Bush Approval: Fox at 31%, Trend at 29.5%

The new Fox poll taken 6/26-27/07 pegs approval of President Bush at 31%, disapproval at 60%. With this addition, my trend estimate of approval stands at 29.5%.

The diagnostics show well behaved data so little to be suspicious of at the moment.

Pres08: Adding Richardson to the Top Dems

Starting today I'm adding Bill Richardson to the Top Democrats charts for both state primaries and the national nomination polling. The graph above shows his substantial movement in Iowa, and New Hampshire looks quite similar. While Richardson is still in fourth place in both states (5th in NH if you include Gore), his is the only trajectory that is clearly moving up. So it seems fitting to start watching it with each new poll.

Richardson's movement is substantially concentrated in Iowa and New Hampshire, so when I include him elsewhere, you might wonder why I'd call him a "Top Democrat." See Florida below for an example.


















Here Richardson has edged up just a little bit (to 3.9%!), but certainly not like the move he has made in Iowa or New Hampshire. But that is EXACTLY the point. By seeing what he is doing everywhere, we can track how his movement in the earliest states compares to how he is doing in the rest of the primary and caucus states. If I left him out of the "Top Dems" everywhere except where he is doing well, you'd have no comparison across states.

Likewise, I'm adding him to the national Top Democrats plot for the same reason. As you can see below, his moves in Iowa and New Hampshire are completely invisible in the national polling.


















And again, that is exactly the point. When you see his campaign move in early states but not others and not nationally, you see the variation in strength and the possibility of future growth elsewhere. But not if I leave him out of the plots.

For other Democratic candidates, we've not seen a substantial upturn anywhere. Richardson stands alone in that respect at the moment.

Of course, I'll continue to monitor the top candidates and make additions (or perhaps deletions!) as developments warrant.

California Presidential Primary Polls

Updated 8/3/07




































This post is updated in place with the latest state polling results. See the links to state primary polls in the column on the right. Or click on the label: "State Primary Polls" for all posts on this topic.

Some of these graphs are large. Click once or twice for full resolution.

Also see the state pages at our partner site Pollster.com for extended coverage of the state polling. There you can see the underlying data and a "zoomed" view of 2007 polling only.

For some technical details, and some warnings about the trends here, see this post at Pollster.

New York Presidential Primary Polls

Updated 8/2/07



































This post is updated in place with the latest state polling results. See the links to state primary polls in the column on the right. Or click on the label: "State Primary Polls" for all posts on this topic.

Some of these graphs are large. Click once or twice for full resolution.

Also see the state pages at our partner site Pollster.com for extended coverage of the state polling. There you can see the underlying data and a "zoomed" view of 2007 polling only.

For some technical details, and some warnings about the trends here, see this post at Pollster.

Bush Approval: CNN at 32%, Trend at 29.4%

A new poll from CNN/ORC taken 6/22-24/07 finds approval at 32% and disapproval at
66%. With this new poll the approval trend estimate stands at 29.4%.

While 3 points above trend, this poll is in line with CNN's recent house effects of about +3 points, so is quite consistent with a trend at 29 or so.

The plots below show the usual diagnostics. There are no recent outliers, and no diagnostics to raise worries, so the approval trend seems to be continuing as recent polls have suggested.

Newsweek Knowledge Survey

Newsweek has a new "what you need to know" survey out this week. (Article, Results). The headline, "Dunce Cap Nation", pretty well captures their summary of the data. Of the 29 items, only a quarter found more than 55% of the public giving the correct answer. Half the items had between 29% and 55% correct, and a quarter fell below 29% correct. (Though defenders of American culture might note that the fourth lowest percentage correct was being able to name the winner of American Idol (A: Jordin Sparks). ) And while the lowest single item was the ability to name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, both Speaker Pelosi and President Putin made it into the top quarter of awareness.

A few of the items were downright tricky. (But don't let me spoil it for you... try the questions yourself.)

And as my colleague Mark Blumenthal points out, some would argue that the answer to

From what you know about the situation, do you think the United States is losing the fight against al-Qaeda or radical Islamic terrorism?

just might be considered a tad political opinion and not so much objective fact.

But while Newsweek is primly aghast at such public ignorance, I doubt any college teacher would be. Knowledge is remarkably compartmentalized. In areas of interest, students are able to develop stunning depth of knowledge, while outside those interests the acquisition of new knowledge, and the retention of what is acquired (say, for the midterm), is quite meager.

And what is the impact of this? Most of us, most of the time, lack the foundation for and the motivation to do independent analysis of political problems outside our narrow areas of expertise. Instead we rely on political leaders with whom we think we agree to lead us. We accept and repeat the arguments that come from our side, and we reject out of hand the arguments that come from the other side. Seldom is independent knowledge and judgment involved, even as we repeat what we've heard and think we are expressing an informed opinion. And that is as true of the Jane Austen scholar who offers political views as it is of the polling expert who opines about budget policy. Outside our narrow expertise, we seldom form original opinions.

Bush Approval: ARG at 27%, Trend at 29.1%

A new American Research Group poll, taken 6/18-21/97, finds approval at 27%, disapproval at 67%. This puts the approval trend estimate at 29.1%, continuing the decline that began in late April.

This is in line with Newsweek's 26% and NBC/WSJ's 29%, and is within range of Gallup's 32%, the three most recent polls. My post on the Newsweek result yesterday is unchanged by this result. None of the recent polls is an outlier, all falling within the +/-5% confidence interval around the current 29.1% estimate.

