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 1.  My last post observed that in 1970, people with higher incomes were less likely to say that people who are successful get ahead because of luck, but that in 2016 no relationship was visible.  How about education?  In 1970, there was no relationship between education and opinions after you controlled for income.  In 2016, there was:                        LuckNot HS grad     19%HS only            16%Some college    10%College grad     14%Grad educ         16%That is, the middle levels of education were least likely to say that luck was what mattered.  This supports my general point about people at the top becoming less likely to assert their superiority (also see this post).2.  In January, I tried to understand the persistence of Republican support for Donald Trump by comparing it to views of Watergate.  Views on whether Watergate was a "very serious matter" or "just politics" shifted towards "a very serious matter" during the earlier part of the Watergate investigation, but then stabilized.  They were pretty evenly divided in the summer of 1974 (not long before Nixon resigned) and in several later surveys that asked people to look back.  In that post, I said "Of course, Nixon was ineligible to run for President,  but no one said he should remain a major voice in the party and no one sought his endorsement when running for office."  I later found some questions from 1979 that were prefaced "there has been some talk of President Nixon getting back into active political life" and then asked what they thought about several possible ways.  (I don't remember whether there actually was such talk or whether the people doing the survey just thought it was an interesting question).  The percent saying it would be a good idea for him to:                                                              Republicans      Independents     DemocratsRun for office                                          18%                   14%                     7%Be appointed to high post                       14%                   10%                    5%Speak out on issues                                 55%                    33%                   27%Take active role in party                         31%                     19%                   14%About 8 or 9 percent said they weren't sure--that was pretty constant across all the party/question combinations.  So a substantial number of Republicans supported the idea of Nixon taking "an active role in the workings of the Republican party," and some even thought he should run for office.    After Trump's loss, Republican elites seemed to expect their voters to spontaneously turn against him, and then be surprised that he retained substantial popular support (or interpreted it as evidence that he had a unique personal appeal).  This example shows that they shouldn't have been surprised:  Nixon had significant support from Republican voters even after he had acknowledged wrongdoing, resigned, and kept a low profile for several years.  Why was elite behavior different in the two cases?  The most apparent factor is that in the 1970s there was a stronger core of leadership that could speak for the majority of the party in Congress.  But I think that there's also another:  there's now a stronger sense of "team spirit" among both politicians and opinion leaders.  That is, Republicans were reluctant to make common cause with Democrats.  As a result, even those who aren't Trump supporters have promoted the idea that he's being unfairly treated, that Democrats have done similar things in the past or are trying to do them now--e. g. Ross Douthat's indignation about efforts to remove Trump from the ballot ("antidemocratic and incompetent at once, signifying ... a general elite fear of the voting public").  That makes it easier for ordinary Republicans to conclude that it's all "just politics."[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 In 1939, the Gallup poll asked "Do you think people who are successful get ahead largely because of their luck or largely because of their ability?"  They asked the question again in 1970, and CBS news asked it in March and September 2016.                  Luck         Ability        DK/NA1939         16%            80%           4%1970           8%            86%           6%3/2016       14%            81%          6%9/2016       11%            80%           6%At each time, overwhelming majorities said that ability was the major cause.  That's important in itself, but differences by social standing are also of interest.  The 1939 survey contained an interviewer rating of economic standing, and people who ranked higher were more likely to say that ability was what mattered.  The 1970 and 2016 surveys didn't have the interviewer rating, so that can't be used for comparison, but both the 1939 and 1970 surveys asked about occupation, so you can compare occupational differences:The figure shows the log of the odds ratio of ability to luck answers by occupational group.  I classified the occupations as higher to lower:  business and professionals, then farmers and white collar workers, then skilled manual workers, with semi- and unskilled manual workers at the bottom.  At both times, people in "higher" occupations were more likely to say ability, but the relationship seems weaker in 1970--the estimated slope is about 1/2 to 2/3 as large, and there is more scatter around the line.  The 2016 survey didn't ask about occupation, but it did ask about income, which can be used to compare it to 1970.  Of course, the income categories were different, but there happened to be 11 each time, so to keep things simple I'll just number them as 1 through 11.There was a clear relationship in 1970--people with higher incomes are more likely to say that success depends on ability--but not in 2016.  Over the whole period, the relationship between social standing and opinions about the cause of success has become weaker, and maybe even disappeared.  Rather than looking down on the working classes, as critiques of "meritocracy" claim, people in the upper and middle classes have become less likely to assert their superiority.  I've argued this before, but didn't have such direct evidence.  [Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research--with special thanks for obtaining the 2016 survey]

