Automatically believing Brett Kavanaugh and invalidating the account of Christine Blasey-Ford. Taking aim at the protection of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Ideas like this are appalling to many progressives, people who pride themselves in taking a rational approach to problem-solving.

But those of us who are appalled by these Republican ideas have to keep in mind a couple of things:

1. We are hardly a majority. Just this morning, a Wall Street Journal / NBC poll reveals that Donald Trump’s approval rating has jumped to 47%. For most of his term, he has lingered below 40%.
2. The Republican views will not magically go away. While I have advocated a possible solution being that schools must focus much more on critical thinking and empathy rather than test scores, that idea is somewhat hollow because so many teachers have Republican leanings (even if they below to unions) and they have very different ideas of critical thinking and empathy.
3. Even if progressives are more interested in learning about how Republicans think than vice-versa, we still are largely at a loss.

In an effort to advance the progressives’ understanding of conservatives to the point where we can possibly move the needle towards our version of critical thinking, etc., Occasional Planet is commissioning a series for public opinion surveys. Each one will hopefully give us greater understanding and also raise a new level of questions. We’ll keep pursuing.

On Thursday, October 18, we sent a survey to a random selection of 239 Americans. This has some statistical significance, obviously not as much as a survey of more than 1,000 respondents. You can see the entirety of the results by clicking here.

In this and coming posts, we will analyze findings and raise new questions. We will try not to overload readers with data; we too belong to the “short attention data club.”

One of the questions that we asked was, “Who do you trust most to protect your interests?” The choices were (a) The federal government, (b) My state government and (c) My local government.

Here are the results:

51% said their local government

29% said their state government

20% said the federal government

Just to clarify, the party breakdown of the survey sample was:

13% Strong Republican

17% Moderate Republican

28% Independent

14% Moderate Democrat

19% Strong Democrat

So, the sample leaned slightly more Democrat than Republican.

But here is our “key finding” and question of the day:

Of those who most trusted the federal government, 50% were strong Republicans while only 26% were strong Democrats.

We normally associate strong Democrats (progressives) with support of the federal government. After all, the New Deal, Great Society and most of the other fabric of the social and economic safety net comes from the federal government. So, why is it that in our survey, there is greater trust in the federal government from strong Republicans than strong Democrats.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us by clicking here.

The post Looking for insights into (er, questions about) the Republican Brain appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Throughout my entire adult life, my Republican friends insisted GOP policies were not racist: the laws are the same for everyone; let people pick themselves up out of poverty; there are poor white people too! As a white person myself, I wanted to believe this. I wanted to believe in a just government.

When I was young, I lived in Philadelphia. During a full decade of my life, I saw how the Move conflict developed because of race and ended in the bombing of a home full of black men, women, and children.

My father’s family were Texas farmers, and when I traveled to visit them in the slowly dying town of Nevada, TX, we passed through nearby Greenville – as you drove through this small town in the early 1980s, a banner hung across the road that read “The blackest land and the whitest people.”

Everywhere I lived and every state I have visited – it has been the same: in both the city and in the country I saw first hand that, no matter what, white people always had the advantage.

I saw the effect with my own eyes as I grew up – I knew people didn’t like to hire blacks, and that made it harder for them to earn a living. But I didn’t know that the federal government told banks not to invest in black neighborhoods. I didn’t know insurance underwriting was priced along racial lines. I didn’t know developments were authorized as long as they would not allow black residents.

My family moved to the suburbs to send my sister and me to good public schools. City schools were not good – like in so many cities.  Because we were white, it was relatively easy to build on our assets and leave the city.  I don’t remember one black person in my neighborhood. They lived across “City Line”, in Philadelphia.

My friends and relatives understood that slavery and racism was wrong in the abstract. But it did not seem to help them understand the full weight of racism on black people and communities. They didn’t see it with their own eyes. Or they turned away from it. It just was the way it was.

In my teen years, when Reagan attacked welfare using the “black welfare queen” idea, and I passed through black neighborhoods in Philly, I could see that was a big fat lie. No one was getting “rich”. It was harsh, depressing, and hopeless.

It is easy to believe the lie. With no real experience about black communities, it is easy to believe the political slogans and to blame black people for “their choices”. But “their choices” were our choices. Their conditions and limited opportunities were a product of our laws and social norms. And so poverty and all that comes with it deepens.

