Glad I Didn’t Say That! Democrats Play the Race Card in the Monterey Park Shooting — Of Course

Tags

Adam Schiff, Asian-Americans, bigotry, Chuck Schumer, Democrats, Glad I Didn't Say That!, identity politics, Monterey Park shooting, prejudice

“I’m praying for the victims [of the January 21 shootings in largely Asian-American Monterey Park, California], their families, the 1st responders We must stand up to bigotry and hate wherever they rear their ugly heads, and we must keep working to stop gun violence.”

–Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), January 22, 2023

 

The Monterey Park shooting was  “A horrific example of needless gun violence. With bigotry toward AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) individuals as a possible motive.” 

– Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Cal), January 22, 2023

 

Identity of the only suspect in the Monterey Park shooting: Chinese-American

 

(Sources: @SenSchumer, Twitter.com, January 21, 2023, (1) Chuck Schumer on Twitter: “I’m heartbroken by the news of the shooting in Monterey Park amid Lunar New Year celebrations I’m praying for the victims, their families, the 1st responders We must stand up to bigotry and hate wherever they rear their ugly heads, and we must keep working to stop gun violence” / Twitter; @RepAdamSchiff, Twitter.com, January 22, 2023, (1) Adam Schiff on Twitter: “Ten dead in Monterey Park. I am sickened. A horrific example of needless gun violence. With bigotry toward AAPI individuals as a possible motive. The families are in my prayers as we seek information by law enforcement. We’ll never quit demanding real action on gun safety.” / Twitter; and “What we know about the suspect in the Monterey Park massacre,” by Nouran Salahieh, Jeffrey Winter, Casey Tolan, and Scott Glover, CNN.com, January 23, 2023, Huu Can Tran: What we know about the suspect in the Monterey Park massacre | CNN . H/T to “Schumer, Schiff, other liberals blame Monterey Park shooting on ‘bigotry’ before facts come out,” by Bradford Betz, FoxNews.com, January 22, 2023, Schumer, Schiff, other liberals blame Monterey Park shooting on ‘bigotry’ before facts come out | Fox News)

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Im-Politic: Republicans are Winning the Other Election

Tags

apportionment, Census Bureau, Democrats, demography, domestic migrants, Electoral College, House of Representatives, Im-Politic, politics, population, Republicans

Americans have always had two main ways to vote: at the ballot box and with their feet. Both are of course important, and in fact the second ultimately influences the first, as I’ll explain below. So it’s more than a little interesting that the Census Bureau has just released figures on “voting by foot” indicating that even though elections are telling us that the country is deeply divided between Democrats and Republicans, when it comes to desired places to live, the GOP could be building up a considerable advantage.

The Census figures supporting this claim are those showing domestic migration totals, which reveal how many Americans each year are literally picking up stakes from individual states and moving to others. According to the latest “National and State Population Estimates,” (more specifically, the fourth xls table downloadable from this link) which was released shortly before Christmas, seven of the ten states that lost the most domestic population to other states between July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022 were governed by Democrats during that year.   They are (in descending order):

California:             -343,230  D

New York:             -299,557  D

Illinois:                 -141,656   D

New Jersey:            -64,231  D

Massachusetts:       -57,292   R

Louisiana:              -46,672   D

Maryland:              -45,101   R

Pennsylvania:        -39,957   D

Virginia                 -23,952   R

Minnesota:            -19,400   D

Nor is this trend limited to the last year. Census also provides cumulative data going back to April, 2020, and these show the same pro-Republican trend. Again, seven of the ten states with the greatest domestic population loss were governed by Democrats during this period:

California:           -871,217   D

New York:           -664,921   D

Illinois:                -282,048   D

Massachusetts:    -110,866    R

New Jersey:         -107,749   D

Louisiana:              -80,278   D

Maryland:             -68,287    R

Michigan:             -43,188    D

Ohio:                    -39,995    R

Minnesota:           -37,377    D

Moreover, the opposite is even “truer.” Of the ten states with the most domestic migration population gain between July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022, nine were governed by Republicans:

Florida:             +318,855    R

Texas:               +230,961    R

No. Carolina:     +99,796    D

So. Carolina:     +84,030     R

Tennessee:         +81,646    R

Georgia:            +81,406     R

Arizona:            +70,984     R

Idaho:                +28,639     R

Alabama:          +28,609      R

Oklahoma:        +26,791      R

And the figures for the last two data years tell generate nearly exactly same list of population gaining states:

Florida:          +622,476       R

Texas:            +475,252       R

No. Carolina: +211,86        D

Arizona:        +182,362       R

So. Carolina: +165,948       R

Tennessee:    +146,403       R

Georgia:       +128,089       R

Idaho:             +88,647       R

Alabama:        +65,355      R

Oklahoma:     +56,807       R

As mentioned at the beginning, population trends can strongly determine election results. and they do so in two ways – by determining which states get how many seats in the House of Representatives, and votes in the Electoral College. In addition, in most states, the state legisature draws up the specific lines of Congressional districts, and parties are not at all reluctant to use (and sometimes abuse, in a process called gerrymandering) this authority power for partisan advantage. 