 A few weeks ago, I wrote about a claim that "only about four percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat."  I gave some results from surveys that asked people how their spouses voted, but mentioned that in some cases people might be mistaken.  There aren't many surveys that ask members of couples separately about their votes, but I found one from 1993 by Nancy Burns, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Sidney Verba (data in ICPSR).  Among couples in which both members voted in the 1992 presidential election, 76% voted for the same candidate and 24% split their votes.  Of course, that election was unusual because an independent candidate (Ross Perot) got a large number of votes.  Limiting it to Bush and Clinton, 67% voted for the same candidate, and 7% split their votes.  The survey didn't ask people how they thought their spouse voted for President, but they did ask whether they disagreed on any race.  In 47% of the couples, both said no, and in 22% both said yes.  In the other 31%, one partner thought that they didn't disagree on any races and one thought they did.  Breaking votes for president down by perceived disagreement:                                 Same            DifferentBoth No                   96%              4%                      [89%-0%]Split                         68%              32%                    [60%-15%]Both yes                   46%              54%                    [32%-12%]The figures in brackets are limited to Bush and Clinton votes.  Looking at it another way, almost half of the split votes, and more than half of the Bush/Clinton split votes, came from couples in which one member thought that they agreed on all the races (there were no clear gender differences in accuracy of perception).  Although the data are old, I think that the general point is still relevant--if there's ambiguity, people tend to assume that their friends and family vote the same way that they do.  It's possible that increased political polarization has made people pay more attention to evidence about what their friends and family actually think, but it's also possible that it's made people more likely to avoid political discussions and more likely to assume that reasonable people agree with them.  

 A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times had a piece on the upcoming election that said "Red and Blue Americas are moving farther and farther apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally."  It went on to say "In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2020, that had grown to nearly four in 10. Indeed, only about 4 percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat."  I already wrote about the last point.  I think it refers to perceived voting differences from one's spouse (there aren't many political surveys which interview both members of a couple):  they are rare today, but were also rare in the previous years for which I had data (1944, 1960, and 1984).  This post will consider the hypothetical question about a child marrying someone from the other party.  This is a summary of all the relevant questions I could find:Year                       Positive               Negative             Survey

1960                     14%                       4%                         Almond/Verba
2008                                                     24%                     YouGov               
2010                                                     41%                     YouGov
2014                     28%                       17%                       Pew
2017                                                     14%                      PRRI
2018                     69%                       35%                       PRRI     
2020                                                     38%                      YouGovThe three figures in boldface involve the same question:  the others all had different questions and different response categories.  Some of the surveys just asked one question about marrying someone from the other party, but others asked everyone two questions--one about marrying a Republican and one about marrying a Democrat.  For the ones with two questions, I also show positive responses--people who say they would be pleased if the hypothetical child marries in the party (rather than saying it wouldn't matter to them).  There's clearly been an increase in both positive and negative reactions, although the differences among the questions makes it hard to say much about its exact timing (I wish people had stuck with the 1960 question).Why do we have stability with (perceived) party differences within actual marriages but increasingly negative reactions to party differences in a hypothetical marriage?  People generally know something about their spouse's political views (although there's undoubtedly a tendency to exaggerate agreement).  But with the hypothetical question, they have to come up with an idea of what an unspecified Democrat or Republican would be like.  The most likely source for that would be prominent Democratic or Republican political leaders.  In a time when ideological differences between parties were small and political leaders tried to show respect for the other side, that wouldn't seem so bad.  But with larger differences and more conflict between the parties, it would.  That is, increased objections to a hypothetical marriage to someone from the other party don't necessarily reflect increased social distance between Democrats and Republicans in the public--they could just reflect increased differences at the elite level.[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 A few days after the 2008 election, a USA Today/Gallup poll asked "In dealing with the problems facing the country, do you think Barack Obama will make a sincere effort to work with the Republicans in Congress to find solutions that are acceptable to both parties?" and parallel questions about whether the Republicans would make a sincere effort to work with the Democrats and Obama and whether the Democrats would make a sincere effort to work with the Republicans.  