For 50 years Republican policies have successfully limited the black community and kept them “in their place”. But their anti-labor/anti-education/pro-big agra agendas, which unrelentingly include tax write-offs and benefits for the wealthy, have also slowly drained white working class communities of their opportunity and modest savings. They have drained poor white communities of hope.

And so, poor whites who may or may not have known or cared about the discriminatory policies of our government of the past century cry out, “What about us?”

And rightfully so.

Single issue voters have given Republican ideology so much power that now the GOP has openly abandoned even whites, especially poor ones.

Keeping people poor limits their choices and their voices.

Make no mistake. The African-American community has been silenced again and again by their poverty and their lack of options. Now the white people in Missouri and across the nation are also being silenced the same way. They are feeling the increasing pinch of the powerful removing their opportunity and freedom.  GOP policies will only make this situation worse for struggling white voters.

The recently failed Republican healthcare bills are evidence of this. Instead of actually solving problems, they continue to carry on with an ideology that provides healthcare to those who can afford it. If you can’t, it’s your own fault or it is okay you are left behind.

The GOP in so many states, including Missouri, has voted against making healthcare affordable or expanding Medicaid, has voted against infrastructure projects with decent wages, against retraining, against innovative businesses that bring new opportunities, and against education – the only way out of poverty for many. What have they really done to help the white working class avoid sinking into debt, illness, and poverty? I would argue nothing or very little.

It’s not the blacks or the Mexicans that are draining the system away from us and toward those in power. It is lobbyists and strategists and politicians.

It’s time for people of all races, Republicans and Democrats alike, to come together and demand change that benefits everyone. Not just ourselves. Not just the people at the top. Everyone.

The post White people ask, “What About Us?” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

There are several theories that attempt to explain why Hillary Clinton was defeated in November, and most of them are at least somewhat credible. Russian interference has been confirmed by 17 different intelligence agencies, that certainly had an effect. Former FBI Director James Comey sending his damaging letter to Congress days before the election apparently tipped the polls in Trump’s favor according to Nate Silver of 538. There are some on the left who argue that Clinton didn’t visit the Rust Belt enough, which is a fair criticism (she famously never visited Wisconsin). The new campaign tell-all book “Shattered” suggests that Clinton was a fundamentally flawed candidate with no political vision to offer to voters hungry for change; that’s harder to quantify but I don’t disagree with the thesis.

All of these explanations are well and good, but they don’t explain what happened down-ballot. If it were an issue of visiting Wisconsin or being progressive, then why did Sen. Ron Johnson (WI-R) not only beat a very progressive opponent, but outperform Donald Trump by 70,000 votes? If it were an issue of being flawed or out of touch with voters looking for change, then why did incumbent Sen. Roy Blunt (MO-R) whose name is synonymous with insider politics, defeat young, popular, earnest, political outsider Jason Kander? How did Republicans end up winning the popular vote in elections for the House of Representatives by 2 million votes?

In 2016 voters were capable of splitting their ballot even though the environment was hyper-partisan. Take Montana for example, where Democratic Gov. Steve Daines was re-elected while Clinton lost by 20 points or Vermont where Republican Phil Scott was elected Governor while Trump lost by 26 points.

So, what happened not just in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri, but across America? Broadly speaking, Democratic candidates put resources into turning out minority voters, maintaining the urban white vote, with an emphasis of reaching out to suburbanites, but in the process actively ignored rural voters.

These rural voters made up 17%  of the electorate in 2016. By contrast, black voters and Latino voters only comprised 12% and 11% of the electorate, respectively. It’s not that these voters are just unreachable either, as recently as 2008, 45% of Americans living in rural communities were casting ballots for Democrats. But in 2016, Hillary Clinton managed to only win 34% of these voters, and Democrats running for statewide office suffered in similar margins. These voters aren’t necessarily becoming more conservative either, Barack Obama narrowly lost Missouri by 5,000 votes and Montana by 9,000, most of the people who voted in that election also voted last November.

