Im-Politic: More Evidence That it Really is a Biden Border Crisis

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Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden, Biden administration, Biden border crisis, Central America, El Salvador, Gallup, Guatemala, Honduras, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mexico, migrants, migration, Northern Triangle, polling

If there’s something that “everybody knows” about the floods of Latin Americans who keep trying to migrate to the United States, legally and not, it’s that they’re acting out of desperation because their countries are such terrible places to live. As stated just this morning by Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, in the wake of news that 53 migrants found dead in the back of a sweltering tractor trailor that had snuck them across the U.S.-Mexico border paid the ultimate price for risking the dangerous journey northward:

“The migration that is occurring throughout the hemisphere is reflective of the economic downturn, increase in violence throughout the region, the — the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the results of climate change.”

Surely the perils that have long faced Latin Americans (and many others) seeking new lives in America have been grave, and the living conditions (and physical dangers) in their home countries have often been appalling.

But what, then, is the explanation for four straight years of polling data from Gallup that consistently show the populations of some of the leading sending countries to be among the happiest on earth?

Recently, through an annual series of Global Emotions Reports, Gallup has tried to measure “positive and negative experiences” in most of the world’s countries to determine their people’s “day-to-day emotional states – such as enjoyment, stress, or anger – as well as their satisfaction with their lives.” Countries are then scored on a scale of 100, with the highest marks indicating where people by an average of these measures are happiest. (See here and here for these descriptions.) 

So it’s more than a little interesting that for most of the last four years (through 2021), the world’s happiest countries have included El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Because, after all, the first three comprise Central America’s “Northern Triangle,” and collectively become the source of the largest number of immigrants arrested at the U.S.’ southern border as of fiscal year 2021. The latter remains the country that’s generated the most arrestees of any individual country. Here are the annual results from Gallup, including their score on that 100 scale and their global ranking.  (For links to the downloadable 2018-2020 reports and the 2021 report, see here.)  

                                    2018              2019            2020            2021

Guatemala                 3d (84)         2d (84)     not surveyed       n/a

Honduras                   4^th (83)         5^th (81)     not surveyed   3d (82)

El Salvador                4^th (83)         2d (84)        1^st (82)         3d (82)

Mexico                      3d (84)          4^th (82)           n/a               n/a

As is clear, Honduras and El Salvador have been among the top five happiest countries for three of these four years. Mexico and Guatemala made this list in 2018 and 2019.

Unfortunately, when it comes to 2020, Guatemala and Honduras were not surveyed. And because Gallup hasn’t provided the scores and rankings for every country it’s studied, no results were available for Mexico in 2020 and 2021, and for Guatemala in 2021.

But as Gallup noted in 2020, “While several of the countries that usually top the list every year, including Panama, Honduras and Guatemala, were not surveyed in 2020, the region is still well represented on the Positive Experience Index. El Salvador leads the world with an index score of 82.” So it sounds like the pollsters believe that countries for which data is missing or not reported stayed pretty happy.

Also striking – the happiness scores of these four major sending countries were not only among the world’s highest. They were way above the global averages, which respectively were 71, 71, 71, and 69.

Polls, as I’ve repeatedly said, are by no means perfect, and polling in developing countries can be especially tricky because inhabitants often do live in dangerous environments where even the authorities (and often especially the authorities) can’t be trusted.

But these Gallup results are consistent over several years. And they are so at odds with the conventional wisdom about the deep-seated socio-economic reasons for hemispheric migration that they seem to add to the evidence that the recent surge stems less from changes in those root causes — or perhaps from these root causes at all (as opposed to seeking improvement, not survival or freedom) — and more from the more permissive immigation measures and rhetoric emanating from the current U.S. administration from Day One. That is, the recent situation really is a “Biden border crisis.”

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Utterly Incoherent Polling on Ukraine

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Biden administration, fake news, journalism, NATO, No-Fly Zone, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, polling, polls, Reuters/Ipsos, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war

Just when you think American polling can get any weirder, along comes another survey that proves me wrong.

It was a mere week ago that I called attention to surveys by Gallup and by the team-up of the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center whose questions were so mindless that they were absolutely incapable of determining Americans’ actual views on various U.S. options in the Ukraine-Russia war – and especially on the potentially (and literally) national-life-or-death matter of involving the American military in efforts to counter the Russian invasion.

Just six days later, a survey from the Reuters news agency and the Ipsos company veered deeper into cluelessness than I’ve thought possible – and deeper than I’d ever anticipated even for polling on foreign policy.