In March and September 2009 they asked about whether the various parties had made a sincere effort to work with each other, and in February 2010 they asked about working together on health care reform.  They also asked the forward-looking questions after the 2010, 2012, and 2016 elections.  The figure shows the percent who said that Obama, the Democrats, the Republicans, or Trump would (or had) worked with the other party:Obama consistently ran ahead of both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the Democrats were generally somewhat ahead of the Republicans, but they all rose and fell together.   In principle, you might expect that they would move in opposite directions at least some of the time:  that people would see one side as being obstructionist and give the other side credit for trying, but that didn't happen with any of these surveys.  Rather, the public seemed to blame both sides about equally when there was disagreement (if anything, Obama's ratings might have fallen more than the Congressional parties).  I think this data helps to explain why Republicans turned against the Senate immigration deal.  If it had passed, Biden would have gotten some of the credit from the public, and most Republicans are unwilling to do anything that will make Biden more popular (several of them said as much).  A few years ago, I suggested that a strategy of uniform opposition had driven down Obama's popularity.   Republicans have continued with that under Biden.  Of course, there has been some important bipartisan legislation, like the American Rescue Plan Act, but they were mostly early in his term and my impression is that the Republicans have tried to avoid publicizing them.  It used to be that when popular legislation was passed on a bipartisan basis, both parties would talk about it and try to claim some of the credit.  But more recently, people seem to have realized that elections are more about the President than about Congress, so for an opposition party, denying credit to the President is more important than claiming credit for yourself.  And blocking potentially popular legislation might make your side less popular, but it will probably make the other side less popular as well.A few other observations:1.  The numbers expecting the parties to make a sincere effort to work with each other were higher than I expected. 2.  Just after the 2016 election, 58% expected Trump to make an effort to work with the Democrats, which was somewhat ahead of the number who expected the Republicans in Congress to work with the Democrats.  That might be because in 2016, many people saw Trump as a "dealmaker" rather than a traditional conservative, or it may be that there is a tendency to have hopes for a new president.  3.  It's not possible to be sure, but it seems that the questions that asked about the future produced more positive responses than those that asked about the past. 4.  Following from the previous points, it's unfortunate that this question hasn't been asked since 2016--I would like to see how expectations have changed.[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 If you go by the standard statistics, the economy is doing very well--unemployment remains low, inflation and interest rates are coming down, the stock market is rising.  Yet the public still isn't impressed, although ratings have been improving recently.  Paul Krugman suggests that the reason is politics--that Republicans have rated the economy as bad ever since Joe Biden took office, and have continued to do so even as economic conditions have improved.  He says that Republican "beliefs are nearly impervious to reality."  The Michigan Consumer Surveys have a monthly "index of consumer sentiment" which goes back to the 1940s.  Since April 2017, they have regularly asked people about their party identification.  The figure shows consumer sentiment by party during the Trump administration:There wasn't much variation among either Democrats or Republicans until Covid hit in early 2020 and ratings declined among both before rising a little in the fall.  I count January 2021 as the beginning of the Biden administration, so changes in the last two months are probably a response to the election results.  Through October 2020, the correlation between Democratic and Republican ratings is about 0.9.  During the Biden administration:Ratings diverged in the first few months and Democrats became more positive and Republicans became more negative--since the summer of 2021 they have tracked each other pretty closely.  Over the course of the Biden administration, the correlation has been about 0.75.  That is, Republicans and Democrats responded to reality in similar ways during both administrations (and to similar degrees--the standard deviations were about the same).  Of course, politics make a difference--Democrats were more favorable under Biden and Republicans were more favorable under Trump.  It's possible that the change of administration had more impact on Republicans--this seems to be the case for beliefs about crime rates and the prospects of the next generation.  But it's hard to say, because economic conditions also changed substantially between late 2020 and mid-2021:  unemployment fell but inflation rose.  The general point is that negative perceptions aren't just Republican partisanship:  something was making Democrats feel worse about the economy between mid-2021 and mid-2022.  And something has made Republicans feel better since mid-2022: That still leaves the question of why views were so negative in mid-2022, and are still pretty negative despite recent improvement.  In August 2022, unemployment was 3.7%, annual inflation was 8.2%, and the index was 53.2.  In November 1973, unemployment was worse (4.8%), inflation was essentially the same (8.3%), but the index was twenty points higher (76.5).  I'd say that the two most plausible explanations are (a) a general shift towards more negative assessments, maybe because of more negative media coverage and (b) a stronger reaction to the inflation of the 2020s because it came suddenly and people weren't used to it.  

