Not two weeks ago, President Obama gave the first of three commencement addresses on his 2013 calendar—this one at The Ohio State University. “Unfortunately you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all of our problems. Some of these same voices do their best to gum up the works. They’ll | Read More »
Tomorrow night (or more likely Wednesday morning), someone is going to look pretty bad. It might be the pollsters who have continually insisted on using a 2008 model for their polls. Or it will be pollsters like us and other analysts who have criticized the 2008 model as unrealistic and exaggerating Obama’s advantage. But, finally, we’ll get some real answers. So, to put ourselves out | Read More »
Sometimes it’s all about momentum and options, and right now Mitt Romney has both. It’s a week before Election Day and it seems that the map is expanding for Governor Romney, which means that it’s contracting for President Obama. In this Election Update I’ll look at the current map and some scenarios that it suggests. I’ll also give you some ideas about how to interpret | Read More »
Beyond speeches and platform votes, last week’s Republican Convention had an important purpose: to redirect the national conversation to problems voters face every day: fewer jobs, lower wages, rising energy costs, and the prospect that our children’s future is being sold away to pay for the present. The US National Debt clock was on prominent display, which has now approached a staggering $16 Trillion. According | Read More »
Impact of the Convention The Convention has created large numbers of positive impressions of Romney but this effect is being somewhat offset by highly negative information elsewhere Convention Watchers: 67% more favorable rating 33% less favorable Nightly news watchers: 28% more favorable rating 72% less favorable Favorite Speech A plurality of likely voters in key swing states who have been paying attention to the convention | Read More »
As part of our continuing effort to keep our clients and friends up-to-date on the political environment as we head toward Election Day,2012, every Friday WPA compiles the key numbers from the week and provides analysis of key trends. In addition to the key political numbers, this week’s analysis includes: A look Paul Ryan’s image boost after he became the Republican VP nominee. The Presidential | Read More »
In the aftermath of the horrific attack in Aurora, Colorado, those on the left have taken up their usual response to such tragedies-push for more restrictions on gun rights. They didn’t wait long, the following morning found a chorus of pundits and elected officials calling for more restrictive gun control. Public opinion suggests that these calls are unlikely to be effective. In the first poll | Read More »
Earlier this week, the Obama campaign released its map of battleground states. According to the campaign Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Colorado are all toss-up territory. But the Obama campaign isn’t the only one with a hypothesis about the map. Over at the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog, Nate Silver has a simulation model that seems to suggest fewer states are in the “nearly | Read More »
To: WPA Research Clients and Friends From: Chris Wilson, Chris Perkins, Bryon Allen Subject: Positioning on Gay Marriage Date: May 14, 2012 Recently a Republican pollster released an analysis suggesting that Republicans should not only stop using gay marriage as a campaign issue, but went so far as to argue conservatives should change | Read More »
Asked at any point before May 1st of last year, the question above would have been ridiculous. Outside of liberal intellectuals and college students, whose idea of “restoring America’s reputation in the world” is something on the order of “surrender and tell the bad guys you want to be friends,” few would have credited the early part of the Obama Administration as a foreign policy | Read More »
It wouldn’t be surprising if you missed it, but the White House is refusing to allow a Congressional Committee access to a key witness in the ongoing probe into Operation Fast and Furious. Operation Fast and Furious is, of course, the incredibly stupid policy of letting automatic weapons find their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels with the supposed purpose of arresting the | Read More »
After a long stretch of inactivity in terms of actually voting, the Republican nomination contest fires back up tonight with Michigan and Arizona going to the polls. Most of us won’t be able to turn anywhere tonight without seeing coverage of what happens, but here are five things we’ll be watching here at WPA that may not get a lot of reporting in the big-picture | Read More »
It is now less than 11 months until American voters will pick our next (and hopefully new) President. While most of the stories you’ll read are, rightly, about the Republican nominating contests, the fundamentals of the general elections are taking shape around us every day and worth an examination. So let’s take a look at a few key measures—some of which apply to any incumbent, | Read More »
