Archive for Politics
Can Twitter approximate polls?
At Pollster, Alex Lundry reviews a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon that attempts to use Twitter to approximate public opinion polls. For instance, the researchers used the prevalence of tweets like “Obama’s awesome” and “Obama sucks” to measure President Obama’s job approval rating, a common measure by pollsters. Implication:
This study also highlights a debate the polling community must have sooner or later: can the shortcomings of dirty data be overcome by a mix of sheer volume, sound data preparation/manipulation and savvy analysis? In this new era of IVR, online panels, social media and big data, the answer is increasingly pointing to yes – especially when you consider the advantages of speed, cost and access that these non-traditional data collection methods enjoy.
Post-UK election roundup: Fact checking myself
Last week I hazarded my guesses as to what the British election would lead to. Since CNN’s Fact Check doesn’t find my prognostications worth checking, unlike Saturday Night Live sketches, I’ll just have to do it myself (under the fold). Read more »
USA Today and the low-tax myth
Folks on the left this morning are having a heyday with an article appearing in USA Today with analysis that suggests that taxes are actually quite low and falling:
Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.
The problem is that this number is so incredible it beggars belief. Not that it’s fundamentally incorrect — just that it, perhaps inadvertently, leaves readers with an impression about the size of government spending that is utterly and completely untrue.
The article does point out that consumer spending has decreased in recent years, the stimulus included some tax credits, and tax rates have become even more progressive in the past decades and heavy with credits (traditional and refundable) to the point that almost half of American tax units pay no income tax. (Granted, this last point can be used misleadingly due to the recent bipartisan consensus that the tax code is a great way to institute social programs, a view to which I’m not entirely unsympathetic.)
But taken out of context, the average USA Today reader might well walk away from a quick skim of the article thinking that the government only spends 9.2 percent of gross domestic product. Less than a dime on the dollar. A bargain!
Let’s parse this out a bit.
First of all, ceteris paribus, as personal income decreases, we’d expect the percentage of personal income collected by the federal government to decrease. That’s evidence of our highly progressive tax system. So the story isn’t really one about tax rates at all — it’s about revenues collected.
Second, readers may walk away knowing that the US government costs much more than 9.2% of national income to operate, but figure that corporations or foreigners pay the rest. In other words, “we” pay 9.2%, “they” pay the rest. It’s an iron-clad rule of public finance that corporations don’t pay taxes, people pay taxes. All tax incidence ultimately rests on a person. If you tax a corporation’s profits, for instance, the people who pay are the owners of its shares, who are (ultimately) individuals.
Third of all, it’s important to get a sense of what state and local governments collect. In 2006, state governments collected over $710 billion in taxes, around 5.4% of GDP. When you include local governments, that figure goes to $1.24 trillion, or about 9.5% of GDP. In other words, in 2006, state and federal revenues were about to the percentage of personal income collected by all levels of government in taxes in 2009. That should give you a sense of how skewed this particular figure is. All levels of government in 2009 did not cost less than state and local governments in 2006.
Fourth, the historical tables in the President’s FY2011 budget give a good sense of what tax revenues look like. In 2009, according to table 2.1, the federal government collected $2.104 trillion in revenues. Assuming a GDP of $14 trillion, that means federal revenues were 15% of national income. Including receipts on the state and local level (see the last graf), even assuming they fell to 2006 levels, this means 2009 tax revenues at all levels of government were around $3.35 trillion, or about 24% of GDP.
But perhaps governments took in surplus revenues and spent less than that? Not hardly. The 2009 federal budget deficit was $1.4 trillion, the largest since 1945 at 9.9 percent of national income, and tripling the previous year’s deficit. The states face a total shortfall of another $113 billion.
In other words, in addition to collecting about a quarter of GDP in taxes, governments in the US at all levels tacked on another 10.7% of GDP in future costs. Add that up and governments in the US spent over a third of national income in 2009. A far cry from the 9.2% that the USA Today article inadvertently implies.