 A recent piece in the New York Times says "In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2020, that had grown to nearly four in 10. Indeed, only about 4 percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat."  That is, they included a link to the source of the second piece of information, but not the first and the third.  But my standards of what's fit to link are lower, so I'll try to provide them.The first is from The Civic Culture, by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, but the third was new to me.  Ideally, you would have a survey that had separate interviews of both members of married couples, but there aren't many like that, so I looked for surveys that asked people about spouse's politics.  I couldn't find any that asked about their spouse's party identification or registration, but there was one from 2016 (just after the election) that asked people about how they and their spouse had voted.  There were also some earlier surveys that had parallel questions.  The results:            Same     Different      Ratio  1944   72%         4%                   181960   67%         5%                   13.41984   64%        6%                    10.72016   63%        4%                    15.8[2016  68%       10%]                   6.8Although I can't be sure, I'd guess that the 2016 survey was the source of the statement in the Times.  In any case, it makes it possible to compare things to the past.    In 1944, 1960, and 1984, almost all votes were for the Democratic or Republican candidate--the columns don't add to 100 because some people said that their spouse hadn't voted and others didn't know how they'd voted.  But in 2016, about 6% of the vote went to other candidates, and the figures in brackets include those votes.  If you don't count the 2016 "others," there's no clear pattern--the samples are only one or two thousand, so there's a good deal of sampling error.  If you count the "others," there was more intra-marriage disagreement in 2016 than in earlier elections.  But maybe at least some of those should be counted as intermediate (e. g., one for Trump, one a write-in) rather than disagreement?  I won't get into that--I'll just observe that the surveys don't provide evidence that married couples are more likely to vote the same way now as they were in the middle of the 20th century.  But what about the question about how you would feel if a child married someone from the other party, where there is evidence of change?  I'll consider that in a future post.  [Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research].   

 After the 2022 election, it looked like Donald Trump's support in the Republican Party was finally weakening. As Trump made a comeback in the middle of 2023, some people said that one reason for his resurgence was that Republicans were rallying around him because he had been indicted on various charges.  Now this seems to have become conventional wisdom:  a news story in the NY Times says "But far from diminishing the former president's standing with Republicans, the charges actually rallied the party around him."A few months ago, I looked for relevant data.  Lots of surveys asked if you had a favorable or unfavorable view of Trump, but I wanted ones that asked for degree of favorability--my idea was that the indictments wouldn't convert people from unfavorable to favorable, but they might make people who were already favorable more strongly committed.  Surveys that ask people for degree of favorability or unfavorability are less common, and I didn't find enough for an analysis.  After the New Hampshire primary, I tried again and found a source I hadn't known about before:  a company called Echelon Insights has monthly polls that include a question about views of Trump (very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, and very unfavorable) and breaks them down by party identification.  Very and somewhat favorable ratings of Trump among Republicans:The first indictment came on March 30, after data collection for the March survey was complete.  There was a lasting increase in very favorable ratings and decline in somewhat favorable ratings starting in April.  Of course, in principle the pattern could be the result of something else that happened at around the same time, but I can't think of any other obvious candidate.  There was no lasting change after the second and third indictments, but it seems reasonable that the first one would have more impact.  There also has been some polarization of ratings among independents, with both very favorable and very unfavorable ratings becoming more common, but this was a gradual change--there's no sign that the indictments had any special impact.  The latest figures among independents are 17% very favorable and 46% very unfavorable.   For Democrats, very unfavorable ratings have been steady at about 85 percent over the whole time period.  

 A few days ago, David Brooks wrote that Donald Trump "has an advantage that Haley can't match.  He is reviled by the coastal professional classes. That's a sacred bond with working-class and rural voters who feel similarly slighted and unseen."  Today, Damon Linker offered a similar analysis: "fundamental to Mr. Trump's strength is populist anger at 'them' — the progressive-leaning elites who graduate from the country's most selective universities, control the commanding heights of culture, run America's leading public institutions and media outlets and sneer at him and his supporters, calling them racists, xenophobes, misogynists and fascists."  I could go on piling up citations--Bret Stephens wrote something similar a few days ago--but this is a blog post, not a research paper, so I'll get to the data.  In 2021, a Pew survey asked how people felt about various possible characteristics of political leaders, including "Has a degree from a prestigious university, such as Harvard or Stanford."  Overall, 7% said they liked that a lot, 14% that they liked it a little, 5.6% that they disliked it a little, and 5.8% that they disliked it a lot.  The majority (about 67%) said they neither liked nor disliked it.    What if we break it down by groups?  