u.s. politics: is this purity test covered under my obamacare?

[Zorral]

6 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Unfortunately this is overstating things.  Quinnipiac had him at 33% in their latest poll, but that is the worst result for him in the past couple of months.  His polling average on 538 is 37%, with a net of -20.  Which is still terrible, but there's actually a pretty big difference between 37% and 33%, since he's already in the single digits with Democrats and the mid-20s with independents.  Dropping another 4% nationally more or less has to come from Republicans (or at the least, Republican leaning independents), and losing that many people from either group isn't easy for a Republican President to do. 

It happened to dub.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 

34 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

EDIT: Oh yeah, in any case, this article seems way premature. If Trump can lose 10-15 points in 6 months, including among the most extreme voters, who knows what can happen in another year.

 Agreed. This guy clearly breaks the mold.Has there ever been a more incompetent President?   

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Here's a good sobering article on why the polling numbers aren't quite as good as Democrats want to believe - namely, Trump's numbers haven't decreased all that much in battleground states.

 

 

These data are comparing unnecessarily large samples from February-April with May to the first week of July.

[Zorral]

If enough courts, state and federal, rule on gerrymandering cases being brought before them in the next months that these gerrymanders were executed specifically to favor the rethugs, and thus illegal, something may break loose.

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

These data are comparing unnecessarily large samples from February-April with May to the first week of July.

That may be, but it's one of the only state-based data points we have so far, and it also makes a reasonable amount of sense as far as a hypothesis of who is reducing their opinion goes. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

These data are comparing unnecessarily large samples from February-April with May to the first week of July.

Moreover, it doesn't really matter because we're simply too far out. There is simply too much if flux for those numbers to mean much. I think the midterms will all come down to the Russia investigation, assuming it's wrapped up or getting worse and worse by then. If Trump and co. are found to be innocent on all the accusations, the Republicans will do really well, holding the House and probably picking up 4-6 seats in the Senate. If members of Trump's team, or the President himself, are in hot water, I suspect that Democrats will take the House and who knows what happens with the Senate. 

[denstorebog]

To add to the uncertainty, there's the persistent narrative that a lot of polls are not picking up on the fact that some people have stopped identifying as Republicans altogether, which screws with the sampling without anyone noticing. I've seen it peddled here and there, and not just on random blogs. No one can really say if there's anything to it or if it makes a difference, but it really underscores just how much we're in unknown territory here. Would hate to be a pollster these days.

[Zorral]

Granted, this is in NY Magazine, which has always held the fort valiantly against this thug family, for decades prior to them Nielson rating themselves into the WH on the back of the Apprentice, which evidently at least 1/3 of the country thought was 'real.'

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/trumps-fledgling-presidency-has-already-collapsed.html

Quote

. . . . During his very brief tenure as communications director, Anthony Scaramucci blurted out something very telling: “There are people inside the administration that think it is their job to save America from this president.” The conviction that Trump is dangerously unfit to hold office is indeed shared widely within his own administration. Leaked accounts consistently depict the president as unable to read briefing materials written at an adult level, easily angered, prone to manipulation through flattery, subject to change his mind frequently to agree with whomever he spoke with last, and consumed with the superficiality of cable television.

BUT!

 

Quote

 

There is one frightening exception. Trump could regain public standing through the rally-round-the-flag effect that usually occurs following a domestic attack or at the outset of a war. A miniature version of that dynamic was on display in April, when Trump launched a small missile strike on Syria, garnering widespread praise in the media for his newfound stature. The 9/11 attacks elevated George W. Bush’s approval ratings for three years, long enough for his party to gain seats in the 2002 midterms and for Bush, two years later, to win what is still the Republican Party’s only national-vote plurality victory since 1988.

Trump’s authoritarian tendencies make the prospect of his rebuilding his legitimacy on the basis of security especially dangerous. The number of Republicans who see Trump as a strong leader has dropped by 22 percentage points since January. Trump’s opportunity lies in exploiting fear to demonstrate strength. . . .

The ability of a president to gain popularity by launching (or suffering) an attack is not a law of nature. It reflects, in part, choices — by the opposition to withhold criticism and by the news media to accept the administration’s framing of the facts at face value. A chaotic, still-understaffed administration led by a novice commander-in-chief who has alienated American allies deserves no benefit of the doubt. Everything from Trump’s incompetent management of the Department of Energy, which safeguards nuclear materials, to the now-skeletal State Department, to his blustering international profile has exposed the country to an elevated risk of a mass tragedy. A long-term task of the opposition is to prevent the crumbling presidency from transmuting that weakness into strength.

