I’ve just gotten off the phone with a pleasant but hapless young man named Nate, whose only crime is that he is trying to keep a roof over the head of his family by hiring on to a political research firm whose head is up its ass.

Nate politely asked me if I’d take a less-than-five-minute political survey, and I agreed, grabbing a pen and notepad, because these things often turn out to be blog fodder. And what fodder it turned out to be! Thank you, Nate.

After establishing that I’m a registered voter, almost certain to vote in the August 2014 Democratic primary election [which turned out to be exactly the demographic he was looking for], he said he was going to present me with some names, and would I please rate them on the old very-positive-to-very-negative scale.

First, Bob Satelle. A name I didn’t recognize.

Then Steve Senger. Wait, Steve Senger? I didn’t recognize that name, but I do know, I said, that there’s a Steve Stenger–with a t– who is running for office this year in my area. “Are you sure it’s Senger, Nate?” I asked. “That’s the spelling I have,” he said. “Okay, then I don’t know him,” I replied.

Next. Sam Page. Okay, now I know what election we’re talking about. Sam Page is a well-known politician around here. So now I also know that this Steve “Senger” guy is actually supposed to be Steve “Stenger.”

“Wait, Nate, I’m pretty sure you were asking me about Steve Stenger, because he’s involved in the August primary election you’re asking me about,” I said. “So, I think the people who wrote your script have misspelled his name. And people like me are going to not recognize him if the name is misspelled. And your data is going to be totally screwed up.”

“I’ll check on that after we talk,” said Nate, helpfully.

“Now, next name. Charles Dooley,” he said. That’s a prominent name around here, too, so I was able to rate him and help with the survey. But I’m still chuckling about that Steve “Senger” thing, and I’m starting to feel sorry for the candidate, who just may get my sympathy vote because this polling firm is so freakin’ incompetent.

And then, Nate asked me how I’d rate Kathleen Burkett.

“Wait, Kathleen Burkett? Kathleen Burkett? I think she died, Nate. Yeah, she died in April. She’s dead, Nate, dead,” I replied. “You’re asking me to rate a dead politician?” At which point I burst out laughing [apologies to Ms. Burkett’s loved ones]. “Didn’t anyone tell you about that? This is the most screwed up poll I’ve ever taken!”

“Where are you calling me from, Nate?” I asked, just wondering.

“Well, I’m not allowed to tell you exactly where, but it’s the western part of the U.S. We poll in areas where we’re not involved in the races, so we don’t know anything about the candidates and can’t inject bias,” he said. Yeah, that’s for sure: Asking me to rate a dead politician proves for certain that Nate’s bosses really, really don’t know anything. At least that solves the bias thing, I suppose.

I was laughing my head off, but I didn’t want to hurt Nate’s feelings, so I said, “I’m not laughing at you, Nate. I feel sorry for you, and I don’t want you to get into any trouble. But you are working for some incredible dumbasses.”

“I’m just paid to ask the questions,” said poor Nate, who had endured my ridicule with amazing aplomb. “Thanks for your input.”

The post How do you rate a dead politician? The most screwed-up political survey I’ve ever taken appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A 202 area code on caller ID usually means that I’m not picking up. It’s going to be political—probably a plea for money. But last night, when 202 popped up at 10:00 pm, my outrage meter red-lined, and I decided to check it out—if only to vent my anger at whoever was on the other end.

It was a doozy—a political opinion poll focused on the hyper-local Democratic primary for County Executive. Out here in flyover country, St. Louis County [which is not the same thing as St. Louis City] elects a County Executive [a fancy name for, essentially, the mayor of the county] every four years. Somehow, we elected a Democrat to the job in 2010, and he’s running for re-election, but has two Democratic opponents in the primary scheduled for August 2014.

Usually, you can tell who’s paying for these polls, because they ask blatantly obvious “push” questions. This time, though, there were “push” questions pertaining to both of the candidates considered the front runners: the incumbent, Charlie Dooley and the challenger, Steve Steinger.

I was very surprised by some of the questions and options offered for responses.  Examples [from my pre-sleep notes, so undoubtedly far from verbatim]:

How strongly would you consider each of the following reasons to vote in the August Democratic primary for County Executive?

-The need to increase the political strength of the African-American community  [Note to readers: Charlie Dooley is African-American.]

-The desire to elect people who support your right to make your own health care decisions

-To elect people who support increasing the minimum wage

-To elect people who support Obamacare

Which of these traits are most important to you when deciding who you will vote for?

