All this does is reinforce my distaste for polls. Obviously, most of America understands that the debt is growing every year, and have conflated debt and deficit. The deficit is shrinking (marginally), debt is growing (exorbitantly). And technically, the last budget Bush signed had a deficit of $459B. Yes, 2009 was Bush's, but Obama signed it.



As evidenced by your poll above, people most likely do not know that to HAVE universal background checks, you must have universal gun registration. I'd like to see the poll ask the question with that caveat that the background checks must have registration.

Short term growth and long term deficit reduction come at the expense of long term growth and short term deficit reduction. I would posit that long term growth is more important than short term growth. Sequester undeniably hurts in the short term, but allows for better long term growth. Also remember that the sequester was Obama's idea as a means of compromise so his credit card wouldn't get clipped. Now he wants to renege. And if you think there isn't room for a 6-8% haircut in government, why have the discussion?

This update drills down on the 2013 gubernatorial election in Virginia.
Quinnipiac has the race at 38%-38%, but it moves to 34%-31%-13% with Terry McAuliffe leading if Bill Bolling jumps into the race as predicted on March 14th.
Personal favorability: Cuccinelli (30%-25%), McAuliffe (23%-16%-60% don't know enough to form opinion), Bolling (18%-10%-72% don't know enough to form opinion)
Job approval: Cuccinelli (41%-32%), Bolling (36%-18%)
Independents favor Cuccinelli 33%-29%, women back McAuliffe 42%-33% men back Cuccinelli 44%-34%. Expect women and independents to swing to McAuliffe as he exposes Cuccinelli's record.

"Governor Ultrasound" (current Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell) still has a job approval rating of 53%-28%. An interesting factor in the race is a recent bipartisan transportation bill. McDonnell, a Republican, relied heavily on state Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass his transportation initiative that calls for an increase in the sales tax and a decrease in the gas tax among other things. McAuliffe supported the bill and personally jumped in the fight to urge Democrats to help pass it while Cuccinelli spoke out against the bill and tried to get Republicans to vote against it. The reception of the state legislature could also play a role in the race (38% approve while 46% disapprove) when the numbers were +4 last month. Voters have become increasingly annoyed with the state legislature passing a number of extremely controversial and unpopular bills including one to allow Virginia to issue its own currency (passed 2:1), two different proposals to rig the electoral college, and a half-dozen further restrict the access to abortion in the state. Voters may punish Cuccinelli for his support for these unpopular measures.

PPP's January polling put McAuliffe +4, but stated that if name recognition is neutralized (as it will be later) McAuliffe develops a 13-point lead (52%-39%). With 23% of Republicans viewing Cuccinelli unfavorably his personal unfavorability numbers are higher than McAuliffe's, 45%-26%. Bolling jumping into the race hurts both candidates equally, but in terms of intraparty support it would hurt Cuccinelli much more than McAuliffe. A mid-January CNU poll (much less reputable than PPP or Quinnipiac) argues based on its findings that if the 2013 turnout resembles the 2009 turnout it will result in a small Cuccinelli win, the judgment being he lacks Bob McDonnell's personal popularity and the atmosphere that was beneficial to the GOP in 2009. The current atmosphere in Virginia in 2012-2013 is very beneficial to Democrats, and if they had a candidate with strong name recognition and high personal favorabilities he/she would be running away with this race already if matched up against the deeply-flawed Cuccinelli. There was also a recent poll by Roanoke College but its methodology is too flawed (both this specific poll and historically) to really gain any trustable information. Their top lines are a lead for Cuccinelli in the race 33%-26% (or 25%-19%-12% if Bolling is included), and a criticism against the bipartisan transportation bill (33% approve with 49% disapproving), with neither being accurate.



Sadly they have conflated debt and deficit. You can thank the entire Republican party for telling demonstrable falsehoods about the issue multiple times per day every day for four years for that. Getting rid of 1/3rd of the total budget shortfall (over $450 billion) in the span of 5 years is not the deficit shrinking "marginally" either, that's fantasy. The fact that it came during slow economic growth and with unprecedented obstruction from the minority party makes it even more considerable. And has been said many times before, the notion that the extraordinary circumstances that delayed Bush's final budget to where Obama had to approve the final appropriations and therefore the trillion-dollar deficit that Bush left us with is actually anyone's fault but his is also a fantasy as well. The deficit from FY07 to FY08 nearly tripled and had the economic collapse began a few months later allowing for no crossover budget the deficit from FY08 to FY09 would have nearly doubled again entirely on account of Bush-era policies. These numbers aren't hiding, we have the data.