 

 

[Fez]

28 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

To add to the uncertainty, there's the persistent narrative that a lot of polls are not picking up on the fact that some people have stopped identifying as Republicans altogether, which screws with the sampling without anyone noticing. I've seen it peddled here and there, and not just on random blogs. No one can really say if there's anything to it or if it makes a difference, but it really underscores just how much we're in unknown territory here. Would hate to be a pollster these days.

There's definitely been some people who have done this, but the only ones I know of for sure are a handful of conservative writers, many of the well-known neo-cons, and three of my four Republican friends. But the thing about all these people is that they were Republicans who lived in the greater NYC or DC area, held college or advanced degrees, and worked in or closely around the Federal government, and therefore were already quite different from many other Republicans. 

The big unknown question is if there are any other Republicans who have done this in large numbers.

[DMC]

35 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That may be, but it's one of the only state-based data points we have so far, and it also makes a reasonable amount of sense as far as a hypothesis of who is reducing their opinion goes. 

The problem is with that size sample you're not getting that much variation.  The three other subsets dropped three points each between the two periods while the close GOP districts help steady.  This isn't much of a difference, or at least it's hard to tell because statistical significance may merely be a reflection of the large "n."  Moreover, while I'm generally a proponent of using online surveys, using them in longitudinal analysis is problematic because you may just be getting the same people doing the same surveys over time in your subsets (i.e. inflating your sample size rather than treating the data as a panel - which in itself could be interesting).  To be fair, I'm not sure about how Survey Monkey does it though, they could filter out repeaters.

Anyway, that's just me being an academic snob.  The main point is the data ended in early July.  You and I have talked repeatedly about how Trump's approval has been largely unchanged for the past couple months.  I'll be interested in their next set post-healthcare failure (although I do wish they'd cut down on the sample size or release the district-by-district data to get a better idea of where and how this is coming from).  As for state-based data points, I mentioned Gallup releasing their tracking poll data a few days ago, that's pretty interesting.

[Week]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 

 Agreed. This guy clearly breaks the mold.Has there ever been a more incompetent President?   

We'll see his level of incompetence when there is a real crisis a la Katrina or domestic attack. I look forward to Kanye's take - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIUzLpO1kxI

 

[ThinkerX]

Might be serious trouble for the GOP money machine.  Emphasis on the 'might' -

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-donor-sues-gop-for-fraud-over-obamacare-repeal-failure/ar-AApqJrk?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580

 

A Republican donor in Virginia has filed a lawsuit against the national and Virginia Republican parties, accusing them of fraud and racketeering for raising millions of dollars in donations knowing they wouldn't be able to repeal ObamaCare.

 

The Virginian-Pilot reports that Bob Heghmann, a retired attorney in Virginia Beach, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Thursday. The suit blasts the Republican Party, saying it "has been engaged in a pattern of Racketeering which involves massive fraud perpetrated on Republican voters and contributors as well as some Independents and Democrats."

The lawsuit's defendants include the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Republican Party of Virginia, as well as Virginia's two members of the RNC and the chairman of the state Republican Party, John Whitbeck.

As part of his suit, Heghmann argues that the Republican Party does not hold the same protection that members of Congress have against being sued for failing to fulfill campaign promises. He wants the GOP to either threaten to withhold money from members of Congress if they don't repeal ObamaCare, or return contributions to donors.

[Red Tiger]

13 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 

 Agreed. This guy clearly breaks the mold.Has there ever been a more incompetent President?   

Warren G Harding

James Buchanan

Andrew Johnson

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Red Tiger said:

Warren G Harding

James Buchanan

Andrew Johnson

Harding allowed an absurd amount of corruption to occur, more than enough to put right near the bottom of Presidential rankings, and supported a number of really damaging policies; but he also had a couple outright successes as well (e.g. a large-scale expansion of road systems and he helped negotiate settlements to several major strikes). Its not much, but its far more than Buchanan, Johnson, or Trump (so far) have accomplished.

I think it is fair to say though that so far Trump is not worse than Buchanan or Johnson. All three of them had incredibly dysfunctional administrations that had no major successes of any sort, but Buchanan is the only President to have a literal civil war start under his watch and Johnson was in pretty much outright war with both Congress and most of his own cabinet (who Johnson couldn't even fire due to a law Congress passed over his veto).

Almost all of the 19th century Presidents post-James Monroe and pre-Grover Cleveland were pretty terrible though (Lincoln, and to a much lesser extent Polk, being basically the only exceptions; also Jackson I suppose, depending on your political views); but in general the Executive Branch had far fewer responsibilities than it does today. So Trump's incompetence has a more outsized impact than most.

