Chris---

I take back what I said two days ago about how the release of the poll info was getting done.

This is first rate stuff and you will have my suport next time around.

Dipsop

...you say:

"Also, why do Republicans, who supposedly don't like government to do anything, trust it so damn much?"

I've argued that the Dems should steal a line from the GOP playbook on this issue:  Keep those insidious bureaucrats away from my e-mail!

Shocked by the extreme difference between Dems and GOP on "should the government intercept communications." I mean, this is such a "new" issue in so many ways, and cuts against the grain of a lot of established philosophies.

But Republicans have already gotten the message: hating domestic spying is hating the President, and they won't.

I mean, so fast. It would be interesting (and I think very revealing) to have historical data for this kind of question. Of course (grumble grumble), Bush seems so creative in finding new basic points of agreement to violate.

Great job Chris!

What the poll has confirmed is that the electorate is deeply divided on partisan lines. There is no common ground. As we should expect.

The small government and keep government out of my private life Republicans support their party's positions irrespective of their so called "ideology". This party strength should not be taken lightly by the Dems.

All this poll has done has reinforced my conviction that the Dems need to do a few things:

1. Play strongly to their base. This "middle of the road" no conviction waffling only demonstrates their weakness. They aint winning anyone over.

2. Attack the Repubs incompetence and culture of corruption. They have failed at fighting terrorists and failed at home.

3. Paint the Repubs as extremists.

4. Frame the Dems positions as Swopa has done under the banner of common sense and competence.

5. Focus on Iraq, terrorism, individual rights. Traditional Dem positions have to take a back seat.

I believe the Dems will get many of the Independents if they can be convinced that they actually stand for something with passion because their views are more aligned with the Dems than Repubs.

But the Dems need to realize the Repub base is solid, organized and incredibly disciplined. This poll proves that in spades. Bottom line is that the Repubs are not easy to defeat as their core is very strong, deeply partisan and will fight hard.

Unless the Dems base is equally well organized and unified under a fighting theme, the 2006 mid-terms will be a replay of 2004. So close yet so far in terms of outcome. There is not much time for the Dems leadership to get this. Max 2 months.

I have always had a problem with the GOP criticism of "big government" since I believe that it's important with economic equality. But then I hoped at least they are consistent, an oppose a big government in every area. Apparently not....

Let's see - the Republicans oppose big government when it comes to redistribution and helping the poor. But they love it when it's about intruding into peoples personal lives and bedrooms?

That is a strange position to hold.

The naked partisanship of the Republicans when asked about removing the President if he broke the law is somewhat eye-opening.

Are we going to have a single-source report at the end of these releases?  Something to pass around in a single URL/PDF?

Though it does seems the Republicans have the upper hand on the the two questions regarding surveillance.  On question 17, excluding the middle ground (people who selected "3"), by a score of 47.1% to 42.6%, more people believe Bush should have the right to monitor while bypassing the courts.

Same holds for question 18, where after excluding the middle group, 40.9% versus 33.9% trust the NSA in gathering information.  

We may have better support among independents, but we are losing way too many Democrats on this issue.  If our leaders actually had a coherent message on this, we could easily win back our own defectors.  

You need to do a little better than what you've been doing. this is almost simulated work. There's no real drift in the stats yet.

The american public has clear and well defined ideas.  I am questioning the signal to noise ratio of the poll.

The best technique to employ, chris, is to ask the question three or four different times, innocuously in three or four different places.

Then, instead of trying to get such a big bang for your buck as to have the poll cover so many topics - you just end up answering one, or two questions with the entire poll and you get a very accurate result.

That is, you get them off balance and ask the question four times, then average and weight the results based on their question value and relevance score to the parent question.

So yes, you're effing it up.

But at least, since you're an english major, you can write convincingly about how you're effing it up. Get a  math guy there. AN INDEPENDENT.  Someone who doesn't give a damn how the poll comes out. thats important.

Or else you'll be delivering a well sharpened axe to grind, fitted just the right size to cut down nothing and cost everything.

Christ. Since when is breaking the law not grounds for impeachment? How is that even an issue?

It's not a bad question at all.  It shows how many Republicans support Bush engading in criminal activity.  It's a shocking, and very important result.  It totally blows all their pretensions to being a the party of "law and order."

Of course, it would have been better to ask Mystery Pollster's question first, and then ask this one.  Two different slants on the same underlying issue.  Always better than one.

Because of the way that politics is discussed, people routinely get the idea that liberals (or Democrats) all believe one thing, while conservatives (or Republicans) all believe another.  In fact, on virtually all issues, there is much more agreement than disagreement than disagreement.  This doesn't always mean consensus, however, since poeople can agree on both sides of a question, or, at the various points on a Lickert Scale (such as the 1-5 scales used on the questions discussed here).

For example, using 1996-2004 data for the General Social Survey question:

"206. Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if...READ EACH STATEMENT, AND CIRCLE ONE CODE FOR EACH.
G. The woman wants it for any reason?

       Strong  Strong    Difference
         Dem      Rep    

1. YES   45.0    26.4        18.6
   
2. NO    50.9    73.6        22.7
   

Total:                       20.65

This produces the surprising result that there is almost 4 times as much agreement as disagreement over abortion (by this measure) between strong Dems and strong Reps.  For self-identified liberals vs. conservatives, the difference is higher--29.1%.  Still, more than twice as much agreement as disagreement. This is no abberation. The strongest abortion or gay marriage hot buttons rarely register above 33% disagreement, and almost never over 40% between liberals and conservatives. Party differences are usually smaller.

On many, many questions--particularly about spending money--differences are significantly smaller.  On the question:

"are we spending too much, too little, or about the right  amount on (ITEM)?
D. Solving the problems of the big cities

By contrast, Chris's post-election analysis showed that the difference in Bush/Kerry presidential candidate vote in 2004 was about 70% between liberals and conservatives.  Thus, candidate votes are much more polarized than issue votes.

With this as background, the total differences for the questions above are:

Q17 (Government right to bypass courts): 47.85
Q18 (Trust the NSA to only monitor threats): 35.5
Q19 (Congress should investigate if Bush broke the law): 53.95
Q20 (Impeach/Remove Bush is he broke law): 45

Of these four questions, only Q18 falls within the range of normal hot-button issues.  Q17, Q19, and Q20 have differences that are off the charts.  All have to do with presidential power, and whether we should even consider questioning it.  Indeed, Q19 not only asks if the President is above the law, but if he's above even being investigated.

If we define a "polarizing issue" as one in which there is more agreement than disagreement, then Q19 is one of the exceedingly rare questions in American politics that reveals an actual polarizing issue.  Aside from who you will vote for, such issues are almost impossible to find.

Naturally, no one expects these numbers would be the same if a Democrat were President.  They are a clear indication of a massive partisan divide, and they clearly reflect how much this presidency exists in a realm that is divorced from the realm of common issue differences.  This is what a cult of personality looks like through the lens of polling data.

I am a bit disappointed in how the wording turned out in some of these questions. For instance, by throwing in the "including yourself" phrase in question 17, you have planted the seed that the person taking the poll could very well have been spied upon (which is extremely unlikely, if you believe Bush), thus potentially coloring the results to questions 18 and 19.

Also, by adding the "There are significant legal questions about..." phrases to question 19, it becomes very biased; certainly enough to tip a lot of fence sitters into an anti-Bush response. You should have left those out and just straight out asked if there should be investigations on the two topics and let the people decide for themselves if there is significant enough reasons for doing so.

Having said that, I a still impressed with the entire polling project, if for no other reason than it proves that something like this can succeed with nothing but grassroots support. A job well done!