Tag Archives: State of the Union; polling bounce

The State Of The Race In Florida, Post-Debate (And The State Of The Union)

So many events, so little time.  Between the debates, primaries results, polls and now the State of the Union, I’m hard pressed to keep up with my day job.  But we soldier on, in the belief that these posts bring a ray of sunshine into what may otherwise be a dreary day. Buck up America! It’s election season!

To begin, Bert Johnson and I have our post-South Carolina video comments up online here for your viewing pleasure.

Meanwhile, the immediate post-debate reaction among the pundits seems consistent with my insta-analysis from last night: that it likely didn’t do much to affect the polling trajectory there that, so far, has Gingrich climbing into a lead over Romney, with Paul and Santorum trailing far behind.  Shortly after I posted yesterday, PPP did release their first post-South Carolina Florida poll which shows Gingrich leading Romney 38% to 33%, with 13% for Rick (“I am not a headless chicken”) Santorum, and 10% for Ron Paul. (PPP surveyed 921 likely Republican primary voters on January 22nd and 23rd. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.2%.) In looking at the PPP crosstabs, a couple of interesting items are worth mentioning.

First, consistent with my prior analysis (but not with that of most other political scientists), the polling data suggests that Gingrich, and not Romney, will benefit if Santorum, the other remaining conservative, drops out. Santorum supporters choose Gingrich over Romney 50-23% as their second choice, and if Santorum is dropped from the field of candidates, Gingrich’s lead grows to 43-36%.

Q9 If the candidates for President were just Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney, who would you vote for?

If Newt Gingrich, press 1.

If Ron Paul, press 2. If Mitt Romney, press 3.

If you’re not sure, press 4.

Gingrich …………………………………………………. 43%

Paul ………………………………………………………. 12%

Romney …………………………………………………. 36%

Not Sure…………………………………………………. 9%

If I’m Newt, I am making kissy noises at Santorum all this week, in the hope I can get benefit from an endorsement when Santorum concedes the race, as he inevitably will.  (Interestingly, Paul’s supporters are evenly divided between Newt and Mitt as their second choice, at 41% a piece.)

Second, PPP finds that 16% of respondents have already voted in Florida.  This is consistent with the number I’ve heard elsewhere.  Among those, Romney has a slight lead, 43-40%, over Gingrich. This gives him a bit of a cushion against a late surge towards Gingrich, but only if the race is close.

Third, and in a sign of just how much success begets success, Gingrich is now viewed as equally likely as Romney to defeat Obama.  This is consistent with Gallup’s results at the national level which I reported yesterday.

Q10 Which of the Republican candidates do you think has the best chance of defeating Barack Obama?

Newt Gingrich …………………………………………. 37%

Ron Paul ………………………………………………… 5%

Mitt Romney……………………………………………. 37%

Rick Santorum………………………………………… 6%

Someone else/Not sure …………………………… 14%

Remember, about 25% of likely Republican primary voters in Florida support the Tea Party, and fully 44% describe themselves as evangelicals Christians.  Tea partiers support Gingrich over Romney 46-20%, but 21% support Santorum.  If he drops out, these Tea Partiers are likely to throw their support to Gingrich. Among evangelical Christians, Newt leads 42-23% over Mitt, with Santorum at 18%.  So much for the argument that Gingrich’s “baggage” will make him unacceptable to the religious right.

It is still relatively early in the Florida race to be drawing firm conclusions, particularly with another debate coming on Thursday.  But notice the RealClearPolitics aggregate polling in South Carolina leading up to Newt’s resounding win there on Saturday (Gingrich=Green, Romney=Purple, Paul=Yellow, Santorum=Brown).

Now look at the current polling trends in Florida (same color scheme).

Yikes! It’s deja vu all over again!  If I’m Mitt Romney, the parallels between South Carolina and Florida – Newt’s surge to the top, his polling collapse, and his resurgence – would make me uneasy enough to want to change tactics and disrupt the dynamics before Newt pulls off another Bachmann miracle.  That means going negative bigtime, a la Iowa, and another nasty debate performance on Thursday.