I have no doubt the BEA figures are accurate and that the article’s author, Dennis Cauchon, reported them faithfully. But by not giving context and not adequately defining terms, readers can walk away with a belief that American government costs about a quarter of what it really does.
Young people’s attitudes towards the word “libertarian”
Many bloggers commented on last week’s Pew survey that asked whether respondents had positive or negative feelings towards the word “libertarian.” I was curious how this would break by age, and Pew kindly provided us the crosstabs, below:
Two observations. One, young people have more positive feelings towards the word “libertarian” than older Americans and fewer don’t know the word. That’s good news for libertarian brand. But two, young people seem to have more positive feelings about most words, including “progressive,” “civil liberties,” and “family values.” I wonder if young people really know what any of these words mean, or whether this reflects a certain sunny generational optimism? I’d be interested in your thoughts in the comments.
British Election Forecast, or Politico Fanfic
I decided to put up my prediction for Ol’ Blighty’s perfectly charming dustup of an election simply because if I get it right I’ll get to point triumphantly back at this post, and if I get it wrong I’ll simply walk away and forget it. Or in other words, here are my predictions, “which later this month I will remind you of with self-satisfaction if they come to pass, or otherwise hope that you will have forgotten.”
Here we go:
Tories win overall popular vote, followed by Lib Dems, with Labour coming in third but just by a hair. Let’s say 34-29-28. BNP vote share at a percent or less, with a notable drop in areas where they won council seats in last year’s election and in Yorkshire and the Northwest which sent BNPers to Brussels.
The Tories win the popular vote but don’t have a majority in the Commons. Cameron makes a play to Clegg, who playing to script demands the introduction of PR voting as the cost of being a coalition member. Without a majority party and no coalition forthcoming, Brown is given the chance to form a government.
Before he can fail — which happens no later than losing the confidence vote after this month’s Queen’s speech — Cameron insists on a chance to form a government on the theory that the sitting prime minister only has the right to form a government if his party comes in second in votes. It has never happened that a sitting PM’s party has come in third in the vote count, no there’s no precedent for this constitutional theory either way.
Thus, Brown and Cameron both claim, in sufficiently hedged language, the right to form a government. Whitehall scrambles. Sterling drops. The Queen tries to stay out of it, and is helped when Prince Charles says something inadvised and draws attention away from her.
Ed Balls and at least one other front bencher get Portilloed. Hazel Blears is drubbed.
Tories win a clear majority of votes and seats in England, and treble their Scottish contingent to three. Lots of gumbling by Daily Mail readers about how the Celtic fringe is holding England hostage once again.
The speaker election will be unusually brutal.
Within a month, the Tories have formed a minority government, perhaps bringing a minor party or two on board for some added comfort. A snap election in 2012 returns a healthy Conservative majority.
The flip side of tolerance
As I had noted before, TargetPoint and Politico had commissioned a poll of attendees to a DC Tea Party rally, including questions to separate libertarians from conservatives. Alex Lundry has been blogging new bits of analysis the last week. I found this observation particularly interesting:
However, while [Ron] Paul does not perform well among traditional values promoters, Palin does perform decently among the more libertarian group, indicating some potential crossover appeal between the two camps of the Tea Party. Beyond that, Gingrich and Romney perform adequately enough in both groups that they too have potential to be a bridge between the libertarian and socially conservative sects of the Tea Party.
So it seems libertarians can live with conservative politicians, while conservatives have a harder time living with libertarian politicians. Is this the flip side of the social tolerance that differentiates libertarians from conservatives? Perhaps. And I wonder if this helps explain why the historical alliance between libertarians and conservatives has often favored conservative politicians.
David Brooks misreads the “center”
David Brooks laments the rise of the “libertarian/Goldwater-esque” streak of the Republican Party and the re-emergence of what he describes as the “government war,” the “stale” debate over “big government-versus-small government.”
To each his own, I guess.