By popular request, I've added a plot to my standard approval post contents: The fourth graph contains both the standard "old blue" trend estimate, which is more likely to be correct in the long run but which is slower to detect change, and the "ready red" estimator which catches change quickly but is easily mislead by random noise that isn't actually a change in trend. Now you can see both as part of these posts. The blue line is plotted second, so when the red agrees closely with the blue estimator, the red line is covered up by the blue line. So where you can see red at all is where the estimators disagree. Otherwise red and blue are tracking together.

Bush Approval: Newsweek at 26%; Trend at 29.9%

Newsweek has a new poll taken 6/18-19/07 that finds approval of President Bush at 26%, disapproval at 65%. With this new data point the approval trend estimate stands at 29.9%, the first time the trend has fallen below 30%. The sharpness of the decline is striking. The change-point for approval is April 23, corresponding to the week of the Congressional vote for deadlines and a fund cutoff in Iraq and the President's subsequent veto. It precedes the immigration debate, though that debate may have sustained the decline. (On the other hand there is little evidence that immigration accelerated the decline which was already underway.)

A look at the last six polls is revealing. Newsweek usually has a "house effect" of about 2.2 percentage points below the trend estimate, so finding it below trend is no surprise. But look also at NBC/WSJ. Their house effect has been around -.6, only a shade below trend. But the new NBC/WSJ poll 6/8-11/07 found approval at 29%. And Gallup's house effect is +.55, and their latest reading was 32%. That makes it awfully convincing that approval has now fallen to very nearly 30%, plus or minus 1. (And to reiterate one more time, house effects incorporate many effects that are specific to a given polling organization. These include how don't knows are treated (are people pushed to respond), question wording, sample selection and non-response rates and order of questions within a survey.)
























Given that agreement among polls, it is not surprising that the outlier analysis finds nothing to complain about. The confidence interval around the trend estimate is approximately +/- 5%, so Newsweek at -3.9% is well within that range.
























The trend over the last 20 estimates has been unrelentingly downward. Despite the long stability in approval from December through mid-April, the trajectory of approval has been dramatically down since April 23.
























Newsweek headlines "How low can he go?" We looked at that a while back in this post. One of the keys I pointed out then was the support presidents enjoy from their own supporters. Past unpopular presidents have suffered a substantial loss of support from their party. President Bush has been a significant exception to this. His lows among Democrats and independents have not been accompanied by similar declines among Republicans. When the post was written in March 2006 approval stood at 38%. Approval among Democrats was 10% back then while independents reported 27% approval. These were much lower than history would predict for a president at 38%. The huge difference was that Republican support in March 2006 was an amazing 82%.

That support has been slipping in recent months. The Newsweek poll finds approval at 6% among Democrats, 23% among independents and 60% among Republicans. The GOP partisans still are providing more support than we might expect, but it is clearly no longer the reservoir of support it once was. (Gallup now finds Democrats at 8%, independents at 24% and Republicans at 73%. Since the historical analysis reported above was based on Gallup polling, a fair comparison would be the shift from 82% in March 2006 to 73% now among Republicans, a less dramatic comparison, but one that still demonstrates the strains on Republican support. It also casts some light on differences between polling organization results.)

Because approval among Democrats is so low, further declines there can make little difference to the overall level. Independents could matter a bit more, but how low approval ultimately goes is going to depend on Republicans' willingness to continue to stand by the president.

Bloomberg Hurts Giuliani More Than Clinton

Michael Bloomberg's possible entry into the presidential race appears to hurt Giuliani more than Clinton, based on analysis of data from SurveyUSA's recent polling in 16 states. While support for both candidates declines when Bloomberg is included in the vote question, Giuliani's support declines by an estimated 1.7 more percentage points than does Clinton's.

The SurveyUSA data were collected by interactive voice response (i.e. "automated" survey) in AL, CA, IA, KS, KY, MA, MN, MO, NM, NY, OH, OR, TX, VA, WA and WI June 8-10, 2007 with approximately 500 respondents in each state. Respondents were first asked

If there were an election for President of the United States today, and the only two names on the ballot were Republican Rudy Giuliani and ... Democrat Hillary Clinton, who would you vote for?

The survey then asked

OK, now imagine that the election for president was a 3 way contest, and the 3 candidates on the ballot are Republican Rudolph Giuliani, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and Independent Michael Bloomberg.

(SurveyUSA asked about other candidate pairs as well, but the focus here is only on the Giuliani-Clinton-Bloomberg effects.)

Adding a third option to any vote question should be expected to draw support away from both candidates in the two candidate only form. In the figure above, that means we would certainly expect the data points to fall below the black 45 degree line in the figure, meaning candidates do worse with three candidates than with two. That obviously occurs in the figure.

The differential impact on the candidates is the more crucial point. If both candidates are equally affected, we'd expec the red and blue points in the figure to mix together more or less randomly in the plot. If one candidate is more damaged than the other, then the blue and red points should separate with one generally closer to the 45 degree line than the other. That's what we see.

Generally the Clinton (blue) points are above the Giuliani (red) points. If we take the simple average changes, Clinton loses an average of 3.6 points when Bloomberg is added, while Giuliani loses an average of 5.2 points. When we do a slightly fancier regression estimate, the net loss hurts Giuliani by 1.7 points more than it does Clinton. That difference is visible in the chart as the gap between the red and blue estimated regression lines.

As a Republican until this week, Bloomberg could be expected to draw more from the Republican than the Democratic candidate.

Of course this is all hypothetical with a mayor who says he expects to serve out his term. But you have to admit that an "all New York" three way race would have its charms.

