GOP strong on crime, boosted by trust in inflation: POLL

If the last 30 years haven't dispelled the myth that Republicans keep crime low and the economy healthy then nothing will.

Of course Democrats don't do themselves any favors by being the worst marketing firm mankind has ever known, and letting conservatives steal issues right out from under their noses time after time.

 

I do trust the Rs to "break" as many laws as possible, since laws do not apply to rich, white men.

Seriously how can anyone see the Rs as the law and order party after Jan 6th?

 

But for some reason the American voters when polled don't believe that the only bills these guys pass are what they actually pass and that they are actually passing good economic legislation & passing criminal reform legislation.

The problem folks... IS THE MEDIA, and information which is creating an alternate reality about what Republicans are actually doing when they govern vs. what "THE MYTH" is about these issues voters actually care about.

 

Poll will almost always favor the out party regardless of the issue. Issue Polling is just broken, IMO.

 

Media isnt the problem. People will always find news sources they want and self select.

The problem is we have a set of election and governance rules, by pure coincidence, that amplify conservative votes and silence liberal ones.

That's the whole ballgame. We're suffering from an imperfect system created by arbitrary decisions. There is no self correcting mechanism in our government to account for this, so we will ride this partisan imbalance to our doom.

 

AFAIK democrats have never held an edge on crime and have only very rarely held one on the economy. This is a myth that is basically engrained in our DNA it seems.

 

You're probably right here about minority rule based on our electoral system, but I'm still a bit baffled here on the margins. So your thought then is that when people are polled about what is important to them, they aren't as misinformed as we think but they are using the economic myth more as a disingenuous crutch to avoid thinking of themselves as a bigot?

The polling suggests that it's not just the 30% of rural hard right Americans that are voting for Republicans. It shows that clearly it's more like 45% of Americans at least that'll vote in Republicans if they think it'll benefit them economically. The polling shows that 70% of Americans aren't down with the GOP banning of abortion/overturning constitutional rights or bullying Trans kids, but a good chunk of those 70% of Americans are still going to vote Republican in November because of the myth of economics and "tough on crime". So either a good chunk of the 70% are lying and are really closet bigots or they are misinformed. It really can't be neither IMO.

The way our electoral system is setup 40 to 45% of people in the right states & parts of states can win elections at the national level and dictate minority rule, but 30% cannot even in the most gerrymandered of elections. So something isn't adding up with 15%ish of Americans. I might be wrong to solely point the finger at the media/misinformed public, but somewhere there's a finger to point at someone or something because something stinks here in our Democracy. Maybe it's a blend of all the above... I dunno.

 

Nah economy always swings back and forth...a lot is just due to response bias of course.

I actually think the fundamental issue is that issue-polling is broken because nobody controls the economy or crime. Not Presidents or congresses. Gallup issue polling has not changed back since the 1940s, basically premised on the idea that parties or leaders can affect these big questions and they're still worded that way.

First off, most of the time they can't . Second off even if they can get legislation or policies implemented - which literally almost never happens now - the effects are far divorced in time from these polls which makes them less useful as something to respond to.

The larger issue is also the lack of common epistemology - what's the point of polling with a simple/ambiguous question attuned to a consensus when 30-40% effectively exist in an alternative facts ecosystem?. I know you can break things down by party affiliation but when people are not even understanding the question the same way, seems not as valuable as when there was a broader consensus.

 

'Crazy doesn't pay': Morning Joe explains why Republicans ...


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/01/poll-biden-post-abc/

Today, 46 percent of registered voters say they would vote for the Democrat in their congressional district, compared with 45 percent
who say they would vote for the Republican. Based on historical patterns, Democrats would likely need a bigger advantage to avoid losing their majority.

Yet last fall, Republicans held a 10-point edge and in February led by seven points on this question, known as the generic ballot. Nearly all of the change since February is the result of a shift toward the Democrats among self-identified independents, a group that can be volatile in public opinion polls.

Democrats have a 12-point margin among voters ages 18 to 39; in February, those voters were split about evenly between the two parties. Democrats have an advantage with these younger voters even though they disapprove of Biden’s performance by a 13-point margin, 52 percent to 39 percent.

The same pattern appears among independent registered voters. This group disapproves of Biden by a 21-point margin but splits 42-42 on the congressional vote.

There is a lot of other good info about things trending up for Biden like this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/01/poll-biden-post-abc/

Biden’s overall approval rating among voting-age adults is five points higher than in February, when 37 percent of Americans said they approved of his job performance. His disapproval rate is now at 52 percent, slightly lower than February’s 55 percent, but that shift is within the margin of error. He has ticked up among men and women and shown improvement among independents and slight improvement among Democrats — but has made no gains among Republicans.

