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Friday, June 27, 2008

Ask: Do You Think We’re Fucked? Obama Wins in November.

posted by on June 27 at 15:50 PM

From this observation:

In its new New Jersey poll, Fairleigh Dickinson split its panel into halves. The first half received a battery of national questions — including a “wrong track” question — before being asked their presidential preference. The second half got the Presidential questions first.

Among those respondents who got the presidential question first, Obama had a 47-34 lead. But among who got the wrong track question and then were asked for their presidential pick, Obama’s lead expanded to 51-33. The difference was particularly large among independent voters, who split 24-24 with huge numbers of undecideds when asked the presidential question first, but went 41-14 for Obama if they had been prompted by the national mood questions.

FiveThirtyEight makes an excellent inference:

But here’s the other side of the finding that asking national mood questions can skew survey results in Obama’s favor. If the mere suggestion that the country might be on the wrong track is enough to send scores of independents into the Obama column, imagine what a concerted effort to frame the discourse that way might do. This is something that Hillary Clinton had started to tap into toward the end of the primary process. Screw hope — things are bad right now — and we need solutions.

Obama’s “change” message, by contrast, has oftentimes been a little bit too abstract. Here’s the messaging that Mssrs. Axelrod and Plouffe need to work on: Iraq’s fucked up, the economy’s fucked up, health care’s fucked up, the environment’s fucked up, and all John McCain can say is to “stay the course”. If that’s the mindset that voters take into the ballot booth with them in November, Obama will win quite convincingly.

It isn’t simply a matter of trying to frame McCain as the next Bush. That allows voters to let McCain off the hook if they conclude that McCain isn’t the next Bush, and McCain’s favorables are strong enough that many voters won’t bite on that one. Rather, it’s a matter of trying to portray McCain as being out of touch because he doesn’t recognize that these things like health care are problems when 70 or 80 percent of the country does.

See? My depressing posts about financial crises, crappy energy policy, impeding war with Iran and worms growing in the organs of poor American children are a force for good. I fully intend to ruin many of your future afternoons and lunches with doses of empiric reality.

RSS icon Comments

1

This might be a better job for surrogates than for the candidate himself to adress. Historically framing the country as fucked up doesn't make you look very snazzy or confident.

Posted by vooodooo84 | June 27, 2008 4:06 PM
2

Don't worry, the Bush/McCain 08 campaign has Cheney fixing the vote.

Remember Zimbabwe? We do.

Posted by Fuckless Fuckers of Fuckistania | June 27, 2008 4:22 PM
3

Does anyone else notice that they received a BATTERY of other questions? Why is it automatically the "wrong track" question that made them go Obama?

Posted by w7ngman | June 27, 2008 5:09 PM
4

@1 - Obama doesn't actually have to say the words "fucked up". But, he's certainly eloquent enough to frame the debate as "I think most of us can agree that we're on the wrong track (heads nod in approval), and my opponent doesn't plan to change anything (most of the undecideds suddenly leer at McCain)".

Posted by Mahtli69 | June 27, 2008 5:16 PM
5

Hmmm. This might be a good time to review what we know about MoE's ... and subsamples.

Hints: Starting from N=589, a half-sample would be about N=295 ... and the Independent component of that would be in the neighborhood of N=65 (possibly varying considerably between the two half-samples; methodology is insufficiently disclosed).

Posted by RonK, Seattle | June 27, 2008 7:01 PM
6

RonK--

Please do read the original 538 posts. This is more an outgrowth from the Obama-is-up-by-fifteen! or twelve! polls that came out this week. They had Obama up way more than ever before, and everyone was searching around for an explanation. The "do you think the country is going in the right direction?" question was added before the question Obama or McCain in these polls. In contrast, in the other polls that had Obama only up by 5%, this question was not asked.

The New Jersey study is being used to confirm this hunch. He acknowledges the low samples in this study. Still, the logic seems fairly solid. McCain *is* campaigning on the status-quo....