To make comparison easier, I show the percent who say they like it minus the percent who say they dislike it--e. g., among college graduates, 23% say like and 10% say disklike, for a net of +13.College grad        +13Some college         +8No college             +8Metropolitan       +12Non-metro             -3Educational differences are small, and there are more likes than dislikes in all groups; the metro/non-metro difference (coded by the survey organization, not a self-report) is bigger, and people outside of metropolitan areas are more likely to see an elite degree as a minus than as a plus. There are substantial partisan differences:Democrats               +18Republicans                 0Neither                      +5Turning to some other groups:aged 18-29                    +15         30-49                   +15         50-64                   +4         65+                      +3White                            +7Black                             +7Hispanic                        +20Asian                             +17Men                                +8Women                           +11I was a bit surprised at the age differences:  my impression is that anti-elite rhetoric has been growing in recent years, so younger people would be more attuned to it.  (For example, Donald Trump seems to admire elite universities:  he frequently boasts that he's not just a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, but of the Wharton School, and a secondary part of his "birther" campaign was a demand that Obama release his academic records to prove that he deserved to be admitted to Columbia and Harvard Law School).  The Pew survey contains a question that has some bearing on this issue:  who was the best president of the last 40 years.Reagan                +4GHW Bush        +13Clinton               +14GW Bush              -0Obama                +20Trump                    -5Biden                    +8As the differences by party identification suggest, people who name one of the Democratic presidents as the best have more favorable views of degrees from elite universities, but the people who name Trump are more negative than those who name Reagan or one of the Bushes.Some of the partisan division is undoubtedly created by the parties--Republican leaders denounce elite universities, so Republican voters follow them and Democratic voters react against them--but the substantial divisions by age, ethnicity, and metro status suggest that opinions have some independent basis.  However, education itself doesn't make much difference, and only 13% of people who didn't attend college see having a degree from an elite university as a negative.    [Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 In my last post, I said that Donald Trump's strong position in the race for the Republican nomination is not the result of his personal hold on Republican voters, but of support (or at least lack of opposition) from Republican elites.  A Republican who doesn't pay much attention to politics is likely to recall that things went pretty well while Trump was in office (up until Covid, which wasn't his fault), and therefore will be inclined to give Trump another chance unless he's given a reason not to.  The obvious reasons are Trump's weak performance in general elections and his campaign to overthrow the 2020 results, but leading Republicans haven't emphasized either one.  On the first point, here's a comparison of the 2012-2020 results:                      Rep         Dem        Other2012             47.2%      51%          1.8%2016             45.9%      48%           6.1%2020             46.8%      51.3%        1.9%In 2012, Mitt Romney was running against an incumbent president who was a skilled politician.  In 2016, Trump was running against an opponent who was neither an incumbent nor a skilled politician.  In 2020, Trump was an incumbent himself, and in addition to the normal advantage of incumbency, there's a tendency to rally round the leader in times of national emergency.   Yet both times he fell short of Mitt Romney's share of the vote in 2012.  Usually after a candidate loses an election, people in his party start talking about why he lost, what the party needs to do differently, what kind of leaders it needs moving forward, etc.  That's never really happened with Trump.  On his campaign to overturn the election, for a few weeks after January 6, it seemed like many Republican leaders were ready to turn against him.  But since then, the dominant tendency has been to downplay it by saying that even if the 2020 election wasn't "stolen," there was something wrong with it, or that the Democrats are engaged in "election interference" themselves.  For example, when Maine's Secretary of State ruled that Trump shouldn't appear on the primary ballot, Susan Collins denounced the decision on Twitter.  She didn't have to say anything--she could have waited until a reporter asked and then just said it was up to the courts.  Or she could have said while Trump's conduct might not qualify as insurrection, it was a serious matter, and that was why she had voted to impeach Trump and would not be voting for him in the primary.   Other Republicans went farther, saying that there is or will be a Democratic push to get Trump taken off the ballot.  So why haven't Republican elites made the case against Trump?  I think that some of it is that they thought his support would fade away after he left office and didn't command as much media attention.  A second is that the appearance of disunity usually hurts a party with voters.  Right-wing Republicans have been willing to engage in intra-party fights in order to get what they want.   Rather than fighting back, moderate and mainstream Republicans have tried to placate them in order to maintain as much party unity as they can.  This is partly because of electoral considerations--moderate and mainstream Republicans are more likely to be from swing states or districts where they have to get some support from Democrats and independents.   I think it may also because their long period of being in the minority in Congress gave Republicans a tradition of being concerned with sticking together.  So someone like Collins, who is clearly not a fan of Trump, gives a generic Republican response rather than taking the opportunity to try to weaken him.