State Presidential Primary Polls

(These are large graphics. Click once or twice for full resolution.)

It is time to turn to state level polling for president. Obviously this is where the nomination is won (and mostly lost). While I believe national polling is valuable, it is Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Florida and South Carolina that will set the stage for the nearly-national primary on February 5. So starting now Political Arithmetik and our partner site, Pollster.com, will be giving new and increasing coverage to state polling. See the links in the right hand column under "State Presidential Primary Polls". At the moment I am focusing on the five states that come before February 5. As more data accumulate for other states, those will appear here as well. And of course each new poll will trigger an update of the graphs for that state.

So what do we learn from looking at, say, Iowa and New Hampshire that we didn't know from the national polls? We see Giuliani and McCain experiencing significant declines, at least as large as their national declines and larger in some states.

But the most interesting thing on the Republican side is the rise of Mitt Romney in both Iowa and New Hampshire. The Romney campaign and some of his supporters have been pushing this story for a week or two now, and the AP and New York Times have run stories in the last couple of days. But the degree of increase for Romney is striking even when stripped of the hype.

In Iowa, the trend estimate puts Romney in first place at 23.8%, well ahead of the slumping Giuliani at 13.4% or McCain at 14.9%. Upward trend is being influenced by three recent polls around 30%, one of which is an internal poll leaked by the campaign, so that should be discounted. But two others find similar results. More polls come in between 15% and 20% so even if we dismissed all three polls around 30%, the trend estimate would still put Romney slightly ahead of McCain and Giuliani.

Newcomer Fred Thompson has not shown the upward trend in Iowa that he has nationally and in some other states, so at the moment at least he isn't challenging Romney in Iowa. But don't be surprised to see Giuliani and McCain marginalized by plummeting polls in Iowa, and a Thompson-Romney contest develop.

Romney has begun spending quite a bit on television ads, and that plus the rest of his campaign has clearly paid off handsomely in Iowa. McCain and Giuliani decided to skip the Ames IA straw poll on August 11, preferring to invest elsewhere. A loss to Romney there would be bad for either or both. But if these kinds of polling numbers hold into August, a Romney victory at Ames, even an uncontested one, will look awfully impressive.

In national polls Romney has looked like the tortoise to other candidates hares, but that tortoise has been slowly but steadily creeping up in the national polls when Giuliani, McCain and Gingrich have all suffered substantial declines. Toss in IA and (as we'll see in a moment, New Hampshire) and Romney is looking far more impressive than he did a month or two ago when suffering a series of gaffes. If he can deflect the inevitable attacks on his ever changing issue positions (is it the water in Massachusetts or what?) and maintain this trajectory we will be in a great position for the fall.

In New Hampshire, the picture for the Republicans is similar. The same upward trend for Romney puts him at 27.9% to McCain's 20.9% and Giuliani's 17.6%. Here again Romney is the only clearly upwardly mobile Republican. Thompson is at 10.9% with a little bit of a wiggle up but not enough polling to be confident of any conclusions. Romney's performance here can't be attributed to being Governor of a neighboring state. That was also true six months ago when Romney was at just under 15% in New Hampshire while McCain was at 28% and Giuliani at 24%.
















As with Iowa, the downward trends for Giuliani, McCain and Gingrich in New Hampshire do not suggest success. Clearly these campaigns must find a way to arrest their falls, both nationally and in these critical states.

Let me be clear that I do NOT think the current trends are inevitable or are good predictors of what will happen next January. Remember always, John Kerry was at 9% nationally in December 2003 and headed down. BUT, these polls are an excellent indicator of the CURRENT dynamics of the races and whose campaigns are doing well and whose are in trouble. At the moment, Romney is the only Republican clearly happy with what is happening in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Turning to the Democrats, we see much more stasis than in the Republican race, though with a very interesting exception.

In Iowa, Edwards leads at 27.4%, with Clinton at 21.5% and Obama at 20.3%. Clearly a tight races. But compare the trends here to what we saw among Republicans. Clinton has moved down by about 4 points since April. But neither Edwards or Obama have managed to get any gains during the last couple of months. Edwards has been almost completely flat, and Obama is also unchanged in the second quarter. None of these looks like the substantial declines of McCain, Giuliani and Gingrich, but on the other hand they don't inspire confidence in an upward trajectory of the campaigns. Rather the three seem to be in equilibrium (and granted a bit of decline for Clinton.) This should be especially scary to Edwards who has placed a large bet on doing well in Iowa. That worked for Carter in 1976, but not so well for Gephardt in 2004. While he leads the race there at this point, and saw some nice gains in the first quarter of the year, it is disturbing that his trend has so completely flattened out. Far better than, say, McCain's situation, but still not what a frontrunner (in the state) might hope for.

The most interesting trend in Iowa, however, is the rise of Bill Richardson. He currently stands in single digits at 9.1%, but is the only Democrat with a significantly upward trajectory.
















Like Romney, Richardson has debuted ads in Iowa and New Hampshire and it is possible to attribute his rise to ads that aren't being answered yet by any of his competitors. But the last couple of weeks have seen news articles saying Richardson is the big disappointment of the debates, a possible breakout candidate who has completely failed to break out nationally. True enough. But in Iowa (and wait for it-- New Hamphire, see below) Richardson is beginning to show the upward movement that previous success stories would look for. That said he is at half the support in the polls of any of the top three, so Richardson has a long way to go to become genuinely competitive in Iowa. But the stagnation of the top three campaigns in the second quarter, and Iowa's positive response to Richardson's ad campaign (and personal appearances) suggests that it may be too early to write this obituary.

New Hampshire for Democrats looks a lot like Iowa.
















Clinton Leads by a substantial margin, 33.4% to Obama at 19.3% and Edwards at 16.4%. This is good news for the Clinton camp where a possible loss in Iowa could be blunted by a convincing win in New Hampshire. But the Clinton gains in New Hampshire came in the first quarter of the year, with substantial stability in the second quarter. Not by any means bad news, but not showing signs of increasing strength either. Shouldn't an inevitable candidate be showing signs of increasing strength?

Obama and Edwards have both seen small declines in support in the second quarter. Hardly large and certainly not panic inducing. But again not what two insurgents facing the "inevitable" frontrunner would like to see. If Clinton is not showing the gains in strength she would like, Obama and Edwards are suffering from a failure to improve their competitive standing.

And then there is Bill Richardson. At 9.1%, just where he was in Iowa. And with a very similar upward trajectory noticeably lacking for the other candidates.

It is a very long way to go to January. Never, never, never will I suggest the current polls show how the race "must" end. But if I were in the Giuliani, McCain or Gingrich camps I'd be looking really hard for some debate points to reignite what look to be floundering campaigns. And I imagine they are smiling pretty much in Boston at Romney headquarters.

For the Democrats it is hard to say the top three are in anything like the same trouble, but I'd be laying awake nights wondering what I have to do to move any of these three campaigns off the dime. Richardson seems to have capitalized on a nice pair of "job interview" ads to introduce him to Iowa and New Hampshire. Now can he continue to improve on the impressive gains of the second quarter to get himself out of single digits and contend seriously for third place? Or is TV fame fleeting, and this gain won't last?

Very interesting. I think I'll stay tuned to the next episode.

P.S. South Carolina is very interesting too, and rather different. I'll post something on it tomorrow, but if you can't wait, just click here to see the data and come to your own conclusions.

Iowa Presidential Caucus Polls

Updated: 8/3/07




































This post is updated in place with the latest state polling results. See the links to state primary polls in the column on the right. Or click on the label: "State Primary Polls" for all posts on this topic.

Some of these graphs are large. Click once or twice for full resolution.

Also see the state pages at our partner site Pollster.com for extended coverage of the state polling. There you can see the underlying data and a "zoomed" view of 2007 polling only.

For some technical details, and some warnings about the trends here, see this post at Pollster.

Nevada Presidential Caucus Polls

Updated: 6/26/07




































This post is updated in place with the latest state polling results. See the links to state primary polls in the column on the right. Or click on the label: "State Primary Polls" for all posts on this topic.

Some of these graphs are large. Click once or twice for full resolution.

Also see the state pages at our partner site Pollster.com for extended coverage of the state polling. There you can see the underlying data and a "zoomed" view of 2007 polling only.

For some technical details, and some warnings about the trends here, see this post at Pollster.

New Hampshire Presidential Primary Polls

Updated: 8/2/07




































This post is updated in place with the latest state polling results. See the links to state primary polls in the column on the right. Or click on the label: "State Primary Polls" for all posts on this topic.

Some of these graphs are large. Click once or twice for full resolution.

Also see the state pages at our partner site Pollster.com for extended coverage of the state polling. There you can see the underlying data and a "zoomed" view of 2007 polling only.

For some technical details, and some warnings about the trends here, see this post at Pollster.

Florida Presidential Primary Polls

Updated: 8/2/07




































This post is updated in place with the latest state polling results. See the links to state primary polls in the column on the right. Or click on the label: "State Primary Polls" for all posts on this topic.

Some of these graphs are large. Click once or twice for full resolution.

Also see the state pages at our partner site Pollster.com for extended coverage of the state polling. There you can see the underlying data and a "zoomed" view of 2007 polling only.

For some technical details, and some warnings about the trends here, see this post at Pollster.

South Carolina Presidential Primary Polls

Updated: 8/2/07




































This post is updated in place with the latest state polling results. See the links to state primary polls in the column on the right. Or click on the label: "State Primary Polls" for all posts on this topic.

Some of these graphs are large. Click once or twice for full resolution.

Also see the state pages at our partner site Pollster.com for extended coverage of the state polling. There you can see the underlying data and a "zoomed" view of 2007 polling only.

For some technical details, and some warnings about the trends here, see this post at Pollster.

Gloom, Doom and Opportunity

The latest round of polls has produced a batch of collectively bad numbers for President Bush, the Congress, the direction of the country and the Iraq war. They also show troubles for front runners. And opportunities for others.

President Bush returns from his European trip to find yet more new lows in individual polls but more importantly a new low and a continued sharp downturn in my estimated approval trend, which now stands at 31.0%, well below his previous sustained low of 34% in December-March. The current downturn started April 24 and continues unabated.

In the figure above I add the more sensitive estimator ("Ready Red") to the standard more conservative ("Old Blue") estimated trend. Since April the two estimates overlap almost perfectly (making Red seem to disappear under Blue in the graph.) This means the current change in approval is not a fluke-- regardless of how I estimate it, the trend is the same. That suggests that the current downturn continues at a steady rate, otherwise Red and Blue would disagree near the end.

Bush reversed a previous downward trend in February-May 2006 with a speech in support of immigration reform. Is it possible that his trip to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican Senators will do any good? Or has the time for him to rally a consensus on immigration now passed? I think it has, despite what was once a clear opportunity for him to gain support.

But gloom and doom doesn't stop with the President. Congress has taken some hard knocks in the last month as well. The two latest polls, from NBC/Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University both peg approval of Congress at 23%. That comes on the heels of the LA Times/Bloomberg finding of 27% approval. The trend started down for Congress on April 15, but shows no sign of slowing. The trend estimate now stands at 27.5% approval. And Red thinks it might be lower still. I think Red is overreacting to the two polls at 23% and Blue is probably a better estimate. But gee-whiz either way.
























Democratic supporters have been quick to point out that opinion of Congress is not the same as approval of Democrats in Congress. I made that same point here and provide regular updates of the party evaluations here as well. But I think that argument is beginning to take on a bit of desperation and denial. There is good evidence that Republicans in Congress remain less approved of than Democrats, but there is no evidence that Democrats are gaining in approval from their recent actions. The polling here is thin, with approval of the parties only asked occasionally, so it is hard to track short term change. But the evidence we have is that Democrats are suffering declines in support relative to their January numbers. There is some evidence that this loss of support comes significantly from their base among liberals, who are unlikely to shift to support of Republicans. But an unpopular Congress has been the undoing of majority parties before and it seems Democrats should pay attention to the decline in approval of Congress, not whistle past the graveyard by pointing out that Republicans are worse off still.

Profound pessimism about the direction of the country continues at amazing levels. The trend estimate has sunk to only 20.8% saying right direction and 73.5% saying wrong track. Even if we discount for the artificially high levels of positive feeling following 9/11, the decline has been profound and sustained.
























With all this gloom, where is the politician with the skill to take advantage by offering some attractive alternative? Ronald Reagan with a happy vision of a shining city on a hill (with low taxes) or Bill Clinton saying the economy can be better. Who can capture the public's confidence that they can move the country in a new and better direction?

At the moment, the front-runners seem to be failing to seize that opportunity. Instead, the momentum in both parties has stalled for front-runners and turned to non-candidates.

The Republicans provide the strongest example of a party unhappy with its choices. Both Giuliani and McCain have suffered significant losses over the past 3 months. Now the excitement is behind the not-yet candidate Fred Thompson, who has gained sharply in the last month to near parity with McCain.



















The evidence is pretty good that Thompson's surge is not a fluke of a single poll or two, but is widespread across polls (though we could use some more to be sure!). This kind of surge for a new candidate is typical of what we see when there remain a significant number of partisans not happy with their choices and looking for any more attractive alternative to the front-runners. We saw this most famously in 1984 when Democrats unhappy with Mondale jumped on the Hart bandwagon once they saw the possibility of a credible alternative. At the moment, I think that is Thompson's greatest strength-- the hope of a better alternative. As Hart shows, it is not enough ultimately to be "not-Mondale", but at least for a while Fred Thompson may benefit significantly from being "the" alternative. Once in the race, can he take advantage of a discontented public? Does he have a story to tell about how to make America better?

I have to add that Mitt Romney is looking like the steady tortoise to the other hares. His trend has remained steadily up despite a number of mistakes earlier. He hasn't enjoyed even a moment of Thompson's "surge", but he's also escaped downturns. His current Iowa and New Hampshire polling also looks good. He has a very far ways to go to emerge in first place, but this far out you might like that long term positive trend.

The Democratic frontrunners haven't suffered the sharp declines that Giuliani and McCain have, but none are showing strong positive gains either. Clinton has fallen off just a few points recently, Obama seems stalled and Edwards has a very slight decline in support. So who do Democrats like more and more? Al Gore, the non-candidate.



















The Gore increase is no where close to that of Fred Thompson, but of the four possible nominees pictured above, he is the only one with steady gains throughout 2007. Given the low level of encouragement Gore has given to a possible candidacy (FAR less than Thompson) it is remarkable that he's moved up at all. And while the Thompson candidacy looks increasingly likely, a Gore campaign seems a remote possibility to me at least. Nonetheless, a non-trivial number of Democrats are looking longingly at him while passing up the easy opportunity to support Clinton or Obama or Edwards. Clearly they are looking for someone else who can take this opportunity to exploit the moment. Other evidence (here and here) makes Gore seem an unlikely white knight. In terms of partisan feelings, polarization and support in a general election, Gore looks a lot like Clinton-- well known and well liked among Democrats but not very popular among independents and actively despised among Republicans. But that isn't the point here. He is "someone else" at the moment within the Democratic party.

The front-runners have won substantial support within their parties and one may yet go on to win. But the current flatness or decline in their support trends argues strongly that none have sealed the deal with their primary voters. The widespread public disaffection with current leaders and conditions can be seen as a difficult environment to run in. But it is also the great opportunity to be seized by an able politician, one who can convince supporters that they have a vision of how to lead the country out of these bad times and into a new "morning in America". Based on the evidence here, I don't think any of the top six candidates has managed that yet. And that leaves them all vulnerable to someone who can. Fred Thompson is evidence that it is not yet too late for such candidates to emerge.

Congressional Approval at 10 Year Low?

The LATimes/Bloomberg poll, taken 6/7-10/07 finds approval of Congress at 27%, disapproval at 65%. That's a bit below my current trend estimate of 31.1%, but not a statistical outlier.

The headline and lede of the LA Times story are eye catching and have been quickly picked up:

Approval of Congress lowest in a decade

Only about a quarter of Americans approve of how it's doing its job, a poll shows; most see 'business as usual.'

By Noam N. Levey, Times Staff Writer
June 12, 2007

WASHINGTON — Fueled by disappointment at the pace of change since Democrats assumed the majority on Capitol Hill, public approval of Congress has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll.

Just 27% of Americans now approve of the way Congress is doing its job, the poll found, down from 36% in January, when Democrats assumed control of the House and the Senate.

My problem with this story is a common one. What it says is exactly true, but it ignores all polling not conducted by the LATimes and Bloomberg. This IS the lowest LA Times Poll reading of Congressional approval in a decade.

But what is not reported is that since January 2006, 42 of 146 national polls have found approval below 27%. That is 29% of the recent polls, so a congressional approval rating of 27% is by no means unique in the last decade. (If we include 27% approval then 56 of the last 146 have been this low or lower-- 38% of polls in the last year and a half.)

As the graph above shows, the LA Times polls have been generally consistent with the overall trend in Congressional approval since 1996, the earliest data I have for the LA Times polls. Their polls track well with the ups and downs of Congressional approval during this time. The "house effect", the average difference between the LA Times and the estimated trend is a moderate +2.6, meaning the LATimes approval is usually a bit above the overall trend estimate. More important the correlation of the LATimes poll and my trend estimate is a robust +.96, showing a very strong relationship between their polls and the trend.

This is just what we'd expect from an excellent poll, one that is conducted to high standards of polling methodology. That is a reputation the LA Times has justly earned. So I repeat that nothing here is evidence of a fault with the individual poll or the LATimes polling more generally. Quite the opposite.

Nor is the basic conclusion that approval of congress is going down in question. My trend estimate turned down starting April 15, and so far there is no evidence that the decline has slowed, let alone reversed.

But we come back to the need for comparison to put the poll in the context of what else we know about Congressional approval. The LA Times understandably wants to compare their polling over time and to gain value from their expensive polling. I'm all for that. But the story chooses to ignore, even for a sentence, the fact that there is a lot of polling that has been done on this subject, and that a significant amount of that polling does not support the "lowest in a decade" conclusion.

Contrast this treatment with that in USAToday last week when the USAToday/Gallup poll produced a result showing Obama with a slight lead over Clinton. USAToday wrote the story, discussed the meaning of the result, but also acknowledged in the story that there was other polling that did not show this sharp narrowing of the Obama-Clinton gap. I think the result was a very responsible treatment of the poll, still showing the value of conducting proprietary polls yet not writing as if other polls did not exist.

If we choose to pay attention to all the polling, as my trend estimate does, then we would conclude that approval of Congress remained within a half a point of 27% from June through October of 2006. This was the low point of the decade for the trend, and in fact since the Republicans gained control in November 1994. The Democratic Congress fell below 27% just before the 1994 election and again earlier in 1992. No other Congress has had a trend estimate this low since 1990 when my data begin.

Following the Democratic takeover of Congress in January, the approval trend rose to a high of 34.4% on April 15 and has since declined to 31.1% (which includes the current LATimes/Bloomberg data in the estimate.) Based on this, the gain was about 7 points, of which about 3 points have since been given up. Net, the current Congress is still about 4 points above the lows of 2006.

It is hard to sustain a claim that this is the lowest approval in a decade, unless one focuses only on the "in-house" polls. But it is very easy to see, with support from all those other polls, that approval has started to decline and that this poses risks for the Democrats in Congress.

The LATimes/Bloomberg poll does a good job showing that decline since January and explores the reasons for the decline, especially among liberal Democrats. All of that is excellent reporting and use of a poll, showing the strengths of original data collection and analysis.

I wish editors and reporters would acknowledge that they do not exist alone. When they ignore abundant outside polling, they undercut the very credibility of their own polling as well as serve their readers poorly by creating headlines which are only true within a very limited context. This story could have correctly informed readers AND exhibited the strengths of the LATimes polling operation if it had just stayed away from the "lowest in a decade" and focused instead on the dangers to Democrats of losing their base. Instead a headline is now being repeated which is quite misleading in light of all polling on Congress.

Who lost the Iraq war funding/veto fight?

The debate over the Iraq War funding bill-- the original one with withdrawal dates-- and the presidential veto of the bill posed a key political question: who wins when Congress confronts President, and in this particular case did President Bush or the Congress win the battle for public opinion?

Democrats in Congress were particularly wary about the charge of "undermining the troops", a charge the White House used repeatedly and one to which past Congresses have fallen victim. But the White House had to defend continuing a policy that most of the public sees as a failure. The Democrats bet that full funding but with a deadline would deflect the charge of undermining troops while moving towards their supporters goal of ending the war. The president bet that a public unhappy with the war would nevertheless reject a "surrender date" and could be persuaded that the surge of troops and Gen. Petraeus' "new strategy" should be given time to work.

The key period was Friday, April 20 through Tuesday, May 1. On April 20, President Bush gave a full defense of his new policy in a speech at East Grand Rapids MI, outlining what was new, what the hopes were and where some success could be seen, while admitting a long road ahead including increased casualties. On Monday, April 23, the President met with General Petraeus, and the same day House and Senate negotiators approved a common bill. The next day, April 24, President Bush gave a final warning to Congress in a South Lawn appearance that again outlined the arguments against a deadline and promised a veto. The House passed the bill on April 25th and the Senate on April 25th. The following Tuesday, May 1, President Bush delivered his promised veto.

So what happened to public opinion? The period from December through mid-April showed surprising stability in approval of President Bush. Despite the change in control of Congress, the new "surge" initiative in Iraq and the subsequent debates about the war, approval of the President remained quite stable, with only momentary wiggles that quickly returned to a stable support of around 34%.

That changed on April 24th. The trend estimate of presidential approval marks a sudden and sharp change on that date. Approval on the 24th was a shade over 34%, as it had been since December. But after that, approval started to decline steadily to the current estimate of 31.9%. That 2.1 point decline may sound small, but it is a significant shift in the trend estimate. Individual polls vary widely around this trend, far more than 2 points, but the mean moves much less, and as the graph above makes clear, hardly moved at all in the December-March period. The sharpness of the change point, and the stability of the subsequent decline, argues that this was a "real" point of change and not just random noise. I'm using the conservative "old blue" estimator here, which is hard to fool about changes in trend. It has taken a while to make up its mind (and mine) that this is a real shift in support, but it and I are now convinced.

That the change occurs in the midst of the war deadline/veto debate could be accidental. But it certainly is a believable moment for opinions to shift. A fundamental problem of inference with change point estimates such as this is that anything that happened around April 24th could also possibly be the cause of this shift in approval. Attorney General Gonzalez testified the previous week, for example, and the President supported him during this week as well. And John McCain announced his presidential campaign. And other stuff happened. All can claim the same coincidental relationship with approval's sudden downward turn. But I'd argue that the debate over the war that week tapped into the most salient divide in American politics this spring and is the more plausible explanation.

And I KNOW someone will say it was gas prices. It wasn't. Gas prices started rising the week of January 22, from $2.107/gal and rose each week but one until May 21 when the price hit $3.211/gal. As of June 4 the price was $3.132. So if it was the price of gas, rather than a trivial little war or a boring Washington political fight that drives approval, the President should have started sinking rapidly around the end of January. Excuse the rant, but the "gas prices" matter more than the war or anything else argument is just wrong. At most gas prices enter into approval along with other economic performance variables, but they do not deserve the primacy some attribute to them.

And so the President pressed his case for continuing the new war strategy and retaining both full funding and an open ended commitment in Iraq. He ultimately won that legislative fight, at least until new funding is required in September. But his approval rating has again started to sink, sapping further his already seriously depleted stock of public support.

And so the story might end here. Bush cast his veto and prevailed on funding, but has lost the public battle, at least temporarily. But what about approval of Congress? Did their approval ratings change about this same time? If so, how?

Estimating approval change requires data. Since April 24, there have been 19 polls of presidential approval, providing my trend estimator with enough evidence to reach a reasonably strong conclusion. For Congressional approval, there have been only 10 polls since April 24, so any conclusion rests on half the evidence. Normally I say that the "old blue" estimator likes to have about 12 polls to detect a durable change of trend, rather than just a random bump. But 10 is "around 12" enough that I'll take the risk this time in order to compare Congressional approval. So there is no cheating, I mark the same change date in the Congressional chart, April 24th, so we can see if the shifts match.
























Congress experienced a downturn in approval at almost the same time as did Bush. The high point for Congress is actually April 15. Since then the Congressional approval rating has fallen from 34.5% to 33.0%.

So how do we read this result? Neither Congress nor President won new or increased support from the public following the April debate over the war. As a single actor, it is easier to understand the President's situation. But with Congress, interpretation is confounded. Did the deadline cause supporters of the war to turn more negative to Congress, while opponents of the war either didn't increase support or were unhappy with a measure they thought too weak? Or were Republican voters happy with Congressional Republican support of the President, while Democrats were happy with Democratic opposition while independents turned a bit down?

It is surely the case that whatever Congress does it is easy to find something not to like. Partisans can be upset with the behavior of the other party in Congress, or even with members from their own party who fail to satisfy them. And arguably Congress suffers from simple controversy which gives the impression of a chaotic institution. All this means that a direct interpretation of WHY congressional approval has slipped is much more ambiguous than it is for the President. But we can say that the net effect, however it was divided by partisanship or anything else, was a decline in approval of Congress, reversing a small upward slope prior to the period around April 24.

However, consider the counter-factual. If approval of Congress had risen following April 24th, we'd have pretty strong evidence that Congress had benefited from the war funding debate. That did not happen. So at the least we have evidence that Bush certainly suffered and that most likely so did Congress. Why Congress suffered, and among which groups of the population, we can't say.

It would be nice to see if the parties in Congress gained or suffered differently. Alas, there are only 2 polls on Democratic performance, and only one for Republicans. The data are below, but no conclusion is possible based on this thin gruel.






















So who lost the Iraq funding/veto fight? Both President and Congress. The President continues to support a war that a majority of the public is unhappy with, even if they are somewhat divided on the solution. The Democrats in Congress benefit from professed public support for reduced forces and a pullout deadline, but have failed to produce legislation that garners them increases in public support. And Republicans in Congress have started to talk about September as the turning point beyond which their support for an unpopular war must find a new direction that will not imperil their electoral chances in the 2008 congressional elections.

So far neither side has found a route to increased public support.

Bush Approval: Three polls: 29, 32, 34; Trend at 31.9

Three new polls in the last 24 hours. Pew, taken 5/30-6/3/07 has approval at 29%, disapproval at 61%. AP/Ipsos taken 6/4-6/07 puts approval at 32% and disapproval at 66%. Fox, done 6/5-6/07 pegs approval at 34% and disapproval at 57%.

With these, the trend estimate now stands at 31.9% approval.

None of the polls is unusual, let alone an outlier, so no commentary there. Do note the last graph which plots the last 20 estimates. Interesting pattern there. I'll have more to say about that tomorrow. Tonight I have a birthday party to attend.

Gallup Sees a Tie

Tha Gallup/USAToday poll, taken 6/1-3/07, produced a surprising lede:

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are essentially tied for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the first time that the New York senator hasn't clearly led the field. (Link to full story.)