The entire Democratic Platform in 2016 was a whopping 25,967 words, the section dedicated to rural Americans however was a mere 268 words, just a little over 1% of the platform. It wasn’t just the platform, Hillary Clinton’s website dedicated almost as many words to an anecdote about Tim Kaine going to church as they did to rural voters on her issues page. Even her very detailed fact sheet was somewhat lacking compared to the considerable effort that was put into other issues. In Hillary Clinton’s biggest moment, her convention speech, there were zero uses of the phrases “rural”, “small communities”, “farmers”, or even “agriculture”. It doesn’t make sense not to at least acknowledge these people.

There was a time when the Democratic coalition depended on rural voters and they were represented at every convention and in every speech, for generations the Democratic Party was the party of the farmer. Democrats authored legislation to build infrastructure in rural communities, provide subsidies to people working in agriculture, and ran candidates who might not have been the most socially progressive people but at least believed in economic populism. Then at some point over the last 20 years, Democrats slowly pulled back, allowing a void to be created and subsequently filled by cultural resentment.

Rural America has been preyed upon by Republicans. These largely white, not especially wealthy, and deeply religious areas of our country have been sold a bill of goods that if only there were fewer immigrants, that if only women had fewer rights, and if only brown people weren’t given assistance to buy food that magically things would improve. There’d be no more lead in the water, the hospitals would stop closing down, and maybe they could afford to send their children to college. Republicans have never had any intention of delivering to these voters, but as long as Democrats refuse to try for their votes, the urban-rural divide will continue to widen.

The Democratic Party is a big tent party, and that means fighting for every vote. Donald Trump is a great foil right now, and presumably will be in the 2018 and 2020 elections, however the hemorrhaging of rural voters is a structural problem that could persist for decades. Frank Church in Idaho, Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas, Brad Henry in Oklahoma, Mel Carnahan in Missouri, Bob Kerrey in Nebraska and so many others weren’t elected because they ran as Republican lite. They won because they had a liberal platform that offered something to people living in rural areas, actual tangible things and not just some hokey feel good talk.

Democrats can’t just wait for the demographic trends we’ve been hearing about for so long to finally win us elections. The country is in trouble now. If Democrats ever hope to win back state legislatures and be competitive not just statewide, but in the 2,600 counties that President Trump swept in 2016, then the party needs to invest in “unwinnable races” and so called “lost causes”. It’s time to forget about expanding margins in Miami-Dade and Cuyahoga, but rather, rebuilding in Salina, Kansas and Fremont, Wyoming. Democrats are the party of the people; they should act like it.

The post It Wasn’t Just Russia: Democrats Have Larger Problems appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You have to name it before you can deal with it. That is sound advice often given by psychologists, sociologists, medical doctors, in fact virtually everyone who engages in try to solve problems. Auto mechanics do it and so do baseball pitching coaches.

One interpretation of what happened electorally in America in 2016 as that too many of us just became sick of “identity politics.” That means that they turned away from the Democratic Party. For generations, Democrats have been the party of “the colored, Negros, Blacks, Afro-Americans, African-Americans” as well as “Hispanics, Latinos” and other ethnic minorities. Democrats have also been the party of the young and the old, as well as of women.

But none of these categories describe a large portion of those who voted for Donald Trump for president. Hillary Clinton attached a moniker to some of them, “deplorables,” but that is neither accurate nor helpful.

Maybe blue collar workers is a more appropriate term. Others prefer “working class” because it seems to describe a lot of people who have daily jobs. But there are a lot of people who are salaried rather than working for wages or are also “working.”

In order to correctly identify this group, we need one or several terms that meet two criteria: (1) the people being described are comfortable with it, and (2) the people outside of that group know who is being described.

There never has been a politically correct term for white people. Perhaps one reason for that is that whites still make up a majority of the American people. This seems to entitle whites to be the “we” and any or all of the others to be “them.”

The difficulty in coming up with a clear name for Trump voters (and that certainly is not a homogeneous group) is what makes it so difficult for Democrats to incorporate them into their plans, their strategies, their way of thinking of creating coalitions from identity groups.

So we are going to suggest two things that Democrats can do now to address the problem:

1. Begin a process of trying to come up with a name (or names) for the people who felt disenfranchised enough from the Democratic Party to vote for Trump, and
2. Named or unnamed for now, help Democrats include them in their basket of constituent groups. These voters need to be seen as people in need of the services and policies that Democrats bring; not as “other people” who we only view as scapegoats.