-A candidate who supports a woman’s right to choose

-A candidate who is African-American

-A candidate who supports the principles of the Tea Party

-A candidate who supports conservative ideas

-A candidate who will fight corruption

On education, which of these statements do you agree with?

-Local, independent school districts should have the right to educate their own children.

-There should be a single, county-wide school district.

How strongly do you agree or disagree with this idea?

-There should be a law that guarantees workers a set number of sick days per year.

Which of the following statements are the most convincing to you? [Note to readers: There were more of these, but I didn’t manage to get them into my notes.

-Charlie Dooley is a strong leader who listens and puts people first.

-Charlie Dooley has a history of awarding public contracts to his political allies.

-Charlie Dooley has been accused of financial mismanagement.

-Steve Steinger is a lifelong resident of St. Louis County who is invested in its future.

-Steve Stenger refused to release his full federal tax returns after he paid just $21 in taxes on $210,000 in income.

-In his law practice, Steve Steinger has represented people with criminal records.

Huh?

I’m not all that sophisticated about public-opinion polling, but my takeaway is that this poll is designed to test a range of messages that the Democratic Party might use to promote one candidate or the other. Or, wait, maybe it’s a Republican poll, trying to figure out, in the general election in November, what messages to use to try to defeat whoever wins the Democratic nomination. Beats me.

In any case, my notes don’t reflect anywhere near all of the questions I was asked, just the ones I was able to scribble down during what seemed like an endless barrage. I timed it, and it took more than 15 minutes—a major intrusion into my pre-bedtime routine. At this stage of the election cycle, even though I am a likely voter, I haven’t really formed many opinions about the candidates, so the in-the-weeds nature of the questions made them really annoying. Honestly, I only stayed on the phone because I was taking pity on the unfortunate woman who was just doing her job. And I know that she heard me sighing and oy-veying many times during our conversation. In fact, I told her that I felt bad for her, and that I would keep going just so that she could collect her pay.

Bottom line, the whole thing is a sad reflection on the current state of political campaigns. Does anybody actually stand for anything anymore, or is it all about poll-testing the messages and adjusting your beliefs to what will sell? That’s one question for which I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

–

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They had me at caller ID. The screen said, “Opinionology ,” but it was the location that made me pick up for what was obviously going to be some kind of a public opinion poll. “Orem, Utah.”

On the line was a woman who promised that she wasn’t selling anything or asking for money. [Promise kept.] Also, she promised, this would be a short opinion poll about current events in Missouri [where I live]. [Promise broken.]

Utah. Current events. I’m already salivating and scrambling to grab paper and pen.

After the prelims about my likeliness to vote, my absentee vs. in-person voting preference and my political leanings, we get down to bidness. My pollster was polite and patient [I stalled a lot and asked for questions to be repeated, because I wanted get it down in my notes.]  Here are the questions [in italics], plus my answers. Who do you think is paying for this poll, and how would you respond?

On a scale of 0 to 100 [0=least important, 100=most important], how would you rank the following issues? 

-Abortion and gay marriage. Not sure how to rank this issue. It’s the first issues question, and I’m already feeling the push from this poll. I think they want me to give it a high number, and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. But I do, indeed, think abortion and gay marriage are important—as human rights issues—but I suspect that’s not what this pollster is looking for.] I take the middle ground: 50

-Pocketbook issues/ the cost of gas and housing. Same problem: 50

-Foreign policy/ War in Afghanistan and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons: 75 [mostly because I want out of Afghanistan]

-Fiscal issues: cutting taxes and the deficit. This one is a political tipoff, so I give it a low number, which actually reflects my view on these issues. Taxes are the dues we pay for a civilized society. If you don’t like taxes, don’t call a cop: 10

On a scale of 1 to 10, which of the following candidates would you consider voting for?

-Obama: 10

-Romney: 0

-Ron Paul: [Interesting inclusion]: 0

If the November election were held today, which presidential candidate would you vote for? [Possibly/Likely/Definitely]: Obama/Definitely

If the November election were held today, which candidate for U.S. Senate would you vote for?  [Possibly/Likely/Definitely]: McCaskill/Definitely [They didn’t mention names. You had to come up with one yourself. I wonder how many Missouri voters, five weeks before the hotly contested Republican primary, can even name one of the candidates?]

What is your opinion of President Obama?

               I like him and his policies/I like him but dislike his policies/I dislike him and dislike his policies

How would you describe President Barack Obama, on a scale of 1 to 10?    