But what I find interesting is Brooks’ historical narrative of where this libertarian streak comes from. The story begins with Obama. By his reading, there was a glimmer of hope for centrists like Brooks, with Obama and his band of “brilliant pragmatists.” But the financial crisis and Obama’s attempt to push too many big-projects too fast, soured the countries’ centrist mood. And now, “politics is more polarized than ever.”
I think this story misses the mark on two counts. First, the story doesn’t start in the right place. As David Boaz and I have shown, this libertarian streak began with Bush. As early as 2004, polls detected the dissatisfaction of small-government libertarians towards the Bush administration’s more big-government policies. This libertarian-inspired anger has been growing and gathering since. Libertarians have led the way.
Second, I don’t think calling this sort of politics “polarized” accurately captures it. Brooks writes, “The Democrats have become the government party and the Republicans are the small government party.” True, this libertarian streak is mad at Obama and the Democrats. But it’s not really a polarized, red-team, blue-team thing. Polls show that these libertarian-inspired voters are just as mad at Republicans. If Republicans are indeed the small government party, they certainly haven’t sold many voters.
Perhaps in recent history, libertarians occupy the “center” of American politics–though certainly drawn on a different map than Brooks imagines.
Rand Paul Money Bomb
Supporters of Rand Paul, Ron Paul’s son and a candidate for US Senate in Kentucky, are organizing a money bomb today. A money bomb is simple: get a large number of donors to make small or medium donations over the course of a few hours. The theory behind money bombs is that they generate large fundraising in a short time period, which generates news coverage, which in turn generates more fundraising.
I’d give even odds that Frank Rich will suggest that the use of the word “bomb” means that Paul’s supporters are violent, anti-government types whose money bombs are likely to become IEDs in the near future. [Addendum: I'll concede that organizing this event on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing is a bit tone deaf on the campaign's part.]
In more serious news, co-blogger David Kirby has an excellent analysis in today’s Politico with Cato Institute veep David Boaz about libertarian beliefs and the Tea Party crowd.
Tea Party split 43% conservative to 42% libertarian
Fascinating new poll out today from Politico & TargetPoint. For the first time, researchers have measured the two camps of the Tea Party ideologically, conservative versus libertarian. Interestingly, Tea Party supporters are split down the middle:
Indeed, combining the responses to some of these questions is a revealing ideological exercise: 43% of attendees said government is doing too much AND that government should promote traditional values, a distinctly conservative view; 42% said government is doing too much AND that government should NOT promote any particular set of values, an ideological view used by the Cato Institute as an indicator of libertarianism (currently 23% of all Americans fit into this category).
Also at Politco today, Boaz and I explore where these libertarians come from. We see the origins of this shift as early as the Obama election, when libertarians swung away from Obama and the Democrats after supporting them in greater percentages in 2004 and 2006. This 2008 swing seems to be an early indicator of the libertarian-inspired anger of the Tea Party that Alex Lundry and his colleagues at TargetPoint are finding today.
UPDATE: Dave Weigel points out some potential biases in the TargetPoint / Politico poll, since they surveyed only DC Tea Party attendees. Nonetheless, this is the first data point on ideological breakdown of Tea Party and an important finding for other pollsters and researchers to verify nationally.
Libertarian sentiment has finally gone mainstream
Or so says Chris Stirewalt, political editor of the Washington Examiner:
Three years ago, the Republican establishment piled scorn on the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling… Paul will not likely be the next president… But there’s no doubt that hating the government and the powerful interests that pull Washington’s strings has gone from the radical precincts of the Right and Left to the mainstream.
McCain on Hayworth
This may not actually be an original concept, and it likely is not, but this is the first time I can recall seeing a candidate for a major political office creating a spoof ad for his opponent. The McCain people have put together a pretty funny take on JD Hayworth:
My Bill Easterly Moment
In his 2006 book The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, economist William Easterly draws a contrast between “planners” and “searchers”; the former offer top-down, big-think approaches to economic development, while the latter think smaller and look for marginal improvements.