Posted by Jonathan Golob | June 27, 2008 8:43 PM
7

Jonathan -- My point is that with (say) 25 McCain Independents and 42 Obama Independents in the entire sample, it's neither necessary not possible to peg the discrepancy to question ordering.

As for the LAT and Newsweek outliers, differences in party mix offer a more pedestrian and fully adequate explanation.

Posted by RonK, Seattle | June 27, 2008 9:07 PM
8

Hey numbers guys:

When things are totally fucked up voters through out the incumbent party.

Everyone knows that.

Since a year ago things have gotten way even more fucked up with housing crisis, the price of food, shit I paid 1.50 for aa freaking yam at Safeway, and the price of gas.

You might try doing some numbers on how many points Obama gets more for each 25 cents the price of gas goes up...I'd say it's about 2 or 3.....

"Iraq’s fucked up, the economy’s fucked up, health care’s fucked up, the environment’s fucked up, and all John McCain can say is to “stay the course”. If that’s the mindset that voters take into the ballot booth with them in November, Obama will win quite convincingly."

Yes, and what's better is Obama does not need to tell them everything is fucked up, everything really is so fucked up everyone knows it.

What would be interesting would be to do polls saying okay, what about Biden versus McCain? Richardson? Hillary? A rabid yellow dog?*

You might find that they are all up over the GOP quite a lot now.

*Note: this is not a coded reerence to a bitch, ie HRC. This is a reference to a "yellow dog Democrat." Go look it up.

PS: one warning sign amongst the generally good poll news right now is McCain is way ahead among Catholics. Now in the last 9 elections whither the catholics go that's who wins. They are the swing voters basically. Middle class folks who sometimes care about social programs if they do not feel threatened by disorder and crime and such.

So beware hubris, etc. etc.

Posted by PC | June 27, 2008 9:58 PM
9

We won't support NO-Bama whatsoever and will re-defeat him in November!!!

Posted by clintonsarmy | June 27, 2008 10:33 PM
10

Say "YES" to War on Iraq by Dan Savage Oct. 2002

"War may be bad for children and other living things, but there are times when peace is worse for children and other living things, and this is one of those times."

"The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we're going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves."

Washington Post June 27, 2008

"Bomb Kills Marines, Iraqi Tribal Leaders
At Least 40 Die in Two Separate Attacks"

Posted by dansavageforeignpolicyexpertandwarmonger | June 28, 2008 9:44 AM
11

Say "YES" to War on Iraq by Dan Savage Oct. 2002

"War may be bad for children and other living things, but there are times when peace is worse for children and other living things, and this is one of those times."

"The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we're going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves."

Washington Post June 27, 2008

"Bomb Kills Marines, Iraqi Tribal Leaders
At Least 40 Die in Two Separate Attacks"

Posted by danfansarewarmongersupporters | June 28, 2008 9:57 AM
12

These are facts Americans continue to ignore:

1. It is not our duty or obligation to remove any dictator from any foreign country by invading and killing anyone in our way. The Monroe Doctrine, December 2, 1823

2. It is not our responsibility to invade a foreign country to promote the evil of democracy. The Monroe Doctrine, December 2, 1823

3 - It is not our responsibility to invade any foreign country to allegedly protect a neighboring country to settle squabbling, religious or tribal differences between them that have lasted decades or a thousand years. The Monroe Doctrine, December 2, 1823

4. The U.S. Constitution does not authorize the American people to be robbed using borrowed money to fund wars based on lies and what is known as nation building. Our military is for our defense, period. We have the right to defend if attacked.

5. Bush has acknowledged the fact that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11, 2001.

6. There were no weapons of mass destruction.

7. Iraq was NOT any kind of threat to these united States of America.

8. Bush and his co conspirators planned the invasion of Iraq long before September 11, 2001, because it is the agenda being pursued for world government and every country who doesn't fall lock step into line will be invaded and occupied until the desired results are achieved. That agenda includes making sure control of the world's oil supply is in the hands of the power brokers who own the U.S. Congress.

Posted by Ron Paul for President | July 3, 2008 8:14 AM

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