So below is a quick survey of possible names for the “Trump people” who have not been included in the recent panoply of “identity groups” who are part of the Democratic coalition. By the way, if Democrats can include the Trump voters in their constituencies, then maybe we can reach the ultimate goal of moving beyond identity politics and including all of us as part of “we.”

Acceptable “identity” names for Trump voters:

We will report results of this survey to you no later than Wednesday, December 15, 2016.

The post The party of identity politics needs to identify Trump voters appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Bernie Sanders is calling for a political revolution. Is there evidence to demonstrate that his “revolution” is needed? And why is the Sanders revolution proving to be more attractive to some voters than Hillary Clinton’s focus on “improving what he have?”

There is considerable evidence in the FY 2017 budget that President Obama just submitted to Congress that the American economy is doing well. Republicans seem to collectively have astigmatisms in both eyes considering how blurred their vision of reality is.

Consider how job growth has changed from 2009 (President Obama’s first year, still in the hangover from the Bush years) through 2015:

Related to that is how unemployment has fallen during the Obama Administration:

Republicans are always harping on the federal deficit, but the rate of growth has consistently fallen through the Obama Administration (as it did during the Bill Clinton years):

To be fair, and to raise a question that Democrats tend to avoid: “has the ‘do-nothing’ nature of the Republican-controlled recent Congresses had anything to do with the sustained growth?” It’s interesting because if it is true, there do not seem to be any Republicans who claim any credit for their role in the growth. This stands in stark contrast to the growth during the Bill Clinton years. If you listen to John Kasich and Newt Gingrich, you would think that their roles as Republicans in Congress were the determining factors in the growth.

The charts above depict certain aspects of the macro-economy. That means how we are doing collectively (I guess that we can now thankfully use that word, courtesy of Bernie). What the charts do not show is the micro-economy – how individuals, families, and small businesses are presently doing.

One way to get a sense of how the economy is working at the grass roots level is to test the mood, or the forecasts of individuals. Using data from the recent December, 2015 CNN/ORC poll, it is clear that the American people are of mixed minds when it comes to how the economy is working for them.

How do you rate the economic conditions in the country today – as very good, somewhat good, somewhat poor or very poor?

What leads to further questions is how the lack of optimism crosses economic and educational levels:

What is interesting here is how the percentages for every single sub-group, with the one exception of college grads who rate economic conditions as “somewhat good,” is within the margin of error, compared to the total column. This indicates that despite the rosy macro numbers, there is no mandate for optimism from citizens. While this pattern has been true for most of the 2000s, it has not always been that way. Take a look at the figures from July of 1998, when Bill Clinton was president:

Take a look at the “Total good” and “Total poor” columns. They seem inconceivable today. Interestingly enough, the “Total good” figure nearly two years later, in June, 2000, was 85%. It makes it hard to believe that Al Gore won the popular election that year by only a half-million votes.

Two of the bellwether questions about how the economy is doing are:

1. Do you believe that you are economically better off than your parents at this stage of their lives?
2. So you believe that your children will be economically better off than you?

Occasional Planet asked those questions in a recent survey* and here are the results:

There are two main conclusions from this chart:

1. None of the bars rises to the 50% level. That means that people do not feel that things “are better” or “will get better.”
2. There is a high degree of uncertainty (42%) about whether or not their children will be better off than they.

The apparent pessimism may be due in part to the lack of growth of “real wages” (wages adjusted for the cost of living) since 1998, the latter part of the Bill Clinton administration:

What we can conclude from all this data is:

1. The American public’s current views about the economy are much less optimistic than they were at the end of President Bill Clinton’s second term.
2. There is pessimism and uncertainty about the prospects for prosperity for our next generation of adults.
3. Despite macro successes, the policies of President Obama and the largely Republican congresses for the past four terms have not really generated confidence among the populace.
4. Perhaps most importantly, the Obama years have not created growth in real earnings for middle and low-income people.

This is in part why Bernie Sanders’ talk of a “revolution” may be more attractive to some voters than Hillary Clinton’s talk of “improving what we have.”

