pew – Moe Lane

Pew: Democrats have a problem with under-$50K voters.

This did not make me spray soda all over the monitor screen:

In 2004, Democrats won the working-class vote by 11 points; George W. Bush was reelected. In 2006, Democrats won the working-class vote by 22 points and took the House and Senate. In 2008, Democrats won by 22 points again, and President Obama was elected. In 2010, the margin narrowed to 11 points, and Republicans took the House back. In 2012, Obama was reelected—on the strength of another 22-point margin among voters making under $50,000.

…but this did: Continue reading Pew: Democrats have a problem with under-$50K voters.

New USA Today/Pew poll: Veterans hate the Bergdahl/terrorist swap.

Mind you, the country in general also dislikes the swap (43/34). But that’s nothing as compared to how veterans feel both about Bose Bergdahl, and the deal that Barack Obama made to bring him back: “Veterans are much more harsh in their assessment of the 28-year-old sergeant. Only 6% of veterans who responded say they sympathized with him, while 33% say they were angry. By 68%-16%, veterans say Obama made the wrong decision.” A couple of other things:

The Pew poll found a two-to-one ratio in favor of having the President inform Congress before he does this sort of thing.
The Pew poll also found that this story was tied with the ongoing Veterans Affairs meltdown – and the meltdown is only getting worse – as being the most important thing that Americans were paying attention to right now. Third thing? The economy*.
This poll is of adults. How all of this is playing out among likely voters… well. Glad I’m not the one who has to worry about that!

Continue reading New USA Today/Pew poll: Veterans hate the Bergdahl/terrorist swap.

Pew polling results: American public thinks Barack Obama MEANS well…

…they’re just increasingly thinking that maybe he’s not capable of getting the job done.

From 77% to 56% for “A strong leader;” and from 70% to 49% for “Able to get things done.” But Obama’s still in there swinging! …Bless his heart.

Seriously, this is kind of damning. Although not as damning as it will be in two years, when the guy’s in FULL lame-duck mode and his staff discovers that the media will be in full 2016 election mode. I’m hoping for Full Metal Petulance, myself.

Pew: Keystone pipeline supported by 54% of …Democrats.

There comes a time when it’s smart to throw in your cards. This would be one of those times. 66/23 for it, overall, and just look at the crosstabs:

Support for the pipeline spans most demographic and partisan groups. Substantial majorities of Republicans (82%) and independents (70%) favor building the Keystone XL pipeline, as do 54% of Democrats. But there is a division among Democrats: 60% of the party’s conservatives and moderates support building the pipeline, compared with just 42% of liberal Democrats.

The 42/48 split among liberal Democrats on the question of Keystone is actually be the one that should really worry Barack Obama and the other Luddites running the Democratic party, though. Being against Keystone isn’t just fringe; it’s perilously close to being a fringe position even among the existing fringe. Mind you, if the Democrats absolutely want to take a cordially hated anti-energy position through at least two, and probably four, more gas hikes, I can live with that. After all, there’s an election going on next year, and every little bit helps.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

PS: For the record, Pew: a 48/38 split on whether fracking is a good idea is not a “mixed opinion:” it’s “a double digit lead favoring fracking.” Again: for the record.

Pew backs up Gallup on Obama losing early voting totals.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Just as the presidential race is deadlocked in the campaign’s final days, the candidates are also running about even when it comes to the ground game. Voters nationally, as well those in the closely contested battleground states, report being contacted at about the same rates by each of the campaigns. And with a fifth of likely voters reporting already having cast their ballots, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney has a clear advantage among early voters. This is in sharp contrast to early voting at this point four years ago, which favored Obama by a wide margin.

Continue reading Pew backs up Gallup on Obama losing early voting totals.

Hill poll: American electorate apparently not addicted to soaking rich.

Or, rather, they don’t actually realize that the soaking is already happening.

The most immediate thing to take away from this Hill poll is what the article on the subject leads with: which is, that something like three-fourths of the American electorate thinks that that the tax rate for the wealthy should be lower than it actually is (about the same proportion has a similar attitude towards similar tax rates for corporations). So far, so good – but then there was this frankly laughable paragraph from the Hill article:

The new data seem to run counter to several polls that have found support for raising taxes on high-income earners. In an Associated Press-GfK poll released Friday, 65 percent said they favored President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” that millionaires should pay at least 30 percent of their income. And a Pew poll conducted in June found 66 percent of adults favored raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 as a way to tackle the deficit.

The bolding is mine – and is, of course, nonsense. And you can tell that quite handily by looking at the questions. In order: Continue reading Hill poll: American electorate apparently not addicted to soaking rich.

Pew: Democrats getting hammered by religious voters.

