The greatest trick Panetta-Burns ever pulled was convincing the world their debt plan didn’t exist.
— Matt O’Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) December 4, 2012
Public Policy Polling has moved from polling about campaigns to polling about how many people believe in crazy and non-existent stuff.
PPP’s Tom Jensen dishes some highlights from the survey with a dash of data-backed snark:
PPP’s first post election national poll finds that Republicans are taking the results pretty hard…and also declining in numbers.
49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.
In fiscal-cliff news, the polling firm looked in on the public’s attitudes about the Simpson-Bowles plan—and then compared it to an entirely fictional plan to see how many people would pretend to be informed about that:
As much of an obsession as Bowles/Simpson can be for the DC pundit class, most Americans don’t have an opinion about it. 23% support it, 16% oppose it, and 60% say they don’t have a take one way or the other.
The 39% of Americans with an opinion about Bowles/Simpson is only slightly higher than the 25% with one about Panetta/Burns, a mythical Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo we conceived of to test how many people would say they had an opinion even about something that doesn’t exist.
Bowles/Simpson does have bipartisan support from the small swath of Americans with an opinion about it. Republicans support it 26/18, Democrats favor it 21/14, and independents are for it by a 24/18 margin. Panetta/Burns doesn’t fare as well with 8% support and 17% opposition.
The Panetta-Burns plan has taken off on Twitter:
“#PanettaBurns borrows for 20 years at negative real rates, then buries the money for people to dig up,” Matt O’Brien, the Washington D.C.-based economics editor for The Atlantic magazine, wrote in a message, suggesting minutes later “#PanettaBurns invests in a new helicopter fleet to drop money from.”
Josh Barro, a columnist for Bloomberg View, tweeted a few seconds later that “#PanettaBurns balances the budget by taxing Canada.”
Ezra Klein, a Washington Post policy blogger who would be amiss left out of any conversation on deficit reduction, would chime in a few seