gallup poll

Economix Blog: Q.&A. on Forecasting Based on Voter Expectations

November 2, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

A new academic study concludes that poll questions about expectations – which ask people whom they think will win – have historically been better guides to the outcome of presidential elections than traditional questions about people’s preferences. From my article about the study, by David Rothschild and Justin Wolfers, and the reaction to it:

Most recently, Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination despite at various points trailing other candidates — Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Perry — in polls of Republican voters’ preferences. Even when Mr. Romney was behind, Republicans typically told pollsters that they expected him to win the nomination….

In presidential races since 1952, the expectations question has pointed to the winner in 81 percent of states, based on data from the American National Election Studies. The question about voting intentions pointed to the winner in 69 percent.

Below is a lightly edited interview with Mr. Wolfers, conducted by e-mail, focusing on the implications of the study for current presidential polls.

In the article, I discussed only briefly the expectations polls about the 2012 race, and some of the Twitter feedback was eager for more. By my count, there have been five recent major polls asking people whom they expect to win — by ABC/Washington Post, Gallup, Politico/George Washington University, New York Times/CBS News, and the University of Connecticut. There is also sixth from Rand asking people the percentage chances they place on each candidate winning. How consistent are the polls?

There’s a striking consistency in how people are responding to these polls. The most recent data are from the Gallup poll conducted Oct. 27-28, and they found 54 percent of adults expect Obama to win, versus 34 percent for Romney. Around the same time (Oct. 25-28), there was a comparable New York Times/CBS poll in which 51 percent of likely voters expect Obama to win, versus 34 percent for Romney.

But these results aren’t just stable across pollsters, they’ve also been quite stable over the past few weeks, even as the race appeared to tighten for a while. Politico and George Washington University ran a poll of likely voters on Oct. 22-25, finding 54 percent expect Obama to win, versus 36 percent for Romney. The University of Connecticut/Hartford Courant poll of likely voters got a somewhat higher share not venturing an answer, with 47 percent expecting Obama to win versus 33 percent for Romney. Finally, the ABC/Washington Post poll of registered voters run Oct. 10-13 found 56 percent expect Obama to win, compared to 35 percent for Romney.

I’m rather surprised by the similarities here – across time, across pollsters, across how they word the question, and across different survey populations (likely voters, registered voters, or adults) – but I suspect that is part of the nature of the question. You just don’t see the noise here that you see in the barrage of polls of voter intentions, which are extremely sensitive to all of these factors.

I always throw out the folks who don’t have an opinion, and count the proportions as a share of only those who have an opinion. By this measure, the proportion who expect Obama to win is: 61 percent (Gallup), 60 percent (The New York Times), 60 percent (Politico), 59 percent (Hartford Courant), 62 percent (ABC). The corresponding proportions who expect Romney to win are: 39 percent, 40 percent, 40 percent, 41 percent and 38 percent. Taking an average across all these polls: 60.3 percent expect Obama to win. Or if you prefer that I focus only on the freshest two polls, 60.7 percent expect him to win.

The results do seem have tightened somewhat since the first debate, which Romney was widely seen to have won, right? Do the patterns — or lack of patterns — in the numbers help solve the issue of what most people are thinking of when they answer the expectation question: Private information (their friends’ voting plans, yard signs in their neighborhood, etc.) or public information (media coverage, speeches, etc.)?

The results of the polls of voter intentions seem to have tightened a bit since the first debate. There’s an interesting school of thought in political science that basically says: voters are pretty predictable. But they don’t think too hard about how they’re going to vote until right before the election. So what happens is that public opinion through time just converges to where it “should” be. And viewed through this lens, the first debate was just an opportunity for people who really should always have been in Romney’s camp to figure out that they’re in Romney’s camp.

So why did the expectations polls move less sharply than intentions polls? One possibility is that your expectations are explicitly forward-looking, and perhaps people saw the race tightening as they saw that some of the support for Obama was a bit soft. Let me put this another way: There are two problems with how we usually ask folks how they plan to vote. First, the question captures the state of public opinion today, while the expectations question effectively asks you where you think public opinion is going. And second, polls typically demand a yes or no answer, when the reality may be that we know that our support is pretty weak, and it may change, or we aren’t even sure whether we’ll turn up to the polls. The virtue of asking about expectations is that you can think about each of your friends, and think not just about who they’re supporting today, but also whether they may change their minds in the future.

I worry that it sounds a bit like I haven’t answered your question, but that’s because I don’t have a super-sharp answer. If I had to summarize, it would be: expectations questions allow you to think about how the dynamics of the race may change, and so they are less sensitive to that change when it happens.

Based on your research and the current polls, what does the expectations question suggest is the most likely outcome on Tuesday?