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

The post The case for the Sanders revolution appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Which two of the following characteristics best describes the kind of leader that you would want for the country? [You must select two]:

1. A warrior, fearless and strong
2. An intellectual who is knowledgeable and who reasons well
3. A person who is thoughtful and caring with who he or she is
4. Someone who will not back down to anyone.

Once you’ve selected your answers, then think about which two Donald Trump might select. Then try Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

In Occasional Planet’s on-line survey of 550 respondents*, the answers came out like this:

Our thinking was that the top and the bottom choices would be more Trump-like; in fact, more reflective of the Republican Party. Similarly, our hypothesis was that the middle two options would be more representative of progressive thinking. These two characteristics seem to characterize several recent Democratic presidents, most particularly John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama.

There are six different pairs of combinations that any one respondent could choose. We wanted to see what the difference was between what Republicans and Democrats chose. Figure 2 shows the percentages of different groups that selected the pair of “comfortable with self” and “reasons well:”

Democrats (in blue) selected these two options 81% of the time; five times as often as random selection would be. Republicans (in red) selected them only 30% of the time. Republicans generally favored at least one of the two more “macho” choices.

As you look at the current debate among 2016 presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seem to focus much more on issues than do the Republicans. Clinton and Sanders both come across as “thoughtful and caring; comfortable with themselves” as well as “knowledgeable and capable of reasoning well.” The GOP candidates reflect more of the warrior mentality (particularly with Rand Paul having dropped out) and as individuals who will not back down, especially Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.

We asked respondents the same questions about what characteristics they would like in their boss. The graph below shows the comparisons of different groups in terms of what they want for a leader of the country vs. a boss. The red bar reflects what they want in a leader; the blue bars are what they want in a boss.

When it comes to the “thoughtful, rational, caring, comfortable” options, all groups think that is more important in their boss than in a leader for their nation. But the biggest spread among them is with members of the GOP. Republicans seem to want what might be called the “integrated personality” for their boss, but not nearly as much in their national leader.

What do we learn from this? This is very subjective, but there are a few takeaways:

1. Democrats favor more a person who is “comfortable with who he or she is.” This is why Democrats generally have the good sense to reject uncomfortable individuals for president like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. The question remains, do Republicans seem to prefer someone who is not comfortable with him or herself, or do they just not notice?
2. Democrats seem to reject the one-dimensional thinking of “someone who will not back down” or a “warrior, fearless and strong.” Does this mean that they have favored “weak presidents?’ It is interesting that during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, no American soldiers were killed in combat. and during Bill Clinton’s presidency, only one American soldier was killed in combat. Were they weak? Doubtful. But they were judicious.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

The post Survey: Democrats and Republicans want different kinds of leaders appeared first on Occasional Planet.

How much of science do people believe? In our 2016 survey, we did not ask “What weighs more, a ton of steel or a ton of cotton?” But we did ask people about their understanding of gravity and climate change and other topics. Here are the top findings:*

1. Only 81% of survey respondents believe what scientists say about gravity. What are the other 19% thinking?
2. When it comes to gravity, Republicans and Democrats are both on the same page.
3. Republicans have less faith in weather forecasts, whether or not a drug is safe to take, and yes, climate change.

It seems that Republicans have more trouble with scientific knowledge if it is sanctioned by the government. Only 34% of Republicans believe weather forecasts, even though data indicates that 48-hour forecasts from the National Weather Service are remarkably accurate. A similar number of Republicans believe information about whether or not a drug is safe, which might in part explain why Republicans are not so supportive of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). Contributions from pharmaceuticals might also influence Republicans (and Democrats) in Washington.

But as might be expected, in our survey, Republicans were less than half as likely to believe what scientists say about climate change (35% to 86%). A clear question is whether or not Republicans are just skeptical of scientists who write about climate change, or if this is a different kind of “learned behavior?” Is their thinking influenced by church teachings? What about what Republican office-holders say? If that is so, does it mean that campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies to Republican candidates have a “trickle down” effect of polluting the thinking of rank-and-file Republicans on climate change? This question is one for further exploration.

Here are a couple of other observations from the survey:

Figure 2

The blue vertical bar represents the thinking of 18-29 year olds. This group has more confidence across the board in what scientists say. This raises two related questions:

1. Did the people in the other three age brackets used to have more faith in what scientists said when they were younger?
2. Will the current group of 18–29 year olds have less faith in science as they get further removed from school? If so, why?