Late January polling included questions pertaining to "gun databases" and unsurprisingly that idea received majority support as well. The one poll I'm remembering off the top of my head was a CBS poll that found that around 70% of people supported instituting a database to track sales (65%-68% in the aggregates). What was notable about that was that the number was never above 50% before Sandy Hook, meaning people know what it entails and now wants to try it. They understand the concept, many or even most of them are probably aware of what happens when you try to buy too much Sudafed. They want this for firearms and ammo too. This silly idea that people don't understand policy and therefore their opinion isn't productive is yet another fantasy.



Long-term growth is more important than short term growth only if you are actually growing in the short term instead of contraction, recession, or lurching along at 0.5%-1.5% growth. This is exactly why sequester is stupid, why all of these Congressionally-manufactured crises that are entirely designed by a spiteful minority party to damage the economy require us to pay full attention to what is happening in the now. Sequester doesn't help us in the long term. It's indiscriminate cuts that don't amount to any benefit. If we found smarter cuts to take out the same amount but immediately invested that in infrastructure and competition-based alternative energy initiatives we'd create a million jobs over the next year instead of lose that many like we will with sequester.



Thanks for the laugh. The sequester was not "Obama's idea as a means of compromise," it was a last ditch effort to prevent the single greatest act of political and governing stupidity that we've seen in modern history: the GOP refusing to raise the debt ceiling clean. Jack Lew and Rob Nabors proposed sequester to Harry Reid as a policy so harmful that it would guarantee compromise to replace it because it could never go into effect. That's exactly how Harry Reid proposed it to Mitch McConnell, who agreed, and that's how he proposed it to Cantor and McCarthy, who agreed. It didn't have anything to do with any of this "credit card" bullshit either. Obama had to get the debt ceiling raised so the $400 billion interest payment on the debt didn't turn into $800 billion overnight, he had to prevent world markets from crashing, prevent another recession, prevent a government shutdown, massive job and income loss, interest rates from shooting up that would force people out of their homes and deny them any hope of loans. Stop peddling this wing-nut bullshit that Obama needed to raise the debt ceiling because it'd hurt an agenda, especially if it's any of this retarded "hurr fucking durr, spending!!11" bullshit. The people that are running this country need to cast that fucking vote when it comes around because it's the single most important thing they do in office. If a handful of people want to vote against it to try to make some point then who cares, but it's absolute fucking bullshit that a major party takes the country hostage with that issue and causes as much damage as they possible can with it however they can. And they're damn sure not going to pull that historically-fucking-incompetent bullshit and think they're going to blame their rampant imbecility on anybody else. Not happening.

Trying to blame Obama for sequester is so laughable I don't even know where to begin. The basis for that (usually) is lifting some context-less paragraph from a sensationalist book while ignoring the extensive legislative history on the issue. The Republicans acknowledged that the sequester wasn't supposed to happen in practice and agreed to get rid of it, though we know them. The Republicans backed out of the supercommittee when they realized Obama supported the notion, and on the grounds that it *gasp* included revenue increases as a way to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. The Republicans were the ones that said they "got 98% of what they wanted" with the BCA and sequester (Boehner) and "what conservatives like me were fighting for were statutory caps on spending... and if they breach that amount across the board, sequester comes in to cut that spending, and you can't turn that off without a supermajority vote. We got that in law." (Paul Ryan). The Republicans were the ones that touted sequester as the great concession they got from the Democrats in the deal. The Republicans were the ones that overwhelmingly voted for it, with 174 of their House caucus voting for it while the Democrats were split 95-95. It was the Republicans that refused to pass legislation averting sequestration when it was time to legislate around it after the supercommittee failed, only advancing two bills; one that simply raised the age of Medicare (against the wishes of the electorate) and the other that repealed both Obamacare and Dodd-Frank (give me a break). The Republicans were the ones that didn't reintroduce their measures for the 113th Congress, when both House and Senate Dems reintroduced their electorate-supported bills and held hearings during the GOP recess. It was the Republicans (Boehner) who walked away during Grand Bargain: Part 2 last December when Obama put COLA on the table in good faith so that Boehner would get only a minority of his caucus to agree to support tax code reform that would have not only completely averted sequester but also would have given us a real deficit reduction plan. It was the Republicans that wouldn't even agree to decouple sequester from the fiscal cliff so that a perfect storm didn't crush our markets, they had to let Pelosi step in and save investors.

