The NN11 straw poll tells a complex story for Pres. Obama
Quite a bit was made earlier in the week about the Revolution Messaging/Democracy Corps straw poll (PDF) conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner of roughly one-fifth of the attendees at the Netroots Nation 2011 Convention in Minneapolis.
"80% approval among the convention-goers! All is well! Obama has no problems with his base! Any concerns with the president are largely limited to the "Professional Left"!
Such was the consensus opinion of probably a dozen tweets that floated through my Twitter feed earlier this week.
To which I say the following: Yes.
And not even close.
To be sure, the 80% approval figure is a legitimate one. What's more, it echoes other recent polling on the matter. Among liberals (and 93% of those taking the straw poll identified themselves as either liberal or progressive), the president's job approval was at 86% in the most recent Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation poll.
But dig a little deeper. GQR didn't just ask the binary question that has been so often reported and tweeted. They asked a pair of questions that measured intensity. And in that data lay some real legitimate concerns for the president.
Consider the following data point:
Q.3 Please indicate if you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?
Strongly Approve: 27
Somewhat Approve: 53
Somewhat Disapprove: 13
Strongly Disapprove: 7
If that doesn't make the Obama re-elect team nervous, it probably should.
Look, the simple fact is that the NN11 attendees are going to vote for Obama. There is little doubt about that. A total of 96% of them identified themselves as "almost certain" to vote in November of 2012. And given some other stats in the poll dealing with the "cool/warm" spectrum, we can be reasonably certain that they aren't voting for the GOP (a stout 4.71 out of 100 on the temperature gauge).
But team Obama has to be concerned about more than just that. They have to be concerned about spit on envelopes, legs pounding pavement, fists knocking on doors, and dollars being stuffed in envelopes or exchanged online.
These things are not well-defined by binary "approve/disapprove" metrics. This is where intensity of support comes into play. And when two of your supporters are tepid for every one that is rabid, that is not a comfortable circumstance heading into an election.
Here, I have to give a very reluctant hat tip to the House of Ras. Early in the 2009/2010 cycle, Rasmussen changed their presidential approval poll's primary metric to the difference between strong approval and strong disapproval. At the time, folks (myself included) scoffed, arguing that Rasmussen was changing its math to make the president look worse. Obama's numbers have always been a bit worse with those feeling strongly as opposed to those merely registering an opinion. Earlier this week, the president was at a net -17 (22/39) with those with strong opinions, while he was at a more equivocal -5 (47/52) overall.
But it has to be said: there are legitimate grounds for using such a metric. Excitement matters when it comes to all those intangibles that are the difference between electoral victory and defeat.
On a more basic level, it is the difference between voting for the president on Election Day and staying home and getting the laundry done on Election Day. Last month, I noted that some of the demographic groups that supported the president most vehemently in 2008 had softened in their intense support recently. Compounding the damage is the fact that some of those groups (voters making under $50K, young voters) are typically groups with flagging voter turnout under normal circumstances.
Anyone who questions how much this matters needs to remember two statistics from the 2008/2010 exit polls. In 2008, there were considerably more Democrats (39%) in the voter pool than Republicans (32%). Also, while conservatives outnumbered liberals, it was not by a dramatic margin (34% to 22%). In 2010, the party ID of the electorate wound up being dead even between the two parties at 35%. Meanwhile, conservatives now outnumbered liberals by a better than two-to-one margin (42% to 20%).
This is what happens when the base feels no better than lukewarm about the state of the nation, and the performance of those who carry their banner. The enthusiasm gap, as it turned out, was real. Democratic politicos, starting with the one at the top of the ticket, should be deeply worried about a similar gap.
The Republicans, oddly enough, might be saving the president's bacon on that score. As mentioned earlier, GQR asked people to rate (on a scale of 0-100) how "warm" they felt towards a number of political entities. The president scored fairly well: liked, if not beloved (73.25). That placed him fourth of the 13 entities polled, with Rachel Maddow pacing the field at 84.86.
But the GOP, and their accomplices in the tea party, drew the sharpest responses from NN11 convention-goers. The Republican Congress came in dead last, at a nearly universally reviled rating of 3.39. This barely beat Newt Gingrich (3.63), the tea party (4.65), and the GOP at-large (4.71).
This poll of the most politically motivated subset of the progressive wing is another data point that suggests that a confrontational approach with a badly overreaching Congress might be not just the right thing to do, it might be an act of election year wisdom, as well.
Poll after poll suggests a pretty serious amount of buyers' remorse in the post-2010 electoral environment. It actually is starting to draw a significant resemblance to the 1996 cycle, except that the GOP was fairly unloved even in 2010 as they were cleaning house (they were actually somewhat liked in 1994, by comparison). So, if anything, the Boehner/Cantor/Ryan Congress of today is actually in worse shape than the Gingrich Congress of 1995.
And, just like Gingrich proved to be an anchor fastened to Bob Dole's presidential campaign by Bill Clinton, the GOP Congress of today will be welded to that fortunate candidate who emerges with the Republican nomination. If base Democrats aren't drawn to the president out of enthusiastic support for the agenda, they can be drawn to him by repulsion to the opposition agenda.
Which, interestingly, means that the president's best way of reaching the base in either event would seem to be found in confrontation, not consensus or compromise. It is not a strategy without risks: confrontation could turn off centrist voters that might lean ever-so-slightly in the president's direction absent a big confrontation. At the end of the day, however, there is yardage to be gained in picking a fight, especially when you are fighting someone who is generally not liked to begin with.
The bottom line, yet again, is that while the president has the support of his base, what he needs to win is their devotion. He can get that either by regaining the strong support of his base, or benefitting from the toxicity of his opposition.
Either way, it would seem like the president is best served by drawing lines in the sand, especially on matters of deep importance like jobs and the economy.