Meanwhile, we have the State of the Union tonight.  Remember, these speeches typically serve primarily as an agenda-setting device. Presidents tend not to get any lasting polling bump out of them, and because the viewing audience tends to self-select toward the President’s supporters, reviews tend to be favorable. In an election year, however, the dynamics change just a bit because the speech often serves as preview of the President’s coming electoral strategy.  So this one may have a bit more bite in it than we normally see in one of these staged events.  I look for Obama to lay out some of the campaign themes for the coming year: the need for fairness, a recitation of some of his accomplishments, and a laundry list of items he’d like to see passed as a way of putting down an election year marker by which to paint the Republicans as obstructionist.  I’ll be interested to see who the “man in the balcony” will  be this time around.  Bet it won’t be Tim Thomas!

While I’ll certainly be watching the affair, I wasn’t planning on live blogging unless you, our blogging community, wants the opportunity to participate. If so, I’ll fire up the ‘ol keyboard, pour a scotch, and go at it.  Let me know.

How High Does a Dead Cat Bounce? Assessing the Likely Impact of Obama’s State of the Union speech

The State of the Union serves three broad purposes:

  1. It is theater, in the sense of watching the nation’s political actors perform their traditional roles (greeting the president, standing, applauding) and occasionally ad-libbing (“You lie!”) – see Justice Alito’s mouthing objections to Obama’s mischaracterization of the meaning of the recent Supreme Court decision;
  2. It serves as an agenda-setting device that allows a president to present his legislative “wish-list”, but without necessarily influencing any of the factors that will determine whether that wish list is fulfilled;
  3. It is a modern day affirmation of a tradition with roots tracing back to the Constitutional provision that presidents should, from time to time, inform Congress of the State of the Union.

What it typically does not do is provide a president with any additional political leverage, either within Congress or among the public at large.  Those relationships are governed by more fundamental factors that usually swamp any short-term effects of the State of the Union speech.

This is easy to forget if you are one of those political junkies who pay attention to things like the polling of focus groups consisting of people who watched Obama’s speech, or who get your political analysis from one of those echo-chamber blog sites.  For example, CNN conducted a pre- and post-speech survey and found that Obama’s address was received very positively or positively by 78% of those in the focus group.  Seventy-one percent of respondents said that the agenda Obama proposed will move the country in the right direction.   This assessment was echoed in blogs like Nate Silver’s, who pronounced the President’s speech a “three-run homer.”

The problem with these results is that they gauge the reaction of those who actually watched the speech – and that audience is almost always skewed toward a president’s supporters.  (Hence, Silver’s assessment.)  Consider this data from Gallup:

Clinton’s audience was predominantly Democrats, and Bush’s Republican (ignoring independents).  I expect that Obama’s will skew toward Democrat.   They are, not surprisingly, likely to gauge the speech pretty favorably (“a three-run homer!”)

However, when we look at the country as a whole, the impact of Obama’s speech is likely to be trivial.  Consider this data from Gallup assessing the post-State of the Union bounce achieved by presidents dating back to Carter in 1978:

The average “bounce” across 24 State of the Union speeches is actually negative, although essentially zero.  (But  see Clinton’s speech in 1998 – can anyone suggest an explanation for his 10-point jump?)  In short, expect Wednesday’s speech to have no impact whatsoever on Obama’s political standing among the public or within Congress.

This is not to say the speech served no purpose – it did.  It is clear that Obama used it to signal a change in direction in his presidency, with a renewed emphasis on a more moderate political tone and a laser-like focus on one issue: jobs, jobs, jobs.  Health care and foreign policy are on the back burner.  His goal is to prevent a reprise of 1994, when Clinton’s failure to get health care through helped create conditions for a Republican landslide in the first midterm elections.  For the next several months, expect the White House to be in full campaign mode as it seeks to minimize losses in the upcoming midterms.

In the meantime, I’ll post the post-speech data as soon as I get it.

P.S.  Great participation and excellent comments on Wednesday’s live blogging.  Max was the only one who called the over/under on the use of the word fight correctly.  (Sorry, Max – no t-shirt awarded in this contest.)  I count six uses by Obama of the word “fight”, not counting “firefighters”, which falls three short of the over/under I posted at the outset of the speech.