To the credit of reporter Susan Page and the editors at USA Today, the story also notes that other polls do not show such a sharp tightening of the race:

No other major national poll has shown the Democratic race so close. An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken last Tuesday through Friday gave Clinton a 12-point lead.

(A strong pet peeve of mine is stories that refuse to note comparisons with other polling, especially when results are surprising. I wish other news outlets would emulate the openness we see here.)

This result has produced a lot of excitement and over-interpretation on both sides of the Clinton-Obama camps. Clinton's advisers found reason to dispute and discredit the poll while Obama supporters preferred to embrace the result as proof of Clinton's vulnerability.

Let's take a closer look.

The chart above shows the Gallup poll results since November 2006 in bold red and blue for Clinton and Obama respectively. The 95% confidence intervals (more commonly called the "margin of error") are shown by the vertical lines around each Gallup poll data point. All other polls over this time are shown in light red or light blue so you can see how Gallup compares with everyone else. And the trend estimates I calculate based on all polls (including Gallup) are shown as the red and blue trend lines. (These are my standard, more conservative, trends, also known as "old blue". This trend doesn't respond as much to individual poll bumps and wiggles, but is a little slow to respond to real changes of trend. The results here don't depend on which estimator I use, but I've included the chart for the "ready red" sensitive estimator in the plot at the bottom for the interest of skeptics. I've written at length on differences between the two trend estimators. See those posts if you wish here and here.)

The most important result is that the new Gallup poll does look quite a bit different from most, but not all, of their previous polls since November. For 17 of the 22 Gallup readings (11 polls x 2 candidates) the confidence interval overlaps my trend estimate. The new poll is unique in that both Clinton's and Obama's confidence intervals do not include the current trend estimate. That means either the trend has changed and my estimator hasn't detected it, or that the new Gallup result is further away from the trend than we would expect 95% of the time. (My sensitive estimator, shown at the bottom, thinks that Clinton's trend is a bit more down, and Obama's a little more up, but the confidence intervals don't overlap the trend in that plot either.)

So based on this, the new Gallup result does not fit what we would expect based on sampling theory and the overall trend estimates. In that sense, the poll is a statistical outlier, and the critics are right to discount the result and any claim of a "statistical tie".

We've seen some earlier Gallup results in which the confidence interval fails to overlap the trend for one, but not both, candidates. Twice Clinton has fallen below trend and outside the CI (one of those was just barely outside the CI). And once Obama was below trend and outside the CI.

But here is the important point: For those polls that were farther from trend than expected, both the previous AND the subsequent polls bounced back to within the margin of error of the trend, and in fact happened to fall above the trend in all three cases.

And that is the really important thing: If these large deviations from trend were telling us something "real" about the trend, we'd expect to see the subsequent poll ALSO reflect that. Instead, these polls act very much like random variables are supposed to do: they may deviate in a single reading, but they bounce back to near their mean ("expected value" is the technical term here) as soon as we take a new sample. NOTE that the trend changes over time, so I'm NOT saying this is all random noise. When we look over all the polls we can detect real shifts in Clinton and Obama support, shown by the red and blue trend lines that are our best estimate of true changes in the candidate's fortunes. The mistake, which is very common, is to think that each single poll's movements are meaningful and MUST be explained by some political event or "short term" trend.

Frank Newport, Gallup's editor in chief, has a discussion of the new poll in his Gallup Guru blog at USAToday here. He stresses that the change from May to June for each candidate is within sampling error and so can the interpreted as "not statistically significant". Obama gained four points, from 26% in May to 30%. The confidence interval for that change is 5.7%, so not statistically significant. Clinton dropped from 35% to 29%, a 6 point drop. The confidence interval for that is 5.9%. We could quibble whether to round the CI to 6% or not, but certainly that change is at most just at the margin of statistical significance, and not "strong evidence" of a change in fortune for either candidate.

The one quibble I have with Newport's comments is that even as he (correctly) cautions about sampling error and non-significance of the changes, he can't quite resist the possibility of real change:

So we don’t know exactly what to make out of the change in the current poll. The relative stability of the structure of the Democratic race certainly suggests that this latest bump up by Obama could be temporary, as was the last such change in April.

It is the "latest bump up by Obama could be temporary" that jerks my chain. If the best explanation is random noise, which the non-significance of changes suggests, then we shouldn't turn around and consider that the "bump" is in any way meaningful. The "last such change in April", for example was a non-significant point above the trend at 26 which followed the low outlier for Obama at 19 earlier in the month. That "7 point gain" was mostly random noise from a lower than expected reading to a higher than expected one, but neither signaled a meaningful shift in trend, which was relatively flat during that time.

The worst implication of taking the current poll at face value is that when the next one comes out and shows Clinton back at around 34% and Obama back around 23% (my current trend estimates) there will be a powerful urge to write that Clinton has rebounded and Obama has fallen off. Neither is likely to be true. Rather, random variation has worked its invisible hand and brought the polls closer to the actual trend in support. A substantive reading of that future poll will be quite as misleading as reading the current one as showing a sharp change in fortune.


(Interests Disclosed: I was interviewed by reporter Susan Page for the USAToday article and briefly quoted, though not on this specific point.)

The plot below shows the trend estimate based on "ready red", the more sensitive measure of trend, but one that is also more likely to mistake noise for changes in trend. While the trend estimate here is a little different, the polls that fall outside the confidence interval are the same as in the chart above using my more stable estimate of trend.