The Hill, one of the two newspapers of Capital Hill, has a new poll out today that says that a majority of likely voters think that the payroll tax holiday has not helped them, by a 54% to 25% spread. That sounds like bad news but there are some caveats that should keep any weak-willed Democrat from using this new (and rather small) poll to defect from the president’s agenda.
You can see the cross tabs here.
That most folks don’t feel the impact is not really that surprising. For average middle class income families it comes out to a total of about $1,500 a year. The way it comes is in the form of payroll so it comes in $30 or $60 dollar increments depending on how they if they are paid weekly or bi-monthly.
That amount of extra money is not really going to be noticed, at least not like a one lump sum of $1,500 would be. But you can bet you butt that it would be missed if it were not there.
More importantly the fact that people don’t notice it means that it is being spent. This more than any perceived benefit from the voters is why it needs to be extended. We know that the Republicans will do everything they can to keep the economy from improving before this fall’s election.
If the mood of the nation is that things are improving the major reason to fire the president is removed. That combined with their (likely) gut-shot nominee of Mitt Romney would make it very hard for them to win the White House or the Senate.
I am not at all convinced that this poll is not an outlier with this finding striking me as particularly odd:
Despite the holiday season misstep, The Hill Poll shows that voters favor Republicans over Democrats on tax policy, with 45 percent saying the GOP has a better approach, compared to 41 percent for Democrats.
Given that other polls have consistently shown that Americans by a more than 2/3 majority favor increasing taxes on the wealthy, which is anathema to the Republicans, this seems like cognitive dissonance to me.
One of the ways that this poll is a little misleading is that it is likely voters. There is a lot of variability in likely voter screens. Different organizations weight this differently and that is probably why there is disconnect between the polls that survey the general population and ones like this Hill poll that filter for likely voters.
What you should know (and I bet more than ¾ of the folks on the Hill probably don’t) is that the firm which conducted the poll, Pulse Opinion Research, is a spun-off Rasmussen Reports company. It allows anyone to run an automated voice poll, which is a far cry form the person to person interview polls that reputable polling places run.
As anyone who is reading this knows Rasmussen polling always skews towards the Republican position. They have been so unreliable that almost no one takes them on their own as an indicator and this should be the case with this poll.
Unfortunately the folks who run our government often read The Hill and will probably not look into the cross tabs or who ran the poll. Which is always a problem because if you do not understand the methodology nor the reliability of a poll you really don’t know how much credence to give it.
One of the failings of Rasmussen’s filter is that it changes all the time. If a party is being favored nationally or state-wide then it the filter is going to give more likelihood of their voters tuning out. This changes on a month to month or even week to week. While there is an argument that can be made (I don’t buy it) that this makes any given poll more accurate, it also means that you really cannot compare apples to apples even from the exact same questions in a Rasmussen or Pulse Opinion poll.
I hear a lot of you saying “Okay, so we know Rasmussen sucks, but water is wet and the sky is blue, so what?” Well here it the so what, gentle reader, as I’ve mentioned above staffers and elected officials read The Hill.
Some of them are Democrats who are, shall we say, a little lacking in the courage of their convictions. This means the Republicans might be able to peel a few of them away. What is really important in this fight is not the payroll tax holiday (though taking that money out of the economy is a giant mistake at this point) but the extension of unemployment benefits and the Medicare Doc fix that are bundled with it.
If those things go down then things will get significantly worse in a very short period of time.
Finally there is a chance to hand the Republicans yet another embarrassing and defining defeat in an election year. It is hard to believe that they are this pugnacious and bull-headed but there are actually GOP Freshmen who are lining up to fight about the KeystoneXL pipeline in again.
It doesn’t matter to these malignant Jethro Bodine’s that there has to be a reapplication process before it can be considered and that it was their own insistence on a fast decision that derailed the pipeline in the first place. They think that they have a good hostage here and are going to the well one more time, even if they got their asses handed to them last time and will get them handed to them again. We should always take the opportunity to rub bullies faces in the dirty and this is a proven issue to do it on.
So, here is how you can assure the right thing happens and this article in The Hill does not give them cover. Take a couple of minutes to call your Representative and Senator, even if they are Republicans, and tell their staffers that you want them to support the Payroll Tax Holiday extension. You can find their office numbers at this link.
I know it might not seem like it will matter to the Republicans, but the point here is to make sure that instead of just relying on this spurious outlier of poll they also hear that there are voters, likely voters, who are watching what they are doing. This is doubly important for Democrats.
So, on the day that Occupy DC is probably going to be dismantled make your voice heard about standing up for the little people of this nation. You’ll feel better for doing it. And imagine how shitty you will feel if you blow this off and the payroll tax extension and the other programs attached to it goes down because of a few weak Dems that needed a little prodding from their constituents.
The floor is yours.