So if states in which voters choose Republicans as governors, and GOP majorities in the legislatures, are gaining population at the expense of their Democratic-controlled counterparts, that would seem to turn into ever more Republican victories in both Congressional elections and Presidential contests.

Not that that’s guaranteed. For example, the next House and Electoral College reapportionments won’t take place until the 2030 Census results are in, and clearly lots can happen between now and then. In addition, voters who move from Democratic- to Republican-run states sometimes take Democratic leanings with them – as apparently has been the case in states with strong histories of GOP support that have been popular domestic migration destinations that have swung markedly toward the Democrats. Arizona, Georgia, and Virginia are notable examples. At the same time, these domestic migrants could well be moving from Democratic- to Republican-controlled states because they’ve had it with the way that Democrats have been governing. Florida seem to typify this trend.

Finally, as demonstrated vividly by the latest midterm elections, various factors can foster ticket-splitting by voters.

But even if demography isn’t always political destiny, it’s hard to imagine many Democrats answering the question “Are you pleased that Democratic-run states seem to be losing population to GOP-run states?” with a “Yes.”

Im-Politic: Americans Really Do Seem Split Down the Middle Politically

Tags

Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2014, election 2016, election 2018, election 2020, election 2022, elections, House of Representatives, Im-Politic, incumbents, Republicans

As everyone is supposed to know, the United States has become a 50-50 country politically. As argued by this well known analyst,

“The two parties have been neck and neck since long before this midterm. Despite wild gyrations in the economy, the terrifying rise of antidemocratic politics on the right, and yawning policy differences between Democrats and Republicans, recent national electoral results keep coming in remarkably close, as if decided by a coin toss.”

And for a change, this time the conventional wisdom seems to be right – at least when it comes to elections for the House of Representatives. I just examined the results of these races going back to 2014 (the final election before the advent of what seems to be the ongoing Trump Era in American politics), and the evidence is strong that they keep becoming more competitive.

My yardstick is a margin of victory of five percentage points or fewer. And my sources are the New York Times tabulations. Here are the totals for the last six House political cycles:

2014: 28

2016: 16

2018: 48

2020: 39

2022: 38

Although the sample size is small, there’s a clear inflection point. But what’s a little surprising is that it wasn’t 2016, when Donald Trump shocked the nation, the world, and himself by winning the White House.

Instead, it was 2018 – which could mean that his impact on national politics didn’t start becoming clear until Americans had seen him as President for two years.

The above numbers indicate that this trend crested in 2018, but I’m not at all sure for one big reason: That year saw major (40-seat) gains for the Democrats.

The following two House elections saw much smaller shifts – indeed, these shifts (13- and 7-seat losses for the Democrats, respectively), were in the neighborhood of the 2014 and 2016 results (a 13-seat loss and a six-seat gain for the Democrats). But the number of close races by my criterion was much greater.

Moreover, despite the smaller shift produced by last month’s voting, nearly as many 2022 House races were decided by margins of a single percentage point or less (nine) than in 2018 (ten).

These results are even more surprising given that elections where lots of seats change hands mean that relatively large numbers of incumbents lose. Since all else equal, beating incumbents is difficult, you’d expect more elections during those years to be nail-biters. So a relatively large number of races were extremely close in a year that was pretty good for incumbents further strengthens the “50-50” argument.

The nail-biter count of course isn’t the only lens through which to view House, or any other, elections. Other major influences are the numbers of incumbent retirements and therefore open seats; the effect of presidential popularity and other coattail factors; voter turnout and how it tends to vary between presidential election and non-presidential election years; the overall condition of the country and how it’s perceived; and the importance of local issues in these most local of all national elections.

But even considering these considerations, increasing numbers of close races does seem to be a recent trend. So if you’re a politics junkie, and you think you’ve been staying up ever later on Election Night before knowing the final results or having a pretty good idea of them, it’s not your imagination.

P.S. As of this morning, two House races are still undecided. And they look like nail-biters!