If a majority expects Obama to win, then right there, it says that I’m forecasting an Obama victory.

But by how much? Here’s where it gets tricky. The fact that 60 percent of people think that Obama is going to win doesn’t mean that he’s going to win 60 percent of the votes. And it doesn’t mean that he’s a 60 percent chance to win. Rather, it simply says that given the information they have, 60 percent of people believe that Obama is going to win. Can we use this to say anything about his likely winning margin?

Yes. I’ll spare you the details of the calculation, but it says that if 60.3 percent of people expect Obama to beat Romney, then we can forecast that he’ll win about 52.5 percent of the two-party vote. That would be a solid win, though not as impressive as his seven-point win in 2008.

The proportion who expect Obama to win right now looks awfully similar to the proportion who expected George W. Bush to win in a Gallup Poll at a similar point in 2004. Ultimately Bush won 51.2 percent of the two-party vote.

Right now, Nate Silver is predicting that Obama will win 50.5 percent of the popular vote, and Romney 48.6 percent. As a share of the two-party vote, this says he’s forecasting Obama to win 51 percent of the vote. Now Silver’s approach aggregates responses from hundreds of thousands of survey respondents, while I have far fewer, so his estimate still deserves a lot of respect. I don’t want to overstate the confidence with which I’m stating my forecast. So let me put it this way: My approach says that it’s likely that Obama will outperform the forecasts of poll-based analysts like Silver.

We’ll find out soon enough. Thanks.

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/forecasting-based-on-expectations-not-intentions/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: gallup poll, republican voters, traditional questions

Economix Blog: Bruce Bartlett: Who Counts as Rich, Continued

December 13, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He is the author of the coming book “The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take.”.”

Last week, Catherine Rampell posted a commentary on a new Gallup poll on the question of who is “rich” in America. The median threshold in the poll’s responses was that rich is $150,000 a year of income or a net worth of $1 million. Because I have asserted that the rich need to pay more taxes if we are to get out of our fiscal mess, and even Republicans say that government benefits for the rich should be cut off, the question of who is rich is politically important.

Today’s Economist

Perspectives from expert contributors.

The first thing to know is that there is no formal definition of who is rich, middle class or poor. Of course, there is an official definition for the poverty rate, but that figure is just a back of the envelope calculation that has simply been increased by the inflation rate since the 1960s. There are many other ways of calculating the poverty rate that could either raise the poverty threshold or reduce it.

Another problem is that one’s social class is a function of both income and wealth. There are many among the elderly who have little income but may have fairly substantial wealth by, for example, owning a home free and clear. At the other end, there are those with high incomes who are, nevertheless, deeply in debt, perhaps even having a negative net worth.

Social class also involves self-identification. According to the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, which has been asking people what social class they belong to since 1972, more than 90 percent of Americans put themselves squarely in the middle – belonging either to the working class or the middle class.

Historically, less than 6 percent of people identify with the lower class – well below the poverty rate, which was 15.1 percent in 2010 – and about 3 percent with the upper class. Not surprisingly, the economic crisis has increased the ranks of the lower class and working class and reduced the ranks of the middle class and upper class.

General Social Survey

Of course, social class is also a question of perception. A family that has temporarily fallen on hard times might still view itself as belonging to a higher social class than its income justifies. Therefore, it is also useful to look at how people identify their income class. The results are not dissimilar to those above – the vast bulk of people see themselves as being broadly in the middle.

General Social Survey

Another factor that might shape people’s perceptions of their social class and what, if anything, the government ought to do to improve the distribution of wealth and income is the prevalence of mobility.

Republicans often oppose policies that would equalize incomes on the grounds that today’s poor could be rich tomorrow and vice versa. Data from the General Social Survey show, by and large, that people believe they have a pretty good chance of improving their economic condition, but probably less so than Republicans believe.

General Social Survey

These data are confirmed by various New York Times polls, the latest of which, in October, found that 67 percent of people believe it is still possible to start out poor in America and become rich. Only 32 percent said that it was not possible. The peak of optimism came in February 2000, when 84 percent of people said it was possible for average people to become rich. The stock market peaked a month later. The trough came in January 1983, when only 57 percent of people thought they could become rich. That was right on the brink of an economic boom.

Times polls also cast light on the issue of mobility. In a 2005 poll, people were asked about their social class when they were children compared with today. People generally saw themselves as better off today.

The New York Times

Since 1989, The Times has asked people whether they think future generations will be as well off as people today. In October, 26 percent said that future generations would be better off, 22 percent said they would be the same and 46 percent said they would be worse off.