I single out the latter category throughout the decades that I’ve followed them, these surveys have routinely failed to pose questions that suggest in any way that various measures could create major costs and risks for American security and prosperity. And as made clear here and here, this incompetence can be particularly misleading and dangerous when it comes to U.S. moves that could engulf the country in a nuclear war. (Here’s one conspicuous exception.)

But yesterday’s Reuters/Ipsos poll went one big step further. Its most attention-getting result was that 74 percent of U.S. adults believe that “The United States and NATO should impose a ‘no fly zone’ above Ukraine.”

As widely recognized, a no-fly zone could well generate direct combat between the United States and Russia, and all too easily lead one or both countries to fire nuclear weapons at the other’s homeland. That’s because “imposing” the zone means sending American military aircraft into the skies over Ukraine to prevent their Russian counterparts from attacking targets in the invaded country – ranging in principle from convoys of Western military aid to fleeing refugees to Ukrainian civilian and even military targets. Maybe the Russians would keep their aircraft on the ground. And maybe they wouldn’t.

Thank goodness that the Biden administration and the NATO leadership realize how potentially suicidal that policy could be.

According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, though, nearly three-quarters of Americans disagree. That’s of course their inalienable right. But as with the previously cited findings along these lines, this response needs to be questioned because those surveyed were never told of the possible and possibly catastrophic consequences.

How do I know this? Because the Reuters reporter who wrote separately about the results actually admitted this whopping shortcoming. In the words of correspondent Jason Lange, “It was not clear if respondents who supported a no-fly zone were fully aware of the risk of conflict….” Which inevitably raises the questions “Why the heck didn’t the question mention this point,” and “Why the heck did the pollsters think that the query was worth posing in this kind of vacuum?” And if Lange (and his Reuters colleagues) knew something that Ipsos didn’t, why the heck didn’t they bring up the point before publication?

No one in their right mind would ever take seriously a book or an article or a broadcast or any piece of information accompanied by the acknowledgement, “Some of what you’re about to read or hear is worthless.” But that’s exactly what Reuters and Ipsos have in effect done.

Even more off-the-wall:  When the same survey asked respondents their views about banning energy imports from Russia, the pollsters included “even if it causes American gas prices to increase.” (For the record, 80 percent agreed and 20 percent disagreed.) Why did Reuters and Ipsos believe it was important to tell respondents that a certain policy could make it more expensive to drive their vehicles, but not that another policy could turn the entire county into glowing heaps of rubble?

So it looks like the Reuters/Ipsos poll has taken American journalism and polling a big step beyond (beneath? alongside?) Fake News.  It’s the first example I can recall of Utterly Incoherent News.  We can only hope that it doesn’t become just as commonplace.      

 

Im-Politic: The Public and the Protests

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African Americans, Associated Press, Democrats, election 2020, George Floyd, Im-Politic, National Opinion Research Center, NORC, police brutality, politics, polling, polls, pollsters, protests, racism, Republicans, Trump, University of Chicago

Here at RealityChek I try to focus on polls only that come up with unusually interesting results,, but even by that lofty standard, this new survey from the Associated Press-NORC [National Opinion Research Center] for Public Affairs Research (the latter affiliated with the University of Chicago) is unusually interesting. And for more than one reason.

First and maybe foremost, is the methodological note that came at the end: “[B]lack adults were sampled at a higher rate than their proportion of the population for reasons of analysis.” You don’t have to know much about polling to ask legitimately “What the heck is that about?”

After all, if you’re looking to find out what Americans (or any group) think about this or that subject, you need to ask a sample of that population that’s representative. In this case, sampling African Americans at a higher-than-justified rate is bound to produce results that permit African-American answers to distort the findings in the direction of African-American opinion. And given African Americans’ overwhelming preference for Democrats and (as far as we know) overwhelming opposition to President Trump, this practice is also bound to produce results that skew markedly pro-Democrat and anti-Trump.

Second, even with this “pro-African-American” bias, the survey shows that although a majority of Americans “approve…of the recent protests against police violence in response to [George] Floyd’s death,” the majority isn’t that big. Overall approval is only 54 percent (and again, this finding is thrown off by the aforementioned methology) and “strong approval” was expressed by only 21 percent.

Black Americans’ backing was much stronger: 81 percent overall, with 71 percent strongly approving.