Im-Politic: Abortion Really Did Prevent a Red Wave, Part II

Tags

abortion, Arizona, Associated Press, democracy, Democrats, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, economy, Edison Research, exit polls, Fox News, Im-Politic, inflation, midterm elections, midterms 2022, National Opinion Research Center, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Republicans, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

 As observed on Friday, U.S. midterm elections are really collections of state and local elections. So it’s crucially important to recognize that the exit polls on these races – including in the closely contested swing state races whose outcomes have been vital for determining control of Congress – show just as convincingly as the national poll results that mishandling the abortion issue was a huge mistake for Republicans.

In fact, as I first saw it weeks ago, even though large numbers of variables always influence all such votes, strong GOP support for the Supreme Court’s take-back of national abortion rights and for enacting sweeping bans in its wake, turned out to be a huge enough mistake to explain most of the Republican under-performance in swing states that as of this writing could cost them both the House and Senate.

As with the national level, the evidence for these propositions at the state level (the focus of this post) comes from two leading exit polls. We’ll start with the data from the survey conducted for the Associated Press (AP) and Fox News by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Corporation, mainly because it looked at more individual states than the sounding by Edison Research for other major news networks, and because it contains state-level figures on that odd quirk pointed out in yesterday’s post: the tendency of many more respondents to brand abortion as the single most important factor behind than designated it as the most important issue facing the country.

That distinction – which I still find head-scratching – seems to account for much of the failure of so many pollsters to pick up on the significance of abortion in the weeks and months before Election Day. Opinion researchers evidently assumed that the wide lead over racked up by the economy over abortion when voters were asked about their top concerns would translate into an election completely dominated by economic issues, and therefore big Republican gains. But it didn’t, and the greater-than-expected influence of abortion on the actual voting looks sufficient to have swung the swing states in the Democrats’ favor.

Let’s kick off with Nevada, since incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto’s (typically narrow) win over Republican Paul Laxalt has just assured Democrats continued control of the Senate. When AP/Fox asked voters views on “the most important issue facing the country,” they responded almost identically like the country as a whole, giving “the economy and jobs” a majority (52 percent) and answering abortion just nine percent of the time.

Yet when it came to identifying “the single imost important factor” behind their vote, inflation’s margin over abortion was a much smaller 54 percent to 25 percent.

Moreover, it’s clear that voters motivated mainly by abortion were opposed to the overturning of the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision. In the AP/Fox survey, Nevadans took a “pro-choice” over a “pro-life” stance by a landslide-like 69 percent to 31 percent. And of that 69 percent, nearly half were “angry” about the Roe-overturning Dobbs ruling.

Voters in neighboring Arizona, where another loss helped kill GOP chances of capturing the Senate, gave the AP/Fox pollsters similar answers. They named the economy the country’s most important issue by 45 percent to 15 percent. But they said that their own vote was determined chiefly by inflation over abortion by a slimmer 50 percent to 24 percent count.

In addition, 62 percent of Arizona voters favored legalizing abortion in all or most cases with only 38 percent supporting a ban in all or most instances. And 35 percent of them described their views about the high court’s Dobbs ruling rescinding abortion rights as angry.

But this pattern isn’t simply a Mountain State phenomenon. In Pennsylvania, Republicans thought they had a great chance to hold a Senate seat because of Democratic candidate John Fetterman’s health problems and supposedly far-left views.

There again, a majority (51 percent) of voters said the economy was the country’s most important issue, and only 12 percent named abortion. But inflation beat abortion as a the key vote motivator by just 50 percent to 24 percent.

And in the Keystone State, too, voters supporting legalizing abortion in all or most cases by 65 percent to 35 percent, with those professing to be angry about Roe’s demise totaling 35 percent.

In New Hampshire, Republicans thought they could flip the Senate seat held by incumbent Maggie Hassan. On the “most important issue facing the country” question, they chose the economy over abortion by 50 percent to 13 percent. Yet on the “single most important factor” shaping their vote, that lead shrank to 48 percent for inflation compared with 23 percent for abortion.

In New Hampshire, “pro-choice” views topped “pro-life” views by a yawning 73 percent to 27 percent, and nearly half of all voters (47 percent) declared themselves angry about the Dobbs decision.

The Edison survey, again, didn’t ask the “most important issue facing the country” question in its exit poll. But it, too, found much more prominence given to abortion, and more heated opposition to the strike-down of broad abortion rights, than was apparent from the pre-election surveys.