[Ormond]

17 hours ago, Fez said:

There's definitely been some people who have done this, but the only ones I know of for sure are a handful of conservative writers, many of the well-known neo-cons, and three of my four Republican friends. But the thing about all these people is that they were Republicans who lived in the greater NYC or DC area, held college or advanced degrees, and worked in or closely around the Federal government, and therefore were already quite different from many other Republicans. 

The big unknown question is if there are any other Republicans who have done this in large numbers.

Don't pollsters ever ask a question like "Has your party identification changed and if so when?" 

This would seem to be data that both political scientists and the parties themselves would want to have. 

[Zorral]

Despite the chaos -- or, more to the point, behind the camo of the chaos -- the real objectives of the real runners of the government have gotten a very great deal accomplished --

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/what-trump-is-actually-accomplishing/535458/

Quote

 

Things are going considerably better for the shadow government. With the Trump administration’s chaos sucking up all the attention, it’s been able to move forward on a range of its priorities, which tend to be more focused on regulatory matters anyway. It is remaking the justice system, rewriting environmental rules, overhauling public-lands administration, and greenlighting major infrastructure projects. It is appointing figures who will guarantee the triumph of its ideological vision for decades to come.

The trick here is that the administration and this shadow government are one and the same. Even as the public government sputters, other elements of the Trump administration are quietly remaking the nation’s regulatory landscape, especially on the environment and criminal justice.

 

They have years and years to consolidate what they've already accomplished, and keep moving on to a totally authoritarian, (white, male, wealth) class-based society, without any recourse for the rest of us.

[Fez]

15 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Don't pollsters ever ask a question like "Has your party identification changed and if so when?" 

This would seem to be data that both political scientists and the parties themselves would want to have. 

My understanding is that its very hard to get accurate answers to questions like that. People often say that their current identification is what it's always been, or place their switch earlier than it occurred (or, if they've switched a few times, claim its only been once). It's the same problem as asking people who they voted for in previous elections, a lot of people claim to have voted for whichever candidate they retroactively like more, or for whichever is more socially acceptable, or even just whoever won

For people who's party ID has changed since their election, there's a high chance than many of them will claim that the change happened before the election and that they never supported Trump. And there were some people for whom that's true, which means pollsters can't automatically discount that answer and therefore continue to not have a good idea of how many have changed since.

I think the best way to answer the question would be for pollsters to contact their pre-election samples and ask them the question, since for those people there is this known pre-election baseline. But there's not much money for polling outside election season, and it can be difficult to get in contact with enough people from each sample for the new sample to still have validity, and it would need to occur for multiple different samples since obviously there could be outliers.

[DMC]

32 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Don't pollsters ever ask a question like "Has your party identification changed and if so when?" 

This would seem to be data that both political scientists and the parties themselves would want to have. 

Sure, they could ask that - there's nothing fundamentally wrong about relying on self-reporting, considering that's how you get all their demo and party and ideological info anyway.  However, the way most political scientists measure change in party identification is through panel data.  All that means is asking the same respondent the same question at different periods in time.  All the major datasets (Americanist) political scientists use - the ANES, the GSS, the CCES - do this for at least one pre-election and one post-election wave.  I would assume private firms do as well, but obviously they're not going to make their datasets available for me just to check.  Have a friend who works at Gallup, I know they do.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

17 hours ago, Week said:

We'll see his level of incompetence when there is a real crisis a la Katrina or domestic attack. I look forward to Kanye's take - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIUzLpO1kxI

 

That possibility/probability scares the living shit out of me.

[Ormond]

34 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Sure, they could ask that - there's nothing fundamentally wrong about relying on self-reporting, considering that's how you get all their demo and party and ideological info anyway.  However, the way most political scientists measure change in party identification is through panel data.  All that means is asking the same respondent the same question at different periods in time.  All the major datasets (Americanist) political scientists use - the ANES, the GSS, the CCES - do this for at least one pre-election and one post-election wave.  I would assume private firms do as well, but obviously they're not going to make their datasets available for me just to check.  Have a friend who works at Gallup, I know they do.

That's interesting, but there is a problem with using just "panel data", too. Social psychological research has shown that people are much less likely to change their views (or admit they have changed their views) when they have stated them openly in front of others, because they then feel more committed to them. So I would suspect you get respondents to be somewhat less likely to change their party identification when the same pollster is asking them repeatedly, and they KNOW that same pollster is going to be calling up to ask them again. Therefore there's a good chance such panel data may somewhat underestimate the degree of change in party identification in the population as a whole.