Third, Americans as a whole aren’t buying the notion that the recent protests have been all or mostly peaceful. Indeed, only 27 percent agree with those characterizations combined. Moreover, a slim majority (51 percent) favored the description “both peaceful and violent” and fully 22 percent regarded tham as all or mostly violent.”

And again, the numbers tilting toward emphasizing the violence seen during the protests have probably been depressed by the pro-African-American and therefore pro-Democratic skew of the sample. Nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats called the protests all or mostly peaceful. At the same time, 42 percent of them viewed the protests as “both peaceful and violent.”

Fourth, no racially broken down results were provided for the violence question, but they were presented for the results judging “law enforcement’s response.” In this case, the U.S. public as a whole chose “appropriate response” over “excessive force” by 55 percent to 44 percent. But 70 percent of black Americans believed the police et al used too much force – which surely propped up the 44 percent figure reported for Americans as a whole.

Finally, don’t conclude from the above results that this survey offers much good news for President Trump and his supporters and the relatively hardline approach they’ve favored for handling the protests. As the Associated Press and NORC put it: “Over half of all Americans say his response made things worse and just 12% say it made things better. While there are racial differences, about half of both white Americans (51%) and black Americans (72%) feel that the president’s response made things worse. ”

And in this case, the bizarre sample used by the Associated Press and NORC can’t come close to explaining these underwater Trump ratings. The most positive pro-Trump spin that makes any sense is that although there’s major overall public support for the President’s positions and the actions that logically follow, he’s getting almost no credit for advocating them.

Following Up: Why Many of America’s Widest Divides Aren’t What You Think

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college-educated, Democrats, education, Following Up, Gallup, healthcare, inequality, minorities, non-college, opportunity, partisanship, polling, polls, race relations, Republicans, whites

“An anxious and divided nation cast its first votes,” the headline in the Washington Post moaned this morning.

As yesterday’s RealityChek post reported, though, some impressive evidence came out last week showing that the nation isn’t all that anxious, or fatally divided in the most general terms, after all. At the same time, diving into that evidence’s internals shows no shortage of divisions – only many of the dividing lines are pretty surprising.  (See the PDF linked at the bottom where it says “View complete question responses and trends.”)

For not only is the most important division by far the partisan split between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a gap that tends to be considerably wider than those between groups where divides in the last few years are supposed to have been especially and worrisomely gaping – between blacks and whites, between rich and poor, between the better educated and the less well educated.

For me, the big takeaway is that when Americans are in political moods, they get carried away by their emotions, with Republicans feeling awfully chipper about the state of the nation, and Democrats correspondingly gloomy. When they’re not preoccupied with politics, Americans seem more level-headed – and their outlooks are sunnier. But the unexpected findings scarcely stop there!

For example, let’s look at the internals of the headline satisfaction finding, which shows Americans’ feelings about the quality of their lives. A lofty 84 percent of all Americans told Gallup that they’re satisfied on this score, and 37 percent said they were “very satisfied.”

Republicans were the most satisfied Americans by a wide margin – an astonishing 96 percent called themselves satisfied, and 60 percent considered themselves “very satisfied.” The least satisfied group? Democrats. Their satisfaction levels were 77 percent satisfied and only 25 percent very satisfied.

But here’s what really grabbed my attention – and should grab yours. Keep in mind that the various groups of respondents overlap considerably (for example, both Democrats and Republicans include the wealthy and the poor, and the college-educated and the high school grads; and the both the wealthy and the poor include those identifying with both political parties).

The Democrats’ satisfaction levels were lower than those for non-whites (79 percent) and for Americans with a high school education or less (84 percent). That doesn’t sound very consistent with the notion that non-whites and those with relatively modest education levels are feeling especially downtrodden lately. But these readings definitely point to special degrees of unhappiness among Democrats. So does the fact that the “very satisfied” results for both these groups (31 percent and 34 percent, respectively) topped those for Democrats as well.

The partisan divide is even bigger, in both absolute and relative terms, for satisfaction levels regarding whether working hard can get a person ahead in America these days. In toto, 72 percent of respondents were satisfied and 43 percent were very satisfied with this situation. Non-whites’ overall satisfaction and very satisfied levels weren’t too far off those figures (71 percent and 37 percent, respectively). And the figures for those holding a high school degree at most were notably higher (77 percent and 51 percent, respectively).

But the Democrats’ results were completely in the dumps (only 47 percent and 19 percent, respectively).

