Articles by Lynn Vavreck

by and in Model Politics

Leading up to the 2010 election, Model Politics published several posts about the distorted view typical Americans have of those who live around them – overestimating the presence, by large amounts, of everything from illegal immigrants to the number of people making over $250,000.  The greatest misperception, however, was in guesses about the proportion of food stamp recipients in a person’s state.  On average, people were off by a factor of three (11.6% in reality at the time, 32.2% as the average response).  Given people’s distorted view of food-stamp-reality, is Newt Gingrich’s recent effort to paint President Obama as "the ... read more

by , and in Model Politics

We don't begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. It's because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don't need and the country can't afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference - like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That's not right. Americans know it's not right. This has been interpreted ... read more

by in Model Politics

Have the attacks on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital had any effect on voters?  Have they even gotten through to voters?  In a new poll of likely South Carolina Republican primary voters released on January 20th by YouGov, nearly half (48%) of the respondents said they weren’t sure whether they approved or disapproved of Romney’s time at Bain.  In the face of all the advertising and free media directed at painting Romney as a “vulture capitalist” the fact that half of likely Republican primary voters in South Carolina could not form an opinion on this question is striking. Even ... read more

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Now that Rick Perry has dropped out of the presidential race and the feel in South Carolina is that Gingrich may be surging (again), where are Perry supporters likely to go?  How much of a role will Perry’s endorsement of Newt Gingirch play?  Nate Silver, at 538.com has one take on this here.  Here is another snapshot, using new nationwide data released by YouGov yesterday, before the debate.   By far, the second choice for the nomination among former Perry voters is Mitt Romney (42.9% choose Romney).  Gingrich comes in a close second for 28.6% of Perry voters.  This pattern is ... read more

by and in Model Politics

The debate among the Republican candidates over Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital has raised again questions about whether Romney’s tenure in the “1%” will damage his campaign.  The Obama team certainly welcomes this debate.  After all, they have been attacking Romney along precisely these lines. The day after Mr. Romney squeezed out a razor-thin victory in the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Obama’s political brain-trust trained most of its fire on him, painting him as both a Wall Street 1 percent type and an unprincipled flip-flopper. Some new survey data that Lynn Vavreck and I have gathered in collaboration with YouGov suggests ... read more

by in Model Politics

What will happen to all those Santorum, Paul, and Gingrich supporters when the Republican party nominates Mitt Romney this summer?  In Spring of 2008, droves of Hillary Clinton supporters declared that they would not, indeed could not, vote for Barack Obama in the general election.  Instead, they would cast their ballots for John McCain.  How many of them did that? Using data from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (that I ran with Simon Jackman from Stanford University), I looked at the general election vote choice as reported by people who voted for Clinton (or Edwards) in the primaries compared ... read more

If you have fired a gun, ride a motorcycle, own power-tools, or watch NCIS you might be a Republican

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Are we, as a nation, closely or deeply divided?  I have always been compelled by the argument that observing a 50-50 election outcome (or an evenly split poll result) tells us very little about whether each half of the electorate hates the other half – or whether we are all just flipping coins, relatively indifferent between the choices in front of us.  Coloring states either red or blue doesn’t help to clarify this relationship. When we color U.S. counties in shades of red or blue to demonstrate the mix of support for parties across the country in a given election, ... read more

Are YOU a Citizen of the World?

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In his “Political Times” column last week in the New York Times, Matt Bai wrote that we are witnessing a sudden rise in political longing – nostalgia, it seems, is winning the 2010 election.   In hard times, Mr. Bai argues, Americans long for the “good old days.”  We want to re-elect political leaders from the booming 1980s, revisit twenty-year old rock songs, and recall the halcyon days of a Bill Clinton White House before a budget and a pizza redefined everything.  From my perspective, the longing and the nostalgia is made of more than just a desire for a better ... read more

Looking to 2012: It's Lose - Lose, but Obama is Still Ahead

by in Model Politics

The shine has come off Barack Obama.  His approval ratings are falling, fewer people would vote for him today than voted for him in 2008, and pundits interpret all of this as a bad sign for Democrats in Tuesday’s midterm elections. But, the shine is coming off the Republicans, too - and in equal magnitudes.  It turns out, that in the worse economic climate since the Depression, American voters are disillusioned with candidates from both parties.  And, if anything, the deflation of potential Republican presidential candidates is ever-so-slightly more precipitous than for President Obama.  Here’s the evidence:  Beginning in 2007, ... read more

Bio

Lynn Vavreck is associate professor of political science and Director of the Center for the Study of Campaigns at the University of California in Los Angeles.  She is the author of The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns and co-editor of Campaign Reform: Insights and Evidence.  In 2008 she was co-PI of the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project.  Her political analysis can be found on KTTV, KCBS, and KNBC in Los Angeles as well as in various print outlets.