Rick Santorum’s meteoric rise in the national polls following his surprise February 7th wins in Minnesota, Missouri and Missouri naturally begs the question, “Where did the Santorum surge come from?”         My analysis of a nationally representative re-interview survey conducted by YouGov last week (respondents were first interviewed in January 2012) indicates that Santorum has his morally conservative brethren to thank for this front-runner status.  Santorum support, not surprisingly, increased rather dramatically among these panelists who were interviewed in both January and February (from 16 to 30 percent).   More importantly for our present purposes, the figure below shows that this ... read more

Did the the contraception contretemps hurt Obama's standing among Catholic voters?  Despite endless speculation about this, evidence has been in short supply. With some newly released data from YouGov, I can shed some light on this question. Here is the percent who approve of Obama among both Catholics and non-Catholics in the last 7 weeks of YouGov/Economist polls. A timeline of events in the contretemps is here.  The announcement occurred on Friday, January 20, just before a YouGov poll went into the field.  It registered no apparent effect, relative to the previous week's poll.  However, the following week, there was ... read more

Attitudes about tax policy are an important aspect of the dynamics of public opinion about how best to deal with the current federal deficit and the looming increases in spending associated with entitlement programs like Medicare. Democratic and Republican politicians have staked out different positions on the question of whether taxes in general ought to rise, and who in particular should bear the burden of those increases. With that posturing in mind, it is useful to understand exactly what Americans think tax rates should be. In light of those debates, we fielded the following question about marginal tax rates: Typically, ... read more

Much has been made of the GOP’s recent “enthusiasm” problem.  According to a Politico news story earlier this week, “Democrats currently are more excited about voting this fall than Republicans are, a sign that doesn’t bode well for the GOP effort to reclaim the White House.” Turnout has indeed been dismal in the most recent primaries and caucuses –although there are many other factors that could be at play, including the spread out primary calendar and lack of a competitive Democratic contest. And polls are now finding that Republicans report being less enthusiastic about voting in the November presidential election ... read more

Since assuming the presidency, Barack Obama has been plagued by rumors that he is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and, as a result, is not eligible to serve as president. The most common claim is that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, but other stories abound. These rumors have shown a surprising resilience over the last four years. In fact, polls conducted by numerous media organizations repeatedly demonstrated that a significant portion of the American public claimed that Obama was not born in the United States, while many others were not sure if he was. Time ... read more

Some liberal political commentators pointed to the racially charged debate exchange between Juan Williams and Newt Gingrich, in which the former Speaker of the House reiterated that African-Americans “should demand jobs, not food-stamps,” as the impetus behind his stunning come from behind victory in the South Carolina Primary.  Or as Jesse Jackson put it in an op-ed last week, “Gingrich's campaign limped into South Carolina on life support. His revival came from his cunning peddling of a poisonous potion of race-bait politics to a virtually all-white electorate.”  Of course, those matter of fact claims had little basis in empirical evidence.  ... read more

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

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

Several recent studies by political scientists show racial and ethnocentric attitudes were not only strongly related to 2008 voting behavior, but that these attitudes had a much larger influence on that year’s presidential race than they had on the all-white presidential contests of the past (see: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).  The studies referenced measure anti-black predispositions in a variety of ways, with “racial resentment” perhaps the most potent predictor of opposition to Obama’s candidacy.  Interestingly enough, this measure of racial conservatism closely mirrors the content of last week’s heated debate exchange between Juan Williams and Newt Gingrich, presenting ... read more

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