A final finding is very tentative because of sample size. But we found that the African-Americans who took the on-line survey showed less belief than others in what scientists say.

Most profoundly, only 6% of African-American Democrats believe that the number of calories listed for a food is accurate. The sample size of African-Americans was only 50, so this will certainly require more study.

But the most vexing question is the one we cited first. Why do so many people not believe what scientists say about gravity. To try to answer that question, we refer them to several experiments on gravity conducted by non-scientist David Letterman in 1986, while dropping “stuff” off a “five-story tower” in New Rochelle, NY.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

The post Survey: Do you believe in science? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Conventional wisdom holds that Republicans are the party of the wealthy. But as Donald Trump’s campaign has clearly revealed, there are plenty of Republicans out there who are not particularly wealthy.

In a recent Occasional Planet poll*, we asked, “In your opinion, what do you think is the primary reason that some people in America are richer than others?” The answer choices were:

1. The rich deserve to be richer
2. The rich are smarter
3. The rich work harder
4. Our economic system favors the rich
5. The luck of the draw

As you can see from the chart of all respondents, hardly anyone said that the “the rich deserve to be richer,” and only a few more said “the rich are smarter.” Most said, “Our economic system favors the rich.”

Conventional wisdom would say that more Democrats than Republicans believe that the economic system favors the rich  The survey appears to validate that notion.

You can see that 80% of Democrats polled believe that our economic system favors the rich, compared to only 27% of Republicans. Independents fall in the middle at 58%.

Conventional wisdom would further say that lower income people would be more likely to say that our system favors the rich. Again, the survey seems to support that idea, but not as dramatically.

The blue bar represents respondents from households earning less than $50,000 per year. The gray bar shows those from households with incomes of over $150,000. Seventy percent of the lower-income group believe that our economic system favors the wealthy. Only 46% of those with household incomes over $150,000 believe that.

There might be an anomaly here, with 46% of the wealthy believing the supposition, and with only 27% of Republicans accepting that perspective. Is this a relatively small fissure between Republicans in general and the wealthy, or is it a great divide?

We drilled down further and here’s what we found.

Figure 4 represents the views of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, separated by household income level.

Inside the blue bars in the middle, we can see there is virtually no difference among Democrats of different income levels in accepting the premise that “our economic system favors the rich.

Inside the red bars on the left, we see a monumental difference between wealthy and low-income Republicans. Only 6% of wealthy Republicans accept the premise that “our economic system favors the rich.” But for those Republicans who are members of low income households, fully 52% believe that “our economic system favors the rich.” This is nearly a nine-fold difference.

What does all of this mean?

1. On the question of whether our economic system favors the wealthy, there seems to be unanimity among Democrats, regardless of their household incomes.
2. On the same question, there is a deep division among Republicans from high-income and low-income families.

• Do these results mean that there are two large groups of Republicans:  one consisting of the wealthy who want to protect most private wealth in the United States; and a second group of lower-income Republicans who live somewhat of a hard-scrabble life and, perhaps, are among Donald Trump’s “angry supporters?”
• While this contention seems to make sense, it will require far more study. A larger sample size might yield more reliable results.

We will conduct at least one further study examining these questions,  and on the ultimate question we are asking:   “Why are the Democratic and Republican brains so different from one another,” and what can we do to try to have a more fair and just America and world.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

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If charity was the answer to our problems, then there would be no homelessness in America, no poverty in general. We would have a much better health care system and school systems that truly met the needs of children and society’s common good. But this is not the way that it is, much to the chagrin of Republicans.

The United States is a charitable nation, and as previously reported in Occasional Planet, Republicans are far more charitable than Democrats. But as our recent Occasional Planet public opinion survey shows, the issue is not that Democrats are stingy, rather it is that they see government as the best way to address problems like hunger.

Occasional Planet asked* a random sample of 550 Americans, “In your opinion, what is the best way to address hunger in America?”

Slightly more saw government assistance rather than charity as the preferable way to solve hunger, however nearly six in ten said that both avenues are of equal value. But as we break it down to various demographic or affiliation groups, we find a clear pattern.