The topline number in this Pew survey shows that the current breakdown among registered voters is 43/48 GOP/Dem, which is a seven point shift from their 39/51 results in 2008. Now that alone should worry the Democrats, seeing as Pew found that the breakdown in 2010 was 43/47, which was the year where Democrats got shellacked across the country; but the news is if anything worse when you look at the breakdown by religious affiliation. A lot of attention will be on how Jewish support for the GOP went from 20/72 to 29/65 between ’08 and today; but what may be even more important is that that GOP support among white Mainline Protestant and white Catholic voters flipped from 45/45 and 41/49 in 2008 to 51/39 & 49/42 in 2011. How this will translate into likely voters is, of course, anybody’s guess… but if you’ve been wondering why the President is suddenly talking about how neat God is, it’s probably because somebody on his staff is keeping track of Pew.

As to how this breaks down in the 2012 election… well, obviously the increase in Jewish support (as Pew notes, those new supporters are identifying as Republicans, not as Republican-leaning) is going to have an impact in Florida, which is a state looking increasingly like it’s going to be leaving the Democratic column. But possibly what may be even more important was what happened with Mormon support: it went from 68/19 in 2008 to 80/17 in 2011. If I had to guess as to why, I suspect that this represents fallout from the incredibly racist* Democratic response to California’s Proposition 8; and if you’re wondering what the point is then I suggest that you look at this map of LDS population percentages in 1990. Mormons make up somewhere around seven and a half percent of Nevada’s population, and while the numbers are much smaller in Colorado and New Mexico they are still significant. While Obama comfortably won all three states in 2008, they are all considered in play for 2012: couple that with Republican gains among white Catholics and we’re seeing a suddenly-rickety Democratic position in the Mountain West.

Continue reading Pew: Democrats getting hammered by religious voters.

Pew Research: 53% of Americans don’t know GOP candidates.

This is, of course, highly unsurprising: it is April of 2011. While the true start of election cycles have been notoriously creeping further and further back for some time now, the major reason why anybody’s talking seriously about the 2012 election at this point is because President Obama rather desperately announced exceptionally early so that he could officially fund-raise*. This means that those parts of the media that are actually covering the election are more or less stuck pretending that it’s September of 2011 (which is still a little early, but such is the custom of the country); after all, the President thinks that it’s election time, so shouldn’t everybody else?

…Apparently not. Pew reports that currently 20% of the population is following the GOP Presidential nomination process closely, and that 4% consider it to be the top story. For comparison: both numbers are ranked sixth; the top stories continue to be the Japan earthquake (38% following closely, 26% consider top story) and oil/gas prices (53%/22%). Combine that with the surprising detail that the media isn’t actually covering the election that much (2% of the media coverage focuses on the GOP primaries; the top media coverage is easily the deficit/national debt at 31%), and you end up with what is a spectacularly… no, not “uninformed.” What we have is a spectacularly uninterested electorate when it comes to the 2012 elections.

Which means? First, it means that people should not be surprised when various polling reveals that the Republican front-runners are all folks that voters have already heard of. Second, it means that anybody who wants to tell you that the current state of the race is an indicator of anything, including the current state of the race, is almost certainly operating with an agenda. Which certainly includes me; only my agenda is to get people to stop talking about the GOP nomination (which is what the Democrats want us to be focusing on) and get back to talking about jobs, the deficit, and the economy (which is what the Democrats don’t want us to focus on)…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(Via Drudge)

*Which is, by the way, what he’s doing today instead of visiting areas of the country that are: devastated by tornadoes; and increasingly unlikely to vote for him in 2012.

#rsrh Interesting Pew results on illegal immigration.

Pew surveyed Latino voters on illegal immigration issues: the report isn’t available yet at the site, but this article reports that Latino attitudes towards illegal immigration has taken a seriously negative turn. The most important finding? 31% consider illegal immigration a net negative for the Latino community, with 29% considering it positive, and 20% considering it neither. In 2007, 50% considered illegal immigration to be a net positive.

Oddly, I sort of agree with both sets of spin from the article on why this would be so: the right’s argument that this reflects heightened public awareness on the issue makes a good deal of sense. After all, people are more than a set of survey questions: having a last name like Herrera or Sandoval or Martinez does not automatically require you to take a hardcore liberal line on immigration policy. But this means that I also sort of take the left’s argument that much of this new attitude comes from our miserable economy. Indeed, it does: the economy’s bad, thanks largely to the inability of the Democratic party to focus on job creation. Instead, they do things like waste valuable legislative time pandering to the ultra-far left splinter of the Latino community…

Via Mickey Kaus (who is watching in horror as his Democratic party acts like, well, the Democratic party on the DREAM Act*), via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

*:shrug: Elections have consequences.

Pew and the Democratic War on Science.

For the record, I don’t actually care if somebody believes in stuff like astrology. But fair’s fair, and if we’re going to have to listen to liberal elites sneering about creationists, said elites can take the time to explain why they don’t sneer at astrology devotees*:

For those limited to text: somewhere around 30% of Democrats believe in a whole range of New Age stuff, explicitly including astrology. This is roughly double the number of Republicans also surveyed. Similar numbers and ratio for conservatives/liberals**.

A quote for you, to roll this up:

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”- find out how he feels about astrology. – Robert Heinlein

I would have added that quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton about the implications of ceasing to believe in God, but the actual quote is hard to pin down.

Moe Lane Continue reading Pew and the Democratic War on Science.