Chapter five of his book is entitled “The Rich Have Markets, the Poor Have Bureaucrats.” Many of Easterly’s critics suggest that this and other dichotomic language are, charitably, unhelpful or, unchartitably, evidence of a Rothbardian anti-state mentality. But in a story about his hometown of Takoma Park, Maryland, Easterly shows that he understands the value of effective bureaucracies — he just believes the evidence shows that smaller bureaucracies, more local to the people they serve, work better than large bureaucracies even if they are staffed with the best and the brightest:
I once had a pothole in front of my house in Takoma Park, Maryland. I got the city bureaucracy to fix the pothole in three easy steps: (1) I called my city councilwoman, Kathy Porter, and asked her to please have the city repait the pothole; (2) the next day, the Takoma Park Public Works bureaucracy was out there filling the pothole; and (3) actually, there was no third step. This worked because the city bureaucracy is accountable to elected politicians such as Kathy Porter, who is accountable to me and other voters. Kathy Porter is a Searcher. Sher built he political career in Takoma Park on responding to constituents.
I take the bus to get to and from work, not out of hair-shirted obeisance to our Gaia Mother, but because it’s cheaper — even with a few taxi rides a month — than buying a second car.
When Arlington Rapid Transit created a new bus route that runs less than a block from my house, I noted that it went for over a half-mile without a stop. It would be convenient for me, and many of my bus-riding neighbors, to break that stretch up with a stop in the middle. So I emailed the director of ART’s bus service, Steven Yaffe, cc’ing my county council member, suggesting they put a stop in.
Well late last month I got my stop. I asked, and the county responded. No hearings, no special elections, no 527s, no PACs, no lawsuits. While hardly life-altering, it’s shortened my commute by a few minutes, and it’s made my neighborhood a bit more transit-friendly.
Most political news headlines and analysis focuses on what happens in Washington, but local government can have a big impact on our lives — whether it’s efficient and effective or corrupt and bloated. Observers and thinkers from Tocqueville to Kirk realized that local policies tend to be more effective than national policies. Those who embrace the concept of subsidiarity and searchers in lieu of centralization and planners should consider that local governments are much different animals than national governments — and in many respects are much more important to our day-to-day lives.
New Winston Group survey of Tea Parties
The Winston Group released a new study of the attitudes of Tea Party members:
In one of the most extensive looks to date at just who Tea Party activists are, how they think, and the ideas that matter to them, the report found that 17% of the people polled considered themselves “part of the Tea Party movement” and more than four in ten Tea Party members said they were either Independents or Democrats. In three national surveys, done for New Models from December 2009 through February 2010, 57% of Tea Party members called themselves Republicans, another 28% said they were Independents, and 13% were Democrats. Two-thirds of Tea Party members identify as conservatives but 26% say they are moderate and 8% described themselves as liberal. The study also found Tea Party members are more likely to be male by a 56-44% margin, slightly older than the electorate as a whole and middle income earners. When it comes to issues, the research found that Tea Party activists espouse a strong economic conservatism. [...] In the February 2010 New Models study, 36% of Tea Party members name the economy and jobs as their top issue with national deficit and spending close behind at 21% — over twice as high as the overall electorate. However, when given the choice in the January survey, Tea Party members favored “reducing unemployment to 5%” over balancing the budget 63-32%, which closely reflects the overall electorate (64-32%). While Tea Party members prioritize job creation over deficit spending and tax issues, they value economically conservative policies because they view them as a means to reducing unemployment and improving the economy. Over 4 out of 5 Tea Party members (85%) say tax cuts for small business will create more jobs than increased government spending on infrastructure while the overall electorate prefers tax cuts by a more modest 61-31% margin.
Press release here; whole analysis here [pdf]. Unfortunately the survey doesn’t seem to include any information on education or demographics. But I’ll leave it to someone more knowledgeable about survey data than me to parse the details. (Via the Twitter feed of Nicki Kurokawa.)