You can see inside the red ellipse that Republicans are almost ten times as likely as Democrats to think that charity alone is the best way to address hunger in America. Inside the blue ellipse, we see that Democrats are about 2 ½ times as likely as Republicans to think that the best way to address the issue is through government assistance. On all counts, Independents expectedly fall in the middle.

Party affiliation involves a choice. But are demographic factors behind the party affiliations the cause of these differences? First a look at gender:

Even without the ellipses, you can see that the differences are negligible. What about race and ethnicity?

The differences between what Caucasians and minorities think is statistically insignificant.

When it comes to income level, we do see one significant difference:

Respondents who live in households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, have only about a third as much confidence in charity as those making over $50,000. This is particularly interesting because the “blue respondents” (those from households with incomes under $50,000 per year), are the very people who are frequently on the receiving end of both charity and government assistance. With only 7% of the blue respondents thinking that charity is the best way to address hunger, it is pretty clear that those who know best do not think that the job can be done best through charity alone.

So here is what we learned from this survey on addressing hunger in America:

1. Most Americans think that the way to address hunger in America is through a combination of charity and government assistance.
2. The people in our society who are the poorest and most likely to be recipients of charity and government assistance do not have very much confidence in the effectiveness of charity alone.
3. By a factor of ten, Republicans are more inclined to favor charity as the sole solution to hunger in America than Democrats are.
4. Perhaps most importantly, this may be why charitable giving by Republicans is greater than that of either Democrats in the United States or Europeans as a whole. However, the Democratic view that government assistance is a much better way to solve hunger than charity is very consistent with the strong support that Bernie Sanders has received in his presidential bid.

Bernie has touched many nerves in the electorate, and this survey clearly demonstrates that one of them is that his own party is much more supportive of government programs than with voluntary charity.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

The post Addressing hunger: Republicans say charity; Dems say government appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In our recent poll* on how Americans feel about important political issues, we asked the question, “In your opinion, what is the primary reason why poor people in America are poor?”

Given the choices, we found that only 9% of the 550 respondents said that the reason was because “They don’t work hard enough.”

If we drill down deeper, we find that there is a significant difference in how members of our political parties view the question of why poor people are poor. Below is a comparative chart reflecting the responses of Republicans, Democrats and Independents.

Republicans (in red) are eight times more likely than Democrats (in blue) to fault the poor for being poor (24% to 3% on the chart).

However, this conclusion does not tell us why Republicans are so much more prone blame the poor. However, if we drill down further, we find that demographic factors are not nearly as important as political affiliation.

First, the difference between men and women:

While men are nearly twice as likely as women to blame the poor, this is not nearly as pronounced as party affiliation.

What about race?

While minorities are less likely to blame the poor, the number is not nearly as statistically significant as party affiliation.

Well then, what about the income level of the respondent?

We looked at three levels of household income: (a) Less than $50,000 per year, (b) Between $50,000 and $150,000 per year and (c) Over $150,000 per year. While the wealthiest of the three groups is most likely to fault the poor for being poor, it is not really statistically significant compared to the two other groups.

So, here is what we have learned from these comparisons:

1. Of the four variables we have examined, two might be considered “status offenses.” In other words, they have to do with a person’s status such as gender or race rather than anything that reflects the content of their character. Those two variables do not seem to play a major role in determining how an individual views the question of why poor people are poor.
2. The third variable is income. In one sense this variable should be disqualified because it implies a self-fulfilling prophesy: that your income level would reflect how you feel about why some people are at your income level and others aren’t. Whether the prophesy is at work or not, we find that these are no significant differences in responses by income level.
3. The final variable is party affiliation. It is important to note that these affiliations are not “status offenses” like gender and race. They reflect a choice that an individual has made. In fact, of the four variables, it is the only one that is a choice because contrary to what a few believe, people do not choose their income levels.

Political party is largely a choice. It’s different from religion where some people do not have the freedom to change allegiances and others do not avail themselves of that opportunity (including freedom from religion).

As we see the clear differences between Republicans and Democrats on the question of why some people are poor while others are not, we are still at somewhat of a loss as to why or how the brains operate differently. This is a phenomenon that behavior scientists are studying. We hope to contribute to their body of knowledge.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

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