In Nevada, Edison found that 36 percent of voters named inflation the “most important issue to your vote” – not overwhelmingly ahead of the 28 percent naming abortion. Nevadans backed broad access to abortion by 66 percent to 29 percent, and fully 35 percent were angered by the Dobbs ruling.

According to Edison, Arizonans prioritized inflation over abortion by a slim 36 percent to 32 percent. Broad abortion legality out-polled broad illegality by 63 percent to 35 percent, and those angered by the Supreme Court’s latest abortion decision totaled an impressive 40 percent.

In Pennsylvania, Edison researchers found that abortion actually beat out inflation as voters’ biggest motivator by 37 percent to 28 percent. Pennsylvanians took “pro-choice” positions over “pro-life” positions by a wide 62 percent to 34 percent, and 39 percent expressed anger over the Dobbs ruling.

Finally, in New Hampshire, Edison reported that inflation edged abortion by just 36 percent to 35 percent as the biggest factor behind voter decisions. “Pro-choice” backers exceeded their “pro-life” counterparts by 68 percent to 29 percent, and those angry due to the overturning of Roe vs Wade numbered a considerable 42 percent.

Incidentally, another major surprise in both sets of exit polls was the importance respondents attached to “the future of democracy in this country,” as AP/Fox called it. In nearly all the states examined above, this issue registered in the low- or mid-40 percent range as “the single most important factor” behind individuals’ votes.

But it’s difficult to understand whether Democrats or Republicans benefited on net, because members of both parties have expressed significant but significantly different sets of anxieties about the subject.

The numerous factors influencing midterm election results include national issues, state and local issues, candidate personalities, voter turnout, and changing demographics. Moreover, the lines separating these issues are rarely blindingly bright, or even close.

But the surprisingly great salience showed by abortion issues in the post-election exit polls, in contrast to the findings of pre-election polls, tells me that my hunch about the political impact of the Dobbs decision was well-founded. As was the case with no other issue, its announcement (on June 24) gave the Democrats a mobilizing cause when they had absolutely nothng going for them before. That’s why this gift looks like the single development most responsible for turning the Red Wave into a Red Trickle – at most.

Making News: Back on National Radio Talking Midterms and Trade…& a New Podcast!

Tags

agriculture, Biden, CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor, Congress, Democrats, election 2022, environment, fast track, Federal Reserve, friend-shoring, interest rates, Kevin Brady, labor rights, MAGA Republicans, Making News, manufacturing, midterms 2022, monetary policy, recession, regulation, Republicans, reshoring, taxes, Trade Promotion Authority, U.S. content, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, unions, USMCA

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight to the nationally syndicated “CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor.”  Our subjects: yesterday’s midterm election and how it might affect Washington’s approach to international trade.

I don’t know yet when the pre-recorded segment will be broadcast but John’s show is on between 9 PM and midnight EST, the entire program is always compelling, and you can listen live at links like this. As always, moreover, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

In that podcast vein, the recording is now on-line of yesterday’s interview on the also-nationally syndicated “Market Wrap with Moe Ansari.” The segment, which dealt with what the midterm results (which aren’t all in yet!) will mean for the U.S. economy – and the manufacturing sector in particular. It begins about 22 minutes into the program, and you can listen at this link.

Note: My forecast of significant Republican gains in the House and Senate seems to have been on the over-optimistic side, but of course, many key races remain undecided.

And keep on checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Has Biden Become the Democrats’ Biggest (Though Not A Real Big) Asset?

Tags

2022 election, abortion, Biden, Capitol attack, Capitol riot, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2022, FBI, generic ballot, Im-Politic, January 6, January 6 committee, Mar-a-Lago search, midterms, midterms 2022, Republicans

As next month’s U.S. midterms elections approach, some of the polling results are growing weirder and weirder. Principally, even as the Republicans have recovered virtually all of the lead they lost in the so-called Generic Congress Ballot (which tries to measure which major party voters would like to see control the House and Senate), President Biden’s approval ratings have rebounded pretty impressively. 

These trends (which of course could turn on a dime in this era of frequent bombshell news) are weird because the conventional wisdom holds that presidents’ popularity is an important determinant of how their party fares in the midterms. So all else equal, if Mr. Biden is being looked on more favorably by voters, Democratic candidates for Congress should be benefiting. But they’re not.

In other words, contrary to the signals being sent by so many Democratic politicians this election year (see, e.g., here), the President is far from the biggest problem troubling his party. Indeed, he might now be its biggest asset.  

Specifically, according to the widely followed average of polls compiled by the RealClearPolitics.com website, the GOP edge in the Generic Ballot today stands at 3.3 percentage points. That’s its highest level since June 24, when it was 3.4 percentage points.