Still, there is a significant difference in the passions people bring to their assessments of the president. Overall, 42 percent say they strongly disapprove of his job performance, while 21 percent say they strongly approve.


Biden gets higher marks for his handling of the war in Ukraine than two months ago — up from 33 percent approval in February to 42 percent in the latest survey. But 47 percent disapprove, identical to February. The improvement is due primarily to a drop in the percentage of people who had no opinion two months ago.

An even bigger change comes in assessments of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Currently, 51 percent approve of his performance in this area, compared with 44 percent in February. Overall there has been a shift of 14 points in two months, taking Biden from negative to positive territory on the coronavirus, and the approval level is now similar to where he stood last September.

 

I think this could be a game changer. Not so much just the ruling but if the trigger laws in several states go into effect and abortion is outrightly banned in many states. Also some members of Congress are talking about a national ban.

Democrat odds of holding Congress won’t be guaranteed but if this Fall we have abortion outlawed in multiple states with stories of women being prosecuted for abortions, Republican members of Congress introducing bills to nationally ban abortion i think that will energize a lot of Democrat votes especially among suburban women.

 

Nothing combats inflation like cutting taxes for the rich and paying for underage girls abortions for Matt Gaetz.

 

The republicans have no answer for inflation and the stated policies they have will likely make it worse. That said the Democrats can’t really combat it either and this is an issue largely out of either party’s control.

Unfortunately for the Democrats whether fair or not the party in power gets the blame.

 

And they call the conservatives the stupid ones

 

The current economic situation is outside of the Unites States hands, much less a bunch of useless politicans.

Lets break it down; This is a full on global economy. The US is not in full control anymore. We now have to deal with the economic uncertainties every other country has had to deal with for decades.

 

Yes that is one consequence of globalization. Even before globalization while the US had more means to combat inflation many of those weren’t particularly popular among the electorate.

even now the strongest tool to fight inflation is one that most politicians don’t want to use and is largely out of their hands Jack up interest rates

 

Translation: Force a mild recession and hope it doesn't spiral out of control. Speed up with stimulus then slow down with increased interest rates, back and forth until the brakes eventually fail. We all know where runaway inflation leads.

I used to argue with @Major over classical vs Keynesian. Austerity is just not a viable solution anymore. They Keynesian's have now moved on to this MMT hybrid.

 

Generally agree

w/r/t inflation - why do you even ask a poll question on that? I understand why pollsters would ask it, because it's a salient issue that might effect votes - partially because, you ask poll questions about it and publish the results. But from a policy perspective, what's the point?

The best consensus we have a from a macroeconomic standpoint is that the current bout of inflation is due to a global supply-demand imbalance (due to pandemic) and additional supply shocks (war, etc). Policy tools fir addressing are pretty much the fed reserve.

None of that really has anything to do with who the Speaker of the House or the President is.

I know there's an argument that "well it was pandemic related benefits that cuased inflation!" - most of those beneifts have expired (and been expired) and that argument falls flat on its face when you see tha the Euro zone and other areas of the globe are also expereicning inflation anyway even though they had stingy benefits.

Basically, why would you ask "which party can handle inflation better" when it's literally impossible for either party to really have much impact? Might as well ask "who's a more awesome god, Baal or Zeus" at least we'd learn something.

Generally every time i see an issue poll on a complex issue i tend to retch a bit now. It seems like the science of polling is stuck in the 1950s in terms of questions while our substantive knowledge of the underlying psychology of polling and framing,of complex systems underlying them, etc has advanced many times over, not to mention the totally ruptured information environment. Yet the pollsters trot out the same questions from year to year

One particular thing from last year drove me crazy, it was some poll on means testing child tax credit someone (centrist type) put up on Twitter.

Now, means testing is generally a terrible idea in this area, because there's a lot of evidence that the adminstrative cost of means testing and bad findings far outweighs the "harm" of a simple program that doesn't means test.

Anyway, the poll said something like "how do you feel about means testing, what should we do" - doesn't give the details about how means testing doesn't work and it gave 4 different means testing regimes and then no means testing as the options - of course in a poll like that you're going to get a certain response that lands in the 80% of options that favor means testing! Not to mention nobody answeing the poll knows **** all about the policy choice anyway.

But this is the kind of **** people like Manichin read on Axios and think it's valid because they haven't thought deeply about it, and it aligns with their bias. And so they act accordingly.