Are think tanks still thinking?
Bob Hahn (until recently of AEI) and Peter Passell offer a lesson from the David Frum firing:
While we find this controversy intriguing in its own right (gossip… inside hardball… what could be better?), we think it misses some broader points in the way the market for think tank services is evolving. Over the last two decades, the top-drawer policy shops (AEI and Brookings) are more dependent on proactive fund-raising – and, by no coincidence, are more amenable to playing partisan games and keener to be in the public eye. These changes have, in turn, altered the role of the policy wonks who inhabit the space. First, there is much greater pressure to be visible; occupation of elite real estate like the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal is seen as critical to raising money. And while the think tanks still do a lot of quasi-academic research, they are more inclined to hire pundits with great rolodexes (make that great Outlook contacts). Note, too, that to stay in the limelight, think tanks are adjusting their time horizons. Tomorrow’s issues matter less than today’s. Accordingly, publication in refereed technical journals – especially the ones that make no effort to be journalist-friendly – counts less for promotion and status.
It is difficult to argue with this assessment.
The angry Rorschach movement
The Republican leadership, such as it is, seems to have settled on a strategy of “repeal and replace” for healthcare reform and the coming election. I’m sorry to have to tell them, but even with gains in November, they won’t be able to overcome a veto. The best hope for repeal is if the incumbent president is defeated in 2012 and both the Senate and House are in Republican hands. Good luck with that.
Still, that’s the strategy they’re going to pursue. Not so much because Republicans have any principles, as Dan has been pointing out, but because they want to tap into the anger and discontent that’s manifesting as the Tea Party movement. What I’m afraid of, though, is that the Republicans, and the broader “liberty movement” in general, have little idea of what the Tea Party is all about.
In his latest column, Ron Brownstein describes skepticism about the health care bill, and big government in general, as centered in the white non-college-educated middle class:
Obama has already been hurt by the perception, fanned by Republicans, that the principal beneficiaries of his efforts to repair the economy are the same interests that broke it: Wall Street, big banks, and the wealthy. The belief that Washington has transferred benefits up the income ladder is pervasive across society but especially pronounced among white voters with less than a college education, the group that most resisted Obama in 2008. Now health care could threaten Democrats from the opposite direction by stoking old fears, particularly among the white working class, that liberals are transferring income down the income ladder to the “less deserving.”
Without commenting on the validity of the perceptions he describes, think Brownstein’s right about the demographic provenance of the Tea Party folks. This reminds me of two things.
One is an essay by Michael Brendan Dougherty about the late radical right-wing writer Sam Francis. It was in that article that I first learned about the anti-elitist social commentary of Francis and James Burnham. The gist is that democracy is a sham masking control by a managerial class of elites at the expense of the traditional (read white) working class. Michael’s article is worth a read, and I’ll probably plumb Francis’s and Burnham’s work as I look more into the Tea Party movement.
The other thing I’m reminded of is the 1993 Michael Douglas movie Falling Down. It’s probably not a coincidence this movie came out when it did, sandwiched between the Perot candidacy and the Republican Revolution in Congress. The movie is a garbage heap of cliches, but it anticipates the directionless anger that I see in the Tea Party today.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but let’s just say that it’s a general unease with the siren song of a relatively successful mass movement. I see it luring not just the Republican Party, but the somewhat more intelligent parts of the free market movement as well.
I think I can be forgiven a lack of specificity in my unease since there’s no one who can tell me what exactly the Tea Party is about. Someone recently told me quite astutely that the Tea Party is like Barack Obama’s candidacy, a blank canvas on which we can all project our hopes and aspirations. And that’s what I’m worried about. Well-meaning folks are trying to co-opt the movement for their more-identifiably-pro-liberty ends, but I’m not sure it’s going to be a fit.
The Tea Party seems to be an anti-elite, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant, populist grab bag of emotion. And while I can’t blame them for the sentiment given how Washington’s been performing as of late, I’m not crazy about the amorphousness of it all.
