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.

1. You cannot be forced to have someone stay in your house of you don’t want them to be your guest.
2. If you are arrested for an alleged crime, the bail that is set for you cannot be excessive.
3. If you are charged with a crime and the case goes to court, you have the right to a trial by jury.
4. You have the right to say whatever you want so long as it does not put another person in harm’s way.
5. If you wish to believe in and practice a religion, you have the right to choose your religion. You also have the right to choose no religion at all.
6. The government cannot conduct unreasonable searches and/or seizures of your personal property.
7. You have the right to own a gun.
8. If you are accused of a crime, you have the right to a speedy trial.
9. The rights that are enumerated in this list are not exclusive; there are other rights retained by you and everyone else.
10. If you are charged with a crime, you do not have to testify against yourself.
11. The press and other media forms have the right to print what they wish, so long as it is not intentionally injurious to someone else.
12. If you wish, you and others can peacefully gather and petition the government (or other entities) for what you consider to be grievances.

Well, if this looks like the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, that’s because it is, slightly reorganized and simplified. Here are the changes:

1. The actual First Amendment delineates four rights that are protected (freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, to assemble and to petition the government). Four of these five get a separate listing in items above.
2. The 10^th Amendment is not included because it does not relate to any rights; it is essentially an ambiguous procedural guidepost relating to the powers of the federal government and the states.

So, if you look at those rights, remembering that their order has been scrambled, is there any one that seems to have less to do with promoting as civilized society than any of the others? If you think so, please indicate by answering the one-question quiz below.

Scroll down to answer. Your answers are completely private. We’re not selling anything.

The post Quick Quiz: Which one of the twelve items below has nothing to do with a civilized society? 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.

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.

The post Survey: Does our economic system favor the rich? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

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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