days.

“Rasmussen’s track record (’08 and ’10) makes it a very credible polling source in this year’s election,” Romney pollster Neil Newhouse told The Fix in an e-mail.

If there continues to be a disparity between Rasmussen and other polls, expect to hear plenty more about Rasmussen’s numbers — along with the continuing debate about how reliable they are.

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