Also interesting – non-whites, and Americans lacking college degrees are all more convinced than the college grads (68 percent) about the payoff of working hard, with respondents with a high school degree or less expressing the highest (77 percent) satisfaction level.

Satisfaction levels are much lower in absolute terms (43 percent overall) over the distribution of income and wealth in America – which should surprise no one. But again, those lacking a high school degree were more satisfied, and by a wide margin (49 percent), while the least satisfied (also by a wide margin) were the Democrats (21 percent).

The least educated were also more satisfied with the current rich-poor gap than college graduates (40 percent). But on this issue, non-white satisfaction levels were lower than the average (38 percent).

Gallup respondents were even less satisfied with the availability of healthcare in the United States, with only 37 percent expressing such views. Yet a familiar pattern emerges from the internals. The biggest gap was between Republicans (53 percent satisfied) and Democrats (27 percent). These also represented the highest and lowest levels of all the groups examined.

In addition, non-whites (41 percent) were more satisfied than whites the overall total (37 percent), and much more satisfied not only than the Democrats but than college grads (31 percent). The same held for Americans without high school diplomas (also 41 percent satisfied).

Finally, let’s look at a particularly explosive issue – race relations. Or at least it’s supposed to be particularly explosive. But according to the Gallup survey, there’s much more dissatisfaction than polarization – except among Democrats and Republicans.

Overall satisfaction levels are low – coming in at 36 percent. But the widest gap by far is between followers of the two parties, with 51 percent of Republican identifiers declaring themselves to be satisfied compared with only 24 percent of their Democratic counterparts. (Actually, Gallup also measured satisfaction levels according to political ideology – liberals, moderates, and conservatives. I’ve left these findings out due to the assumption because these results closely track the political parties’ results – which include independent voters. But according to this gauge, the conservative-liberal gap is somewhat wider, at 52 percent-17 percent.)

Most significantly, this partisan divide is far wider than the racial divide, with 35 percent of whites expressing satisfaction with the state of race relations and 39 percent of nonwhites so stating. Also doubtless significant: The next-least-satisfied group is college graduates, of whom only 28 percent expressed satisfaction. Further, their “very satisfied” levels (3 percent) were by far the lowest along with the Democrats’. And they were only one-third the nine percent “very satisfied” levels of non-whites.

Is the country indeed anxious?  To some extent, sure.  Is it divided?  That’s where the answer gets especially complicated.  And this complex picture indicates that, especially in this presidential campaign year, all Americans should beware of pundits and others bearing sweeping generalizations. 

Im-Politic: A Moral Quandary Surrounding American Morals?

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abortion, Gallup, gay marriage, Im-Politic, marijuana, moderates, morals, polling, public opinion, social conservatives, social liberals, Trump, values

This’ll be one of those posts where I confess I just don’t know what the heck is going on. But the info seems so compelling – and possibly contradictory – that it can’t be ignored.

The first half of the puzzle comes from Gallup’s new finding that a large (81 percent) of Americans judge the country’s moral values to be “only fair” or “poor,” and that 77 percent believe that this problem is getting worse. Although I know there will be many who are tempted to respond with something to the effect of “Ah, Trump,” keep in mind that these numbers haven’t changed dramatically since the company began asking such questions in 2002. (Somewhat greater shifts – for the worse – are evident since the early 1990s, when Gallup’s questions were somewhat differently worded.)

Another intriguing result: More than a third of respondents rated the state of U.S. morality as “fair” – which isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, combining the 36 percent of Americans taking this view with the (dwindling) share who view it as “excellent/good” (17 percent) sums to a majority that’s arguably pleased with the nation’s ethics. And these sub-categories (called “internals” by polling insiders) have remained broadly stable over the last decade and a half as well.

Less intriguing: Over the last year, self-identified social liberals have become much more concerned about America’s morals, with the share perceiving a worsening spurting from 58 percent to 71 percent. Social moderates became markedly more pessimistic, too, and that definitely looks like a Trump effect. So does the less dramatic drop in the share of those considering themselves as social conservatives telling Gallup that moral decay intensified during that time.

But here’s where the real mystery comes in. Another Gallup survey, taken just a few weeks ago, reported “Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues”. Give the company credit: It’s recognized the apparent paradox: “Even liberals, who seemingly should be pleased with the growing number of Americans who agree with their point of view on the morality of prominent social issues, are more likely to say things are getting worse than getting better.”