Three years after the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, surveys find a large number of people continue to believe that Donald Trump didn't do anything wrong.  Many observers say that this reflects the strong hold he has on his followers, or the power of social media and Fox News, or even a change in our relation to reality.  Of course, you can't definitively prove or disprove any interpretation, but there is a historical example that sheds some light on the issue.   In April 1973, the Gallup Poll asked people which of these two statements came closer to their views on Watergate:  "It is a very serious matter because it reveals corruption in the Nixon administration," or "It's just politics--the kind of thing that both parties engage in."  The question was repeated a number of times up until late June 1974 (a couple of months before Nixon resigned).  There was a substantial movement towards seeing it as very serious between April and June 1973, but not much change after that time.  Gallup asked the question again in 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2014, with slight changes in wording ("is" to "was" and an introduction mentioning how long ago it happened).  The results (including the June 1974 survey for reference):Again, not much change--between 42 and 46 percent said it was "just politics".  Nixon resigned after several leading Congressional Republicans told him that his support had collapsed and he was almost certain to be impeached and removed from office.  Virtually all of the mainstream media agreed that it was time for Nixon to go, and there was no Fox News or conservative social media where holdouts could voice their opinion.  That is, political and media elites united behind the position that Watergate was a very serious matter, and as later generations came along that presumably was what they were taught in school, but almost half the public continued to say that it was "just politics."  So the important difference between the two cases doesn't involve the public, but elites. Of course, Nixon was ineligible to run for President,  but no one said he should remain a major voice in the party and no one sought his endorsement when running for office.  In contrast, Trump has had a lot of support from Republican officeholders--according to Ballotpedia, he has 162 "noteworthy" endorsements, compared to 17 for DeSantis, 5 for Haley, and 1 for Ramaswamy (Doug Burgum and Tim Scott got a few before dropping out).  That's considerably more lopsided than the distribution of support among likely Republican primary voters.  That leads to the question of why he continues to get so much support among Republican elites.  I've had a few posts that touch on the issue (especially this one), but will try a more systematic one in the near future.  [Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 A few weeks ago, Thomas Edsall mentioned a survey question on which party was better at looking out for the middle class.  The Democrats led, but only by 36% to 34%, which was the smallest in the 30-year history of the question.  I followed the links and found that the question was part of a group: which party was better at dealing with crime, immigration, education, health care, abortion, looking out for the middle class, and dealing with the economy.  Not all questions were asked in all surveys, and there were substantial gaps for some of them, but they still provide information on how party images have or haven't changed.  I show percent saying Republicans minus percent saying Democrats--that is, positive numbers mean the Republicans have an advantage on the issue.  The color of the points indicates the party of the administration.Republicans consistently had an advantage on dealing with crime, but it's been larger under Biden than it was in the 1990s or the one time it was asked during the Trump administration (October 2020).Neither party has a consistent advantage.  The Democrats generally had an advantage during the Bush, and Trump administrations, but the Republicans have had a big advantage under Biden.  Things were up and down under Obama--overall the parties were close.  Thus, it seems that people react against the party in power, but the reaction has been especially strong under Biden.  Unfortunately, there is a long gap (1996-2011) on this question.  But there is an interesting pattern beginning in 2011--the Republicans made steady gains under Obama and Trump.  On dealing with the economy, there's a similar pattern of steady Republican gains in recent years.  There are also signs of the reaction against the incumbent party that was seen for immigration. The Democrats consistently have an advantage on education, although there's a good deal of fluctuation in the size.  Under Biden, the lead has been small by historical standards.  The Democrats have consistently had an advantage on abortion, although the Republicans seemed to be closing the gap in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Since the Dobbs decision, the Democratic lead has increased.  On health care, the Democrats have consistently had an advantage.  It was smaller under Obama, but has grown under Trump and Biden.  There seems to have been a reaction against Democratic attempts at reform under Clinton and Obama, but as people have experienced the Obama reform they have returned to the Democrats.  For me, the most surprising thing is that Republican gains on the economy and the middle class didn't start with Biden, but have been pretty steady since the early years of the Obama administration.  Since these are important to voters, this is bad news for the Democrats.  However, there is one case in which views about the middle class changed quickly---the Democratic advantage fell from 20 points to 9 between October 1993 and 1994, but then went back to 19 by December 1995.   