The early November statewide elections in Kentucky and West Virginia were something of a yawn compared to the excitement of 2009 where big Republican wins in Virginia and New Jersey presaged the 2010 wave that swept Republicans into a dominant position in the House and in states nationwide. In Kentucky, Republican nominee David Williams was never really a threat to Steve Beshear. In West Virginia | Read More »
As was discussed in our WPA blog on Friday, the DCCC has released its first list of targeted races for 2012. The NRCC has also announced some seats targeted for pick-ups. One of the interesting things to me about these target lists is what they say about the beliefs of the smart people at the two about what the political dynamics of the 2012 cycle | Read More »
For those who missed it last week, Doug Schoen released a fascinating poll consisting of in-person interviews of n=200 Occupy Wall Street protesters. The topline report can be found here and is worth reading in its entirety. It provides a glimpse into some of the real lunatic fringe elements that are part of (but not the whole of) the Occupy Wall Street protests. That “part | Read More »
John Sides had an interesting piece in the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog earlier this month. The full piece is well worth a read for anyone serious about understanding the latest political science research on campaign advertising. Here are links to part one and part two. Sides is a widely published political scientist and the co-founder of one of my daily must-read blogs, The Monkey | Read More »
President Obama is on the road again. Never missing an opportunity to waste taxpayer dollars in an increasingly desperate effort to get a second term, Obama will take his “pass this bill/it’s not my fault” tour to Virginia and North Carolina this week. That certainly makes sense as both are traditional swing states that Obama won in 2008 and where he is polling well below | Read More »
Almost any embattled President facing re-election is sure to stir rumors of a primary challenge. Of the past five Presidents before Obama we have seen two face either serious or at least rumored serious primary challenges. Jimmy Carter in 1979 saw Democratic legend Ted Kennedy launch a primary challenge that at least one commentator thinks came within one major event—either the Iran hostage crisis or | Read More »
Recent post debate polling shows Texas Governor Rick Perry maintaining his lead in the race to capture the Republican nomination for president. Despite attacks by opponents and Washington insiders, Governor Perry has not seen a significant drop in his numbers. Perry continues to lead the field with 28% of the vote while his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, trails by seven points with 21%. Since experiencing | Read More »
Gallup’s latest data paints a potentially dire picture for Barak Obama, but not one so dire that it prevents Democrats from whistling past the graveyard. To recap: Obama’s job approval is down to a miserable 38% in the latest Gallup Poll. But Democrats will point to the fact that his personal favorable ratings are still above 50% according to the latest Real Clear Politics average. | Read More »
It’s no surprise that the dominant story these days is Presidential politics. Between the Ames straw poll and Obama’s full-campaign-mode bus tour, the race for the White House in 2012 has been fully joined on both sides. With all eyes on the Presidential race, the question of what happens to the House and Senate is almost an afterthought despite being just as important in terms | Read More »
Like many in Washington, we’ve been focused on the debt ceiling debate for the past several weeks. The evolution of public awareness and opinion on that issue was fascinating to watch and the public opinion and electoral repercussions will continue to evolve over the coming weeks and months. But, the debt ceiling issue has been resolved until after the 2012 elections. So let’s refocus a | Read More »
Barack Obama ran a campaign in 2008 that, at least superficially, was built on the value proposition that we should move beyond the partisan battles that characterized the previous decades of American politics and instead return to shared set of values to guide our government through compromise. We all know that the policies that Obama advocated, and subsequently enacted, were far more partisan and ideologically | Read More »
While President Obama claims that 80% of Americans want to see their taxes increased to address the Federal deficit, Congress continues to debate raising the debt ceiling and we close in on the highly publicized August 2nd deadline to avoid a government default, there are several points that need to be made to keep claims of public support in context. First, significant numbers of Americans | Read More »
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