Although this shift and these leads may seem small, keep in mind that during Mr. Biden’s term, the results have stayed within a distinctly narrow range. For example, the Democrats’ biggest lead was 6.7 percentage points, registered on June 21, 2021. The Republicans’ biggest lead – 4.8 percentage points – came this past April 28.

As for President Biden, his popularity is still underwater as of today – by 11.6 percentage points. But that’s up considerably from his worst showing – the 20.7 percentage gap reported by RealClearPolitics on July 21.

What I find especially notable are the changes in the Generic Ballot and Biden approval since three events that should have put the Republicans in scalding water: the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the right to an abortion, the beginning of public hearings held by the House of Representatives on the January 6^th Capitol attack, and the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

The abortion decision, which I speculated could seriously harm Republicans politically, was reported thanks to a leak to Politico.com on May 2. On that day, the GOP held a four percentage point Generic Ballot lead, and President Biden’s negatives exceeded his positives by 11 percentage points. As indicated above, the Biden gap doubled over the next two months, but his ratings have regained nearly all that lost ground.

After May 2, the Republicans’ Generic Ballot fortunes worsened so dramatically that the Democrats had built a 1.3 percentage point lead by September 21. Since then, however, these results have flipped markedly, so it seems reasonable to believe that the abortion decision has faded in importance for the midterms, even as Mr. Biden has become more popular.

The same conclusion looks warranted for the January 6^th Committee’s work. On June 9, when it held its first hearing, the Republican lead was 3.4 percentage points (just like its aforementioned June 24 margin), and President Biden’s approval ratings were 15.3 percentage points underwater. But thereafter, of course, both numbers trended in the Democrats’ direction until…they didn’t. On a relative basis, however, recently the President has been outperforming his party’s Congressional candidates.

And with the Mar-a-Lago search having taken place on August 9, the subsequent revelations about Trump’s handling of classified documents reveal a similar polling pattern.

The bottom line here isn’t that the Democrats are doomed to a wipeout next month, or that Mr. Biden has recently turned into Mr. Popularity. Instead, it seems to be that as unenthusiastic about the President voters clearly remain, they like what they see of Democrats in Congress today, and the slate of candidates offered by the party this year, even less.

At the same time, my belief that the abortion decision in particular has hurt the GOP politically isn’t completely dead yet. It’s still possible that it could wind up exacting an opportunity cost on the party’s 2022 performance. That is, even if the Republicans win both the House and Senate, it might still be plausible to contend that their margins might have been even greater had the Court stayed its hand.

But that case can’t be proven until the ultimate poll results come in – on Election Day itself.

Im-Politic: The Myth that Violent American Crime is Mainly a Red State Problem

Tags

cities, crime, data, Democrats, election 2022, GOP, Im-Politic, midterms, murders, Republicans, statistics, Third Way

If you’ve been following the national debate about crime during this midterm election year, you’ve probably read one of the Democrats’ main efforts to deny responsibility for surging numbers of murders and other violent lawlessness in particular, and indeed to pin the blame on Republicans. That’s the finding that the vast majority of states in which the murder problem is worst have long been dominated politically by the GOP.

Trouble is, it’s a claim that’s as false as it’s easily demolished – for the simple reason that most U.S. states are pretty big and, above all, diverse political units, and that crime rates can vary dramatically among them. And that’s precisely what was accidentally overlooked or politically ignored by researchers at Third Way, “a national think tank that champions modern center-left ideas” along with the Democrats’ defenders throughout the Mainstream Media (see, e.g., here and here).

Specifically, when authors Kylie Murdock and Jim Kessler argued that “8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century,” what they didn’t mention is that in most of these states, the numbers are high mainly because of pervasive violence in cities with Democratic mayors.

For 2020, the year emphasized in the Third Way report, that case doesn’t hold for South Carolina, and it’s weak for Arkansas (although interestingly, Democratic-led Little Rock, the state’s capital and biggest city, accounted for 18.18 percent of Arkansas’ murders despite containing only 6.57 of its inhabitants). And there’s not enough detailed data for Alabama to make judgements either way. But according to the official data I’ve combed through from the U.S. Census (for population), the FBI (for numbers of state murders), and various state governments (for numbers of city murders), it emphatically does hold for:

>Mississippi. It sits atop Third Way’s list of murder leaders, but would surely be much further down if not for Jackson. Despite containing only 5.49 percent of Mississippi’s population in 2020, its Democratic-led capital city accounted for 61.32 percent of its murders.