 A few days ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece  by Matthew Schmitz which said that Donald Trump "isn't edging ahead of Mr. Biden in swing states because Americans are eager to submit to authoritarianism.  . . . Mr. Trump enjoys enduring support because he is perceived by many voters — often with good reason — as a pragmatic if unpredictable kind of moderate."  This was once true-- September 2016, a survey found that only 47% thought that Trump was a conservative, compared to about 60% for Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.  But a lot has happened since 2016--is it still true?  In November 2023, a survey sponsored by Marquette Law School found that 78% thought Trump was conservative.  That is, perceptions are very different today than they were in 2016.   Comparing Trump with some Republican presidents and candidates from the past:                                    VL    SL    M     SC  VC   DK   meanReagan 04/1980           5 15 33 30 7 10 0.21Reagan 01/1981         2 7 15 38 24 15 0.87Reagan 01/1983    4 7 16 28 28 16 0.83Reagan 02/1984     4 10 31 26 19 10 0.51Bush 06/1999         2 12 27 31 9 19 0.41Bush 01/2000      3 11 19 38 10 19 0.51Bush 03/2000         6 13 22 31 17 11 0.45Bush 10/2000         5 10 18 39 20 8 0.64Bush 11/2003         6 9 19 39 22 5 0.65Bush 07/2004         2 6 19 43 24 5 0.86McCain 12/2007         2 8 32 39 6 12 0.45Romney 12/2007         1 8 22 39 8 21 0.58McCain 01/2008         2 10 27 35 7 19 0.43McCain 03/2008         4 7 31 29 17 12 0.55McCain 06/2008         2 8 34 29 19 8 0.60McCain 10/2008         2 8 26 45 17 3 0.68Romney 12/2011         2 9 53 22 7 7 0.25Romney 10/2012         5 9 21 40 16 9 0.58Romney 11/2012         4 5 26 37 19 9 0.68Trump 09/2016         8 12 21 30 17 13 0.41Trump 07/2022         6 4 11 30 48 1 1.11Trump 11/2023         7 3 13 30 48 0 1.08Unfortunately, the question doesn't seem to have been asked between 2016 and 2022, so we can't say just when perceptions changed, but they have definitely changed--Trump is now seen as more conservative than GW Bush, Romney, or even Reagan ever was.  This isn't surprising, because he governed as a conservative Republican (as Alan Abramowitz, a professor of Political Science at Emory University, pointed out in a letter to the editor today).  As far as why Trump leads Biden in most recent polls, a more likely explanation is the tradition of the two-party system--if people don't think Biden is doing a good job, they turn to the Republicans.  And Republican elites haven't made an effort to discredit Trump or push him aside, so ordinary voters treat him as a normal representative of the party.  [Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 A day or two ago, a column by Bret Stephens said a Harvard/Harris poll  "finds that 44 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34, and a whopping 67 percent of those ages 18 to 24, agree with the proposition that 'Jews as a class are oppressors.' . . . . The same generation that received the most instruction in the virtues of tolerance is now the most antisemitic in recent memory."  I've seen several other references to that poll since then.  The full question is "Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?"  Some people have observed that other recent surveys suggest much lower levels of anti-Semitism.  But then how do you explain the Harvard/Harris results?  I think that the key is in a question that comes just before "There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?"    That's followed by a question on "Do you think this ideology is helpful or hurtful to our society?" and then the question about whether Jews are oppressors.  Comparing the percent agreeing that white people and Jews are oppressors by age:              Whites           Jews18-24      79%              67%25-34      49%              44%35-44      39%              36%45-54      33%              24%55-64      26%              15%65+         19%                9%Support for the statement that Jews are oppressors is consistently a little lower than support for the statement that white people are oppressors.  So the most plausible interpretation of the results for that question is that most people who agreed that white people are oppressors regard Jews as white people rather than "nonwhite people and people of certain groups."  In any case, if you accept the results for the question on Jews as evidence of widespread anti-Semitism among young people, you have to accept the results for the previous question as evidence of even more widespread "anti-whitism."  My interpretation of the results on the first question is that people treated it as about general recognition of racial injustice and/or support for affirmative action, although it's so badly worded that it's hard to be sure.  A couple of other points on the Harvard/Harris survey:1.  The general direction of the age differences is reasonable, but they seem implausibly large for many questions.  I suspect there's something wrong with either their sample (an online panel) or their weighting.2.  Many of the questions could serve as examples of things to avoid when writing survey questions.  And on anti-Semitism:1.  I think that, like other kinds of ethnic and religious prejudice, it is declining, and there's less of it in younger generations.2.  However, more than other kinds of prejudice, anti-Semitism tends to be elaborated into a comprehensive world-view.  That makes it more harmful than the numbers alone would suggest.3.  There is an anti-Semitism of the left.  People on the left used to be aware of this--"anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools" was a well-known expression in the early days of the German Social Democratic Party--but I think that recognition has faded, and leftists now often assume that anti-Semitism just involves people like Richard Spencer and isn't something they need to look out for on their side.  

