American Feelings

I used some "Feeling Thermometer" data in a class recently and was struck by an insane result reflected in the recent data. You'll see that below, where I've linked to the original polling agency, 

First, definition: A "Feeling Thermometer" is a commonly used research measure. Here's a reasonable definition from a recent piece of scholarship:

The feeling thermometer, or thermometer scale, is a rating procedure to measure respondents’ feelings about an issue using a scale that corresponds or makes a metaphor to temperatures in the thermometer.

Political scientists often derive these numbers via public opinion polling. Sometimes, respondents are specifically asked to provide a number on a scale (0 to 100 is typical) and the results reflect averages, often broken down by specific demographic information.

For example, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs asks Americans in a regular poll what they think about foreign countries. 

As this data reveals, Americans feel quite warmly about Canadians, but have quite cold feelings about North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China. Likely not coincidentally, these are four states specifically identified as threats to American interests in the Director of National Intelligence's annual (public) assessment report. Question for another day: which way does the causal arrow run?

With those numbers in the 19 to 32 range in mind (and 85 for Canada), take a look at this next polling result, showing how Americans feel about other Americans -- limited by their political party. Americans like other Americans of the same political party just a little less than they like Canadians.

And Americans' feelings about members of the opposing political party are comparable to their feelings about North Korea!

Some recent political science research is particularly interesting about the meaning of such data, suggesting that these positive and negative feelings can have real-world consequences, at least in international politics:

This research note utilizes novel country feeling thermometer data to explore the [Democratic Peace Theory] debate’s micro-foundations: the underlying drivers of international amity and enmity among democratic citizens in the US, UK, France, and Germany.

No wonder some scholars are studying the allegedly growing risk of American civil war.



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Popular will

Photo credit, christopher j. dorobek

Andrew Hacker has an interesting piece in the August 18 New York Review of Books, explaining why Barack Obama's chances for reelection are much better than recent poll results would suggest:

The 2012 electorate will differ from 2010’s in a crucial respect: it will contain nearly 50 million additional voters. Some will be new, but most of them will be people who supported Obama in 2008. Compared with the 2010 House electorate, they will be younger, more ethnically diverse, with fewer identifying themselves as conservatives, and a higher proportion will be women. Most of them would not have voted for the Republicans who now make up John Boehner’s House.

Hacker, by the way, discusses a number of recent political books in the article, including one on the 2010 election edited by Larry Sabato. That volume includes a chapter on Kentucky's junior Senator, Rand Paul, written by my colleague Laurie Rhodebeck.

Hacker credits Sabato with pointing out that election outcomes are "determined by the people who show up" to vote. In midterm elections, about 40% of voters turn out to vote, while presidential elections draw substantially more voters -- about 55 to 60% of the electorate in the past quarter century.

This column in yesterday's Guardian succinctly summarizes the importance of this difference:

...the sweeping Republican gains in Congress in the midterm elections of 2010 were on the usual 40% turnout; Obama was elected in 2008 on a 61% turnout. Yet it is the Republicans who think they have a mandate from the American people.

Perhaps, in hindsight, Democrats should have tried harder to convince non-voters that the 2010 midterms were a referendum on Obama that required their attention. Republicans certainly made that case to the likely voters -- who are older, more affluent, less diverse, and more likely to vote in midterm elections. Instead, Democrats often ran away from their successes (health care reform, the stimulus) and distanced themselves from the President.

In any event, despite the poor economic numbers, it would appear that President Obama stands a pretty good chance of reelection -- so long as his 2008 voters actually show up to the polls.


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KY: 49 of 50

The latest Gallup "well-being" index was released about a week ago:

Hawaii's residents had the highest well-being in the nation in 2009, pulling ahead of 2008 leader Utah, and coming in with a new high state Well-Being Index score of 70.2. Utah and Montana are also among the top well-being states in the country, sharing the same score of 68.3. Kentucky (62.3) and West Virginia (60.5) have the two lowest well-being scores, as they did in 2008.

The score reflects "an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities."

Since I've lived in Kentucky for 19 years, I suppose the appropriate thing to do here is to disparage West Virginia -- rip them for something people in my state care about. Hint: it wasn't the Gallup poll that caused Gov. Joe Manchin to say recently: "I was so ashamed and so embarrassed for our state..."

Still, Kentuckians will take it.


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"Any time they want"

As the AP reported Saturday, the leader of the Iraqi government thinks that his country can provide for its own security:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that the Iraqi army and police are capable of keeping security in the country when American troops leave “any time they want,”

And they want.

Polls from this past month show that nearly two-thirds of Americans think that the U.S. should "set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2008."


Note: Photo courtesy U.S. State Department.

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Presidential poison pen

So far, in more than six years of governing, President Bush has vetoed exactly one piece of legislation -- on stem cell research. It is a remarkable record, though the President has expressed fairly strong dissent from congressional action through his unprecedented extensive use of so-called "signing statements."

Now, the President is threatening to use the veto to stop Democratic efforts to end the war in Iraq (and for lots of other purposes too).

Unfortunately for Senate Republicans, who could almost surely stop the anti-war legislation with a filibuster, the Democratic proposal is popular. Today's Washington Post reveals the polling data:

A new Pew Research Center poll found that 59 percent of people surveyed want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by August 2008, the deadline set in the House version of the spending bill, which passed by a 218 to 212 vote on Friday. Thirty-three percent of respondents said they wanted their representative to oppose it.

Apparently, the Republicans have decided that they don't want to lose the 2008 congressional elections on the issue of Iraq -- so President Bush is going to have to overturn the anti-war legislation with his own hand.

According to the Post article, the Republicans might be able to extract the withdrawal dates from the bill that passes their chamber, but the measure could well survive the conference committee with the House.


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