>Louisana. The Bayou State is second on Third Way’s list, but murders in Democratic-run New Orleans represented 28.98 percent of its 2020 murders, even though the Crescent City’s population was only 6.73 percent of the 2020 state total. Moreover, Louisiana’s second-biggest city, state capital Baton Rouge, is also headed by a Democratic mayor, and suffered 14.35 percent of the state’s 2020 murders, despite accounting for just 4.76 percent of all Louisianans.

All told, these 43.33 percent of Louisiana’s murders in 2020 took place in these two Democratic cities, which only accounted for 11.50 percent of the state’s population.

>Kentucky. Ranking third on Third Way’s list, the Bluegrass State’s murder totals have obviously been boosted by Democratic Louisville. The city was home to 13.87 percent of Kentucky-ans in 2020, yet was responsible for 55.99 percent of its murders that year.

>Missouri. The fourth state on Third Way’s list is another state whose murder totals have been distorted by two Democratc-led cities. St. Louis and Kansas City combined represented 11.82 percent of all Missourians in 2020, but 58.73 percent of the state’s murders that year took place within their limits.

>Tennessee. The Volunteer State, tenth on Third Way’s list, also contains two Democratic-run cities with outsized murder totals. Memphis and Nashville held 20.05 percent of the state’s population in 2020, but were the sites of 60.48 percent of their murders that year.

It’s true that big city totals also account for disproportionate shares of murders in many Democratic-run states. For example, in 2020, New York City contained 42.95 percent of all New York State’s 2020 residents. But the City experienced 57.82 percent of the state’s murders that year. (The gap widens further when you add in Democratic-led Buffalo, the state’s second largest city.)

More extreme is the situation in Illinois, where in 2020 Chicago was home to 21.22 percent of the Illinois-ans, but was the scene of 74.78 percent of the state’s murders.

But the obvious conclusion here isn’t the one drawn by Third Way – that Republican states have at least as big a violent crime problem as Democratic states. The obvious conclusion is that the nation’s crime problem is heavily concentrated in big cities, which are run by Democrats whether they’re in Red states or Blue states.

With the midterm elections just a few weeks away, the good news here is that voters seem to understand this reality, as they’ve consistently been giving Republicans higher marks on handling the crime issue than Democrats (see, e.g., here and here for two recent examples). Can Democrats turn this situation around? Time of course is running short. But their chances will be especially dim if they keep trying to blame-shift rather than offering credible solutions to violent crime.

Im-Politic: Welcome Polling News for Immigration Realism

Tags

Biden border crisis, Center for Immigration Studies, Democrats, Gallup, Im-Politic, Immigration, independents, polls, public opinion, Republicans, YouGov

Two sets of poll results sure don’t make a trend. But they’re sure more convincing than one set of poll results. So recent surveys from Gallup and YouGov could signal an encouraging turning point in U.S. public opinion on immigration issues – and one brought about by the epic failure of the Biden administration’s Open Borders-friendly statements and actions.

Gallup’s findings were posted on August 8. The headline development? The share of American adults contacted between July 5 and 26 believing that immigration levels should be decreased stood at 38 percent. That’s the highest level since June, 2016 and up from 31 percent last June. Moreover, the annual percentage- point increase was the biggest since 2008 and 2009 – when the economy was mired in the Great Recession that followed the global financial crisis.

The share of respondents who wanted immigration levels to be decreased or remain the same (69 percent) was also the highest since June, 2016 (72 percent) and up from 66 percent last year.

By an overwhelming 70 percent to 24 percent, Gallup found that Americans agree that “on the whole” immigration is a “good thing” rather than a “bad thing.” But even though this question seems to focus on immigration views in the abstract, with no relation to current conditions, the “good thing” share of responses fell from 75 percent last year, and the “bad thing” responses rose from 21 percent.

In addition, the “good thing” responses represented the lowest percentage of the total since 2014 (63 percent) and the “bad thing” responses the highest since 2016. And the 46 percentage-point margin enjoyed by the “good thing” responses is a drop from last year’s 54 percentage points and the smallest since 2014’s 30 percentage points.

Also striking in the Gallup results: It’s no surprise that the 69 percent of respondents identifying as Republican wanting less immigration is by far the highest total since Gallup began asking these questions (surpassing 2009’s 61 percent). It’s also no great surprise that independent identifiers agreeing with this stance has rebounded lately a bit to 33 percent (though still far below its high of 51 percent in 2002.