-President Obama can fix the economy: [Trick question. No President can fix the economy on his own, especially when Congress blocks every move he attempts to make. But if I say he can’t fix the economy, then the pollster can use this data against the President. If I say he can fix the economy, they can say that he hasn’t done what he is empowered to do. Or maybe I’m overthinking this.] I give it a 7, because I think the President could help the economy a lot, if he were allowed to do what is really necessary.

–President Obama is out of touch: 0

How would you describe Mitt Romney?

–Mitt Romney could fix the economy: 0 [Well, he could fix—meaning “rig”– the economy so that it works beautifully for the top 1%, but I doubt that he has any intention of making things better for the rest of Americans.]

–Mitt Romney is out of touch: 10 [Seriously? They’re asking this question?]

On a scale of 1 to 100, how concerned are you—meaning angry or upset—about the following?

-Politicians who don’t respect the rights of women: 80 [Did they throw in this question to try to give the impression that they’re interested in progressive issues?]

–Providing illegal immigrants with special discounts and scholarships at state universities. [Uh, oh, your prejudice is showing]: 5

–Cap and trade regulations that will drive up the price of energy in America. [Push!]: 2

–Politicians who fight for tax cuts for the rich and deep cuts in Medicare. [Another Trojan horse question]: 80

-China cheating on trade agreements and costing American companies millions of dollars: 3  [Just wanted to give an answer. It’s not an issue I think about very much. You have to wonder why they threw this one in.]

-Efforts to prevent the expansion of energy production in America, which is driving up the cost of gas: 3  [Will Republicans ever stop using the price of gas as a political issue?]

–Politicians who undercut traditional values by supporting gay marriage: 0

-Increasing the national debt and putting the burden on future generations: 0

-Passage of healthcare reform: 0

What does it all mean?

We can speculate as to who is paying for this poll and what they’re looking for. We can make some reasonable assumptions about why certain questions were asked. As to the accuracy of the gathered data, if my attempts at psychoanalyzing the questions and my efforts to game the poll are typical, any trends reported by the pollster would merit a great deal of skepticism.

I recently attended a presentation by an influential Missouri pollster who said that 80 percent of public-opinion polls are inaccurate, and that most published polls are skewed to make a point or to polish the image of the polling organization. The only polls that are at all accurate, he added, are internal polls, because pollsters who want to get paid by candidates can only gain their trust by telling them the truth.

I’m lucky, in a way. I live in a zip code that has a swing voting record and demographics that make it appealing to pollsters. So, although I am clearly in the progressive camp, I get polls, robo calls and mailings from both Democrats and Republicans. I get more than I can respond to. But I read some of the mailings and listen to some of the robocalls, just to get a feel for what’s out there. And, as I did last night, I answer some of the polls. It just seems to me that, in a political world in which campaigns and even ideas are driven, to an alarming extent, by data[and I use that term lightly] from polls, it helps to know how the opinion-shapers are getting their information.

The post So, this is how pollsters get their information appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Ideology-driven, intransigent, Norquist-pledge-signing, Obama-hating Congressional Republicans might not get it, but kitchen-table Americans do. Public opinion polls released in the past few days indicate overwhelming support for President Obama’s call for fair-share tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

And we’re not just talking about a few, cherry-picked polls. Capital Gains and Games has posted a chart that compares results from all the big-name polls, dating back to November 2010. Bruce Bartlett, who compiled that chart, says that it shows that:

“… people support raising taxes as part of deficit reduction by a 2-to-1 margin over the Grover Norquist/Club for Growth/Tea Party position that the deficit must be reduced only by spending cuts without a penny of higher taxes. In light of President Obama’s new budget plan, which includes higher taxes, I am posting an updated table, including a poll on Friday showing that three-fourths of people support higher taxes and only 21 percent support the doctrinaire right-wing position.”

Bartlett is far from a raving leftist, by the way. You may remember him from his days as a senior policy analyst for President Ronald Reagan [who raised taxes!], deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department for Bush 41, and his work as an adviser to conservative Republicans Ron Paul and Jack Kemp.

Also on board with President Obama’s plan is Andrew Sullivan, who says:

“The margins are staggering: the NYT poll shows a majority of 74 – 21; even Rasmussen shows a majority of 56 – 34. What the president proposed this morning is simply where the American people are at. If he keeps at it, if he turns his administration into a permanent campaign for structural fiscal reform, I don’t see how he loses the argument.