No one that expects to be taken seriously can blame President Obama for sequester. The notion that he's at fault for it occurring is pure fantasy, and the notion that the Republicans have tried to prevent it with a short-term or long-term replacement is pure fantasy as well. I understand that people ignorant of legislative history or that just need to lie to themselves have no problem lifting something out of a Bob Woodward book while leaving the entire context behind, but people aren't falling for that bullshit. There's a reason Obama's not being blamed for this nonsense: it smells exactly like all the other Congressional Republican bullshit that has been served up these past 3 years. Also, no one said that that there isn't room for a 6% cut in, as the post you quoted said: the problem is the nature of the cut. I have said many, many times that the budget could stand to lose much more than the specific amount that sequester calls to cut, so stop moving the goalposts because too many of your delusions are so easily smashed by legislative realities.

This post was edited by JayKwik on Feb 24 2013 08:45pm

It originated inside the white house, but it was supported and voted on by a majority of republicans in the house, and a majority of dems in the senate. Something like 70% cong reps to 58% cong dems, and around 60% of the yes votes in the senate were from dems.

as Bob Woodward (author of “The Price of Politics”) - http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bob-woodward-obamas-sequester-deal-changer/2013/02/22/c0b65b5e-7ce1-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_story.html - states

Another "How dare you pretend any of this is Obama's fault? Its the repubs fault! If you disagree you have no credibility" Posts by JK (maybe he is JustKidding?)

A little excerpt on polls from Freedom Under Siege:

He seems to also assume that most of us were in favor of the big spending Bush did in the first place, when he couldn't be further from the truth.

I wonder how accurate that OMB report on the sequester breakdown by department really is? Look at the top of Page 121. It references cuts affecting a department that no longer exists, and didn't exist when the OMB prepared their report:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/stareport.pdf

Now mind you, this is just one line item out of thousands, but has anyone really done a thorough analysis on the full accuracy of this report?

Closure of the NDIC: http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/ndic-moved.html

It may have been the intensity of the question of "why do you hate America?" whenever anybody said anything against Bush. I'm not pointing fingers at anybody here in PaRD but the real world got pretty McCarthyist.

And again, that could have just been a super-loud minority.

This post was edited by Skinned on Feb 25 2013 01:40pm

Looking forward to potential 2016 candidates
A recent Quinnipiac poll took a look at the favorability of people that may be running in 2016, including Hillary Clinton (61%-34%), Marco Rubio (+12, but 57% of Americans don't know him), Paul Ryan (-2), and Jeb Bush (-4).
A recent Time/CNN poll puts Joe Biden's job approval rating at 59% (up from 54% in December), possibly reflecting an increase in appeal based off of his spearheading of the gun violence reform effort.
Rasmussen put out some of their findings also: their Generic Congressional Ballot is Democrats +5 (a one point drop from last week).
The firm also put Obama's job approval rating at 54%-45%, which is surprisingly pretty accurate.
There's also a lot of data on the 2014 Senate incumbents, but it really needs to be evaluated and organized so it'll go into a later update.



I didn't really intend for this topic to be a place for discussion of policy, it was really meant to discuss polling findings and to look at things like trends and possible explanations. I anticipated that if it did offer a real drill-down into specific policies, that discussion would look a lot like the original reply, which can pretty much be expressed as "I want to ignore polling realities because they don't conform to my minority opinion." I do realize though that a discussion of polling will eventually lead to policy discussion as a possible explanation for findings, so hopefully in the future people will be able to critically evaluate poll findings instead of trying to dismiss them because they personally don't like what majority opinion looks like.