But it’s really surprising, especially given their loathing of immigration restrictionist Donald Trump and the growing influence of progessives in the party, that the share of Democratic identifiers supporting less immigration is up from 12 percent last year to 17 percent this year.

The YouGov survey was conducted in late July, and reported that by a 35 percent to 31 percent margin, Americans believed that immigration “makes the country” “worse off” instead of “better off.” According to Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, that’s a huge turnabout from what the same outfit found in September, 2019. Then, “better off” won by 43 percent to 19 percent.

At the same time, this latest YouGov survey found that 31 percent of Americans support increasing legal immigration versus 22 percent who want it reduced. Gallup didn’t draw the (critical) legal/illegal distinction. I don’t know how these results have changed over time. But the sheer size of the discrepancy indicates that even if American opinions are moving their way, it’s still far from certain that restrictionists (who I of course consider to be the adults in the room) have won the day.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Demonization and Double Standards on Gas Prices

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Biden, demand, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, energy, gas prices, inflation, oil, oil prices, sanctions, supply, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, {What's Left of) Our Economy

According to the reasoning of President Biden, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and many other Democrats and progressives, Vladimir Putin, or Big Oil, or American gas station owners, or some combination of those three, have been getting nicer or less greedy and/or more patriotic (when speaking of the domestic actors). What’s the evidence? The average price of a gallon of gasoline in Anerica has fallen during this period.

After all, the President and his fellow Democrats have been saying since at least mid-spring March that prices at the pump had been soaring because the Russian dictator’s invasion of Ukraine (and resulting sanctions) has pushed up world oil prices, because the world’s oil companies have been earning “windfall profits,” and because U.S. gas station owners have been (unpatriotically) price-gouging.

Since mid-June, though, as Mr. Biden has just noted, gas prices are down. So the above culprits must have become less villainous. In fact, since several authoritative sources track these prices, it’s possible, depending on which one is considered most trustworthy, to know exactly how much less villainous.

Specifically, according to the GasBuddy.com website, national average pump prices are down 6.87 percent over the last month. So clearly, Putin, Big Oil, and gas station owners have collectively become 6.87 percent less heinous and/or avaricious and, in the case of U.S.-owned oil companies and the gas station owners, less unpatriotic.

The widely followed Lundberg survey says regular grade gasoline has become 4.14 percent cheaper during this period – so the Democrats’ culprits in its view haven’t become quite so benign.

They look better in Triple A’s eyes, though, since that organization calculates that pump prices are off by 6.74 percent.

Of course, the above analysis is the most childish and even self-serving form of nonsense. Gas prices, like prices of practically everything, depend on numerous interacting factors having nothing to do with foreign strongmen or corporate iniquity. World oil prices are the biggest single determinant, but these in turn are affected by national and global demand, which in turn results from the overall state of the economy, which in turn can be strengthened or weakened by fiscal policy (e.g., stimulus bills) and monetary policy (e.g., interest rates). Don’t, however, forget refining and pipeline availability, and even weather (as in bad hurricane seasons shutting down oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico in particular).

Complicating matters further, these and other oil price determinants don’t affect retail gas prices all at once, as they understandably take varying amounts of time to work their way through a lengthy production and distribution system. Meanwhile, future supplies depend on private investors examining this multi-faceted and highly fluid landscape to judge whether committing capital to the oil industry is their best bet for maximum returns. And these calculations are inevitably highly uncertain given that any payoffs will inevitably be years off.

So it’s indeed childish to ignore the complicated and constantly interacting dynamics of an enormous industry that at bottom needs to keep wrestling with inevitably fluctuating supply and demand conditions. And it’s self-serving because for years the President and his party have clearly worked hard to reduce the role played by a fossil fuel like oil in the U.S. energy picture.

If you doubt that self-serving claim in particular, or any of the above analysis, ask yourself this: Are these oil industry critics remotely as likely to start praising the producers and the gas station owners (or Putin) for reducing prices as they’ve been to slam them for the price increases?

Following Up: Still No Signs That Abortion, Guns — or January 6th — Are Democratic Midterms Lifesavers

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abortion, Biden, Buffalo shooting, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Following Up, gun control, January 6 committee, mass shootings, midterms 2022, polls, RealClearPolitics.com, Republicans, Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Uvalde shooting

Since early May, American politics has been rocked by the kinds of major shocks that I can’t recall coming so fast and furiously since at least the Nixon impeachment summer of 1974, and maybe since the spring of 1968 — when the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive led to Lyndon Johnson’s withdrawal from that year’s presidential race,and was followed by the assassinations of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King and New York Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy (for starters).