At Washington Monthly, Steve Benen calls the President’s deficit-reduction plan “ambitious [and] surprisingly progressive.”

 The American Jobs Act, recently unveiled to a joint session, was refreshingly bold and quite progressive. The president’s critics on the left feared he would aim low, fail to call for major new investments, and might even propose a regulatory moratorium. Those fears proved to be largely backwards.

Going into this morning’s speech on debt reduction, we saw a very similar dynamic, with fears that the Obama plan would cut Social Security and raise the Medicare eligibility age. And again, the president exceeded expectations.

Given the larger political circumstances, it’s unlikely the president’s proposal will enjoy much support in the right-wing House, making this more of an opening salvo than a realistic legislative blueprint. But in some respects, that’s the most heartening part of the recent White House shift — Obama and his team aren’t playing by the same rules anymore. Indeed, they appear to have thrown out the old playbook altogether.

At the Washington Post, columnist Eugene Robinson calls the President’s plan “common sense, not class warfare.”

“The headline from Obama’s plan, though, is the call for wealthy Americans to pay taxes like everybody else. If Republicans believe the current system is fine, Obama said, “they should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness. . . . They ought to have to answer for it.”

So, what’s not to like? The President is calling for everyone to pitch in to help rebuild America’s economy.  Pre-schoolers who watch “Barney” sing a song that sums it up very simply: “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere. Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share.” Even a four-year-old knows what’s fair.

The post Polls: Overwhelming public support for President’s fair-share tax plan appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Right-wing activists are doing a great job of whipping up anti-government sentiment—mostly based on fear-mongering and misinformation. In fact, however, even the most right-wing citizens depend on government services in their daily lives—although they’d be reluctant to admit to this reality. In this irrational political climate, you’d think that government agencies would be clamoring to get out their messages and clarify their roles in citizen’s lives.

Well, they are and they aren’t. On President Obama’s first full day in office, he released a memorandum spelling out his commitment to government transparency.  Unfortunately, according to a survey released on March 31, many government agencies still are doing a lousy job of communicating. But there’s good news from the survey, too: When the federal government communicates effectively and helps people understand what it does, citizens’ opinions of government improve.

According to a telephone survey of 1,000 adults, conducted earlier this year by Segal+Gale, a New-York-based company that specializes in “strategic branding:”

• Two-thirds of American adults (65%) say the U.S. government does not do a good job of communicating what benefits and services its agencies provide to its citizens Only one-third (34%) rate the government’s performance in this area as good.
• Americans tend to understand the basic functions of each agency, but many are unaware of the breadth of services they provide.
• When respondents were given specific information about agency programs, they were much more likely to recognize the impact the agencies have on their day-to-day lives and, more importantly, tend to view the agencies in a more positive light.
• When asked about six specific federal agencies – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – opinions tend to be more positive. Yet while awareness of these agencies is high, (at least eight in ten have heard of each) the survey results suggest that few have a good understanding of the wide range of services that they offer.
• Among the six agencies, the FDA and the EPA are those that are best known, best liked and most perceived as having an impact on Americans’ daily lives.
• The agency viewed least favorably among the six is the FTC and there appears to be a good deal of confusion around the role that the FTC plays.
• While the Center for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) enjoys higher levels of familiarity and favorability among its beneficiaries than it does among the general public, 40% believe the agency has little or no impact on their day-to-day living.
• While those who have a driver’s license tend to have a better opinion of the NHTSA and to know it better in general than those who do not drive, awareness levels for specific NHTSA services are similar among drivers and non-drivers.
• Majorities view the TSA favorably and feel that it has an impact on their daily lives, though this is more common among more affluent adults. Few seem to recognize that the TSA’s responsibilities extend beyond airport security.

“This survey suggests that familiarity breeds affection,” says Siegel+Gale.  “Government agencies could significantly increase their perceived value by simply increasing their visibility and communicating more clearly with the American people. When government fails to communicate clearly, the social and economic costs can be considerable. When Americans can’t figure out how to answer U.S. Census questions, complete their tax forms, apply for student loans, qualify for small business assistance, or understand their Medicare and Social Security benefits, the economy suffers, revenues decline, and confidence in government takes a dive. The Obama Administration has an opportunity to change all that: when government provides applications that are easy to complete, disclosures that actually inform, and websites that are navigable and intelligible, this clarity and convenience sends a powerful message that our government is truly here to serve the people.”

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