The peak of optimism was also in February 2000, when 44 percent said future generations would be better off and 27 percent said they would be worse off. The trough came in March 1995, when 16 percent of people thought future generations would be better off and 58 percent said they would be worse off. This was also right on the brink of an economic boom.

When people are asked whether it is the responsibility of government to reduce income inequality, they mostly disagree, but not strongly. The data for 2010 show an increase in the percentage of people opposed to income redistribution that may reflect the influence of the Tea Party movement.

General Social Survey

The Times poll in October, however, found that only 26 percent of people thought the distribution of money and wealth was fair, with 66 percent saying it should be more evenly distributed.

Obviously, the question of who is rich in America is extremely fluid. The commonly used threshold of $250,000 is certainly reasonable, but it is nevertheless questioned by those who have such an income but also have equally high expenses, such as children in expensive Ivy League schools.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=61ef356f5988e94adf03706ea38f70f7

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: expert contributors, gallup poll, general social survey

Economix Blog: A Challenge for Unions in Public Opinion

September 2, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

A new Gallup poll has found that a slim majority of Americans, 52 percent, approve of labor unions and that the difference in views between how Democrats and Republicans feel toward unions has reached record levels.

The Gallup poll, released on Thursday, found that the approval rate for unions was unchanged from 2010 and was up from 2009, when unions had the lowest approval rating, 48 percent, since Gallup began this survey in 1936.

Gallup

Showing a huge partisan difference in views, the poll of 1,008 adults found that 78 percent of Democrats approve of unions, while just 26 percent of Republicans do, the lowest percentage ever for Republicans.

Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup’s managing editor, wrote, “This could reflect a greater politicization of union issues given the fact that many state-level efforts to curb union influence were promoted by Republican governors often backed by a Republican-controlled legislature.”

After Republicans swept to power in many states last November, the Republican governors of several states, most notably Wisconsin and Ohio, moved to curb collective bargaining by public-employee unions, an effort that generated huge resistance from labor unions and Democrats.

Mr. Jones wrote that the huge debate over union rights this year “seems to have resulted in a draw in the court of public opinion, with labor unions neither gaining nor losing Americans’ support overall compared with last year.”

The Gallup poll found a strong rebound of Democrats’ and independents’ views toward unions over the last two years. Approval among Democrats rose to 78 percent from 66 percent in 2009, and to 52 percent from 44 percent among independents. For Republicans, the approval rating was 26 percent this year, down from 34 percent last year (and 29 percent in 2009).

This year’s poll found that 52 percent of Americans approved of unions and 42 percent disapproved. (The survey was conducted Aug. 11 to 14 with 95 percent confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.)

When the overall approval rating for unions fell to its lowest level ever in 2009, many labor relations said that was because many Americans believed that labor unions could be too stubborn and demanding and were a major cause of the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies that year. Union leaders maintain that a major reason for the overall decline in approval ratings in recent years — the approval rate was 65 percent less than a decade ago — is that conservative politicians and think tanks have been putting out a flood of negative information about organized labor.

Business groups say labor’s approval ratings have slid from decades past because many Americans feel they have good wages and benefits and no longer see a need for unions.

Labor leaders acknowledge that one of their biggest challenges is to figure out how to make Americans more enthusiastic about unions and unionizing at a time when many workers face stagnating wages, rising insecurity on the job and employers’ cutting back on pensions and other benefits — all while corporate profits have been quite strong.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ef1fd2af70f1f9cb116e96761e5eb2dd

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: gallup poll, managing editor, rebound

Economix: What Americans Really Think About the Debt Ceiling

July 18, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

This month, a Gallup poll found that Americans are almost twice as likely to say they want their Congressional representative to vote against rather than for an increase in the debt ceiling (42 percent to 22 percent, with 35 percent saying they had no opinion).

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Gallup also asked those Americans who had expressed opinions to explain why they had answered that question as they had. Today the polling organization has released all 700 of these open-ended responses, which can provide some useful insights into how ordinary Americans think about this issue.

I just whipped up a couple of word clouds (via wordle.net) to give a sense of the themes behind both sets of responses. Here are the responses from people who think their representative in Congress should vote against raise the debt ceiling:

Source: Gallup. Image created using Wordle.

Here are the responses from people who think their representative in Congress should vote for raising the debt ceiling:

Source: Gallup. Image created using Wordle.

For what it’s worth, I see that the word “economy” was used more frequently by those who wanted to raise the debt ceiling. Notice any other interesting patterns here?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=95c0c1001b0c3ccd7b329becba6b6ce6

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: debt ceiling, gallup poll, insights

Economix Blog: Q.&A. on Forecasting Based on Voter Expectations

Economix Blog: A Challenge for Unions in Public Opinion

Economix: What Americans Really Think About the Debt Ceiling

CATHERINE RAMPELL

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