The last two months of this year alone have been marked by the leaked draft and final release of the Supreme Court ruling that ended nearly fifty years of a national right to an abortion, two appalling mass shootings (one racially motivated in Buffalo, New York, and one of school children in Uvalde, Texas), and televised Congressional hearings that have bombarded the nation with reminders of both the disgraceful January 6^th Capitol attack and former President Donald Trump’s reckless behavior that day.

On net, these developments would seem to damage Republicans’ chances of an midterms election landslide of epic proportions this November. As I’ve noted, even though the abortion developments could motivate heavily Republican anti-choice voters, too, the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision at least gave Democrats one reason for optimism where none could plausibly be detected – because everything we know about public opinion tells us that Americans decisively favor keeping Roe. (The same arguments hold for mass shootings, IMO, as do poll results on gun control).

But at the end of May, I reported the absence of polling evidence that the guns and abortion issues were turning the tide. Now, a month later, they — along with the January 6th Committee hearings — still haven’t shown any midterms lifesaving potential for the Democrats. In fact, some survey measures suggest that the Republican position has strengthened somewhat.

As often, my sources are the averages of poll results compiled and updated on an ongoing basis by RealClearPolitics.com. Let’s start with an important indicator of midterm outcomes – presidential popularity.

The Politico.com scoop on the Supreme Court abortion draft leak appeared the evening of May 2, so May 3 seems like the baseline to use for measuring how the aforementioned news shocks have changed midterms prospects.

On May 3, according to the RealClearPolitics average, President Biden was underwater in terms of job approval ratings by 10.5 percentage points. As of today, the share of Americans admiring his performance in the White House stood at 38.4 percent and the share giving him thumbs downs was 56.9 percent. So his net negatives have nearly doubled, to 18.5 percentage points. In addition, that gap is only slightly narrower than the record 19.5 percentage points registered just yesterday.

And worse for the President, and his party: His popularity has deteriorated both because his approval ratings are as of today (38.4 percent) just off their all-time low and the disapproval numbers (56.9 percent) are just shy of their all-time high (both also set yesterday).

Pollsters also offer respondents a “generic Congressional ballot” – asking them whether they’d be likelier to cast ballots for Democratic or Republican candidates for House and Senate whoever the specific candidates on their ballots are. Although it deals with the elections that will actually determine which party winds up with majorities on both ends of Capitol Hill, its readings need to be viewed with caution because Congressional elections aren’t national but state-by-state and district-by-district. In fact, because of the Constitution’s approach to apportioning Senate and House seats, Republicans enjoy a built-in edge here, meaning that at least when it comes to the generic ballot, Democrats need to be winning by several percentage points to justify election day optimism.

According to RealClearPolitics, they’ve made some progress since May 3, but still have a ways to go.

The day after the Supreme Court leak, Republicans led the Dems by this measure by 4.1 percentage points. By May 29, that margin had shrunk all the way down to 1.5 percentage points. But as of today, though, it’s back up to 2.2 percentage points, and has remained stable overall since June 5.

Finally, and perhaps most discouraging for the Democrats given their efforts to portray most Republicans as backers of an extremist, Trump-y “ultra MAGA” agenda, the former President continues to lead Mr. Biden in polls asking about a head-to-head match-up in 2024. The website doesn’t post averages over time – just a single average figure that shows a Trump lead of 1.8 percentage points as of today.

Changes revealed in individual surveys can be interpreted as either favorable or unfavorable to President Biden depending on your baseline starting date. Specifically, in late April (just before the Politico leak), two polls showed him leading his predecessor by one and two percentage points. So since then, the President has lost ground. But a mid-May survey reported a three percentage point Trump lead. So since then, Mr. Biden has gained ground, though he’s still behind.

What does seem fair to say, though, is that no polls report any burgeoning public disenchantment with Trump since recent events that can credibly be argued have placed him, his views on gun control, and the Supreme Court Justices he appointed, in more negative lights. And revealingly, the latest set of Biden-Trump election results, in this Emerson (Massachusetts) College survey, showed Trump with his biggest edge (five percentage points) since late March – even though it was conducted the day of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive anti-Trump testimony before the January 6^th Committee, and the day after.

All of these trends could easily reverse themselves in the months remaining before November – if only because more politically charged shocks could easily be in store. In addition, voters’ views on the recent shocks could grow more intense and likelier to influence their voting. (Here’s some new evidence for that proposition.)

But what seems most striking to me at this point is how stable the polls have been despite the recent string of arguably pro-Democratic bombshells – and consequently how dim their November prospects remain.