Also, about your question on sequestration reporting: There have been a few very detailed (and very boring) reports that predict the impact of sequester. Some of the best reporting comes from state-specific evaluations.



This is a topic on the institution and practice of public polling, and if you can't substantively address that topic and the replies in it then you need to go find another topic to embarrass yourself in.

This post was edited by JayKwik on Feb 26 2013 09:19am

I had a serious urge to "tl;dr" this. Just sayin. I don't have the patience to address long posts.

I wasn't laying FY09 at Obama's feet, just explaining that it isn't an outright lie to say Obama doubled the deficit when you account for the fact that he signed it. Is it spin? Most assuredly. When is politics not? I also chuckled to myself as I read "Bush-era policies." You guys just don't give up.

Re: gun databases, I saw something similar (if not the same poll when I googled). That is still why the "gun show loophole" is never going to be "patched," because groups like the NRA will make sure that politicians, and subsequently the public understand that it means registration. Registration will not prevent criminals from getting guns. It will certainly be a convenient listing for a hacked database on the internet to point criminals to where the guns are though, just like what is happening after that newspaper in New England published the addresses of gun owners. Never mind the fact that registration is the lynchpin to confiscation.

Short term contraction is fine, even healthy, in terms of the long term. Sequester, and the long term budget control it is supposed to inspire, allow for a dollar that isn't poised to lose a significant portion of its value, which will do far more damage to our economy than a contraction will.



Thanks for the laugh.



None of this need come to pass if Democrats weren't intransigent to actually cutting spending. Not cutting the rate of growth in spending, cutting spending. There isn't a actuary in the world that will tell you current obligations are sustainable. Blame Republicans all you want for an impasse, but Democrats are just as culpable. Obama wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted a hike in the debt limit, and he wants to keep spending. The fact that you view efforts to control spending as hostage taking and intentionally trying to burn the country to the ground are what make these efforts necessary in the first place. You simply refuse to acknowledge fiscal reality. Interest rates are going to go up, there is no way around it. If they're forced by the markets (at some point, they will be), it will be ugly. You have to understand that our trading partners don't HAVE to accept the USD, they just have incentive to do so so long as OPEC demands USD for their oil. All it takes is other countries to tire of continually absorbing our inflation before the house of cards comes crashing down. Debt is forcing this to happen. Imagine long term double digit inflation. This is in store for us if we continue down this path. We don't have the savings rate like Japan to keep interest rates low. We can hardly be bothered to save for a rainy day.

Sorry about not responding to the rest, but I simply do not have the time to give it a full reply. Also, in light of:



...I just want to be on record showing some of the issues with replying on policy by polling that I already highlighted. It can easily be said that poll wording has as much to do with the outcome of the responses as the actual issue itself. Poll questions are rarely neutral completely, and usually do not allow for nuance.

This is a common exaggeration, but it's something that hasn't been true for a number of years. Though even as methodology has improved an important part of poll evaluation remains the meticulous review of full polling briefings. Even if we know the methods have gotten better, people still have to evaluate each and every poll that's commissioned and study each element of its methodology, and when questions are not asked in a satisfactory manner then the results pretty much have to be ignored. What you're complaining about is the first thing that serious analysts look for during poll evaluation, especially if they're developing summaries or aggregates. Poll questions are no longer of "Why did you kill your wife?" variety. Unfortunately there are some firms that still have not caught up to the new standard, but for the most part people know who they are and don't consult them for serious data.

I would't care if you "tl;dr" my posts, you've shown no interest in substantively addressing them with evidenced-based assertions so I wouldn't think anything of it or take offense to it if you just refused to reply to what's written in them. I'm going to get back to poll-related discussion: You're right that the NRA et al. has already turned their attention to making the public aware of what registrations are through Wayne LaPierre's amusing press conferences, and the public has both laughed him off the stage and thoroughly rejected the NRA's premise that the registry that powers universal background check is just the first step that inevitably leads to a "gun grab." This is exactly the type of crap that led to their 10-point unfavorable swing that I posted in an earlier post, and it's put their numbers underwater because people just don't buy it.