 I have an account on Truth Social, and I check it from time to time to see what Donald Trump is saying.  He recently posted a story from Breitbart about a survey by Rasmussen Reports.  According to the story "more than 1-in-5 voters who submitted ballots by mail say they did so fraudulently."  This isn't just some Twitter "poll"--Rasmussen has decent record of accuracy in predicting elections (a B rating from 538)--so it deserves a closer look.  The survey found the 30% of the sample said they voted by mail in the 2020 election.  Those who said they did were asked "did a friend or family member fill out your ballot, in part or in full, on your behalf" (19% yes); "did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?" (21% yes); "did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident? (17% yes); "did you sign a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without his or her permission?" (17% yes).  Everyone was asked three additional questions whether "a friend, family member, or organization, such as a political party, offer to pay or reward you for voting?" (8% yes); whether "you know a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted to you that he or she cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence?" (10% yes); and whether "you know a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted to you that he or she filled out a ballot on behalf of another person?" (11% yes).  Rasmussen didn't release the original data, but they provided a detailed breakdown of responses.  In looking at that, I noticed something strange--people who said they voted for Trump were likely to say that they had done these things.  For example, among people who voted by mail, 26% of Trump voters and 14% of Biden voters said that a friend or family member had filled in their ballot.  A larger fraction of Biden voters voted by mail (36% vs. 23%), so overall, .23*.26=.060 or 6% of Trump voters and .36*.13=.050 or 5% of Biden voters said that someone else had filled in their ballot.  The total percent of voters who answered yes on each question:                                                                   Trump                BidenSomeone else filled in your ballot                  6.0%                5.0%You filled out someone else's                         6.9%                4.7%Signed someone else's                                    5.3%                4.0%So if you accept the data, Trump voters were more likely to engage in "fraud" than Biden voters. For the questions asked of everyone:Offer of reward                                               6%                    9%Know out-of-state voter                                13%                    8%Know someone who filled out other's           12%                    9%There was also another odd pattern in the data.  For all of the questions, people in the youngest age group (18-39) were more likely to answer yes--a lot more likely.  For example, 33% of people aged 18-39, 9% of people aged 40-64, and 1% of people aged 65% said that they had signed someone else's ballot.  Of course, there is sampling error, but these aren't tiny groups--there are roughly 100 absentee voters in each age group.  Since people in the youngest age group were more likely to have voted for Biden, the tendency for Trump voters to be more likely to report irregularities would be even stronger after controlling for age.   The age differences are also present in the questions asked of everyone--19% of 18-39 year olds, 7% of 40-64 year olds, and 3% of people over 65 said they knew someone who admitted casting a ballot in a state of which they weren't a resident.  How can you explain the age differences? I doubt that there has been a dramatic increase in propensity to violate the rules for mail in ballots (and to tell friends, family members, and acquaintances that you've violated the rules) across the generations.  Rasmussen has a statement on their methodology that might provide an answer.  Their sample is mostly obtained by random-digit dialing of phone numbers, but "to reach those who have abandoned traditional landline telephones, Rasmussen Reports uses an online survey tool to interview randomly selected participants from  a demographically diverse panel." Unlike most survey organizations, Rasmussen doesn't use live interviewers--there's a recorded voice and people answer by "press 1 for yes, 2 for no....."  I suspect that people are more likely to give a false answer with this format than when speaking to a person, and because Trump has been saying that there was fraud in mail voting, Trump voters may have wanted to help give evidence of fraud.**  This tendency is likely to be stronger in the panel--since they are regularly asked to do surveys (and probably are generally more online), they are likely to have a better sense of how the results will be used.  People without landlines tend to be young, so the panel probably makes up a much larger share of the 18-39 group.  So my hypothesis is that many of the "yes" answers are a result of Trump voters (especially in the panel) giving answers that they think will help to make Trump's case that there was a lot of fraud in the election.   Another factor is that people in the online panel are presumably given some compensation for participating in the surveys, so they may rush through without paying much attention.  Most organizations make some effort to identify people like this and remove them from the sample, but they are usually pretty crude and Rasmussen doesn't say anything about whether and how they do it.  So some of the "yes" answers, especially in the youngest cohort, may be people who are essentially answering at random.  *The "no longer a permanent resident" question was left out of the table.  **The question about who you voted for was asked before the questions on voting irregularities--that is, people answered it before they knew what the survey would be about.