Gallup offers two possible explanations, but I don’t find them especially convincing. The first, after all, assumes (at least logically) that social liberals believe that many Americans who have swung their way on gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, and the like are still insensitive (at best) toward racism and poverty. Or even have become more so. The second assumes that liberals believe that these same, increasingly tolerant Americans keep displaying “lack of respect or tolerance for others,” or are getting even coarser.

Nor am I persuaded by another possible explanation that could well be proposed by social conservatives: that although they increasingly support more liberal moral positions and views, deep down inside, liberals and moderates recognize them as dangerous and therefore perceive American morals to be declining.

So I’m left in the dark, but certain something important is taking place within the national psyche. What do all of you think?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Where the Experts are Blowing it Again

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foreign policy, grand strategy, interventionism, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, polling, public opinion, responsibilities

It’s long been clear to me that Main Street Americans have much better instincts than their country’s bipartisan foreign policy elites about what goals U.S. foreign policy should be seeking. The main reason seems to be that, even though few of the hoi polloi can name the leaders of many countries or even find these lands on maps, unlike the specialists they recognize intuitively that the United States is an fundamentally, even existentially, secure country.

In other words, the mass public isn’t big on the details, but understands the big strategic picture – that their country is separated from the greatest actual or potential military threats by thousands of miles of ocean, is richly endowed with all manner of economic resources, and that these priceless advantages should be fully exploited and maximized, not ignored or squandered.

The elites have the big picture completely wrong. They’ve mastered many details, but mistakenly believe that the United States is a fundamentally weak, insecure country, acutely sensitive to all manner of overseas troubles, and heavily and inevitably dependent on global prosperity for its own well-being.

The gap between the public’s bedrock foreign policy confidence and the elite’s state of constant alarmism was just illustrated once again by a new POLITICO poll of voters in so-called election battleground states. Consistent with a pretty longstanding pattern, solid majorities oppose more U.S. ”involvement” (the form wasn’t specified) in today’s hot spots, and in several cases, pluralities oppose even the current, modest level of involvement. (One key qualification – the poll predated the downing of the Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine.)

More surprising, and much more heartening, was respondents’ emphatic rejection of the claim that “As the world’s moral leader, the U.S. has a responsibility to use its military to protect democracy around the globe.” Only 22 percent agreed, versus 67 percent endorsing the view that “U.S. military actions should be limited to direct threats to our national security.”

These results are heartening because they signal strong public opposition to a basis for foreign policymaking strongly endorsed by liberal and conservative elites alike, but with almost no potential to produce either a sensible list of national foreign policy objectives and even less potential to foster the national consensus needed to pursue such goals successfully.

Here’s why: In my post of June 5 I argued (pretty cogently, I think!) that basing foreign policy on a concept of national interest (i.e., “selfish” considerations) was vastly superior to basing it on moral considerations. One of my main reasons: However difficult it always is to generate widespread agreement on policies that will make America safer, freer, or wealthier, it’s bound to be easier than generating agreement on policies that reflect the better angels of nature. Concrete policy benefits, costs, and risks, after all, are possible to measure with reasonably objective indicators. Granted, Americans broadly agree on many fundamental moral precepts. (It’s hard to imagine our society cohering at all if we didn’t.) But inherently subjective definitions of morality become even more subjective when applied to policy issues – and, I’d venture, international policy issues.

Basing U.S. foreign policy on a definition of America’s international responsibilities will undoubtedly be even more difficult. To start, such responsibilities can’t logically be identical with a definition of U.S. interests, since responsibilities are obligations individuals or collectives are supposed to assume apart from their interests. If the two were substantially identical, why would anyone bother spelling out responsibilities? So we’ve just reentered the realm of the highly, and maybe impossibly, subjective.

A further complication: Individuals and collectives can surely take responsibilities on themselves, and often do. But definitions of responsibilities can often include the expectations of others. That would seem to add yet another layer of fiendish complexity. Even more vexing, the expectations of other countries, in particular, can be self-serving at best and at worst contrary to U.S. interests.

None of this is to say that ideas regarding America’s international responsibilities – whether originating domestically, abroad, or some combination of the two – should never influence U.S. foreign policy, just as I would never insist that moral considerations be outright banned from foreign policymaking. A sovereign people by definition have every right to make such choices.

But if you agree with me that America is existentially secure and prosperous, you’ll join with me in thanking the nation’s lucky stars that its representative form of government creates a strong check on the misguided, gratuitously interventionist impulses of our supposed foreign policy experts — and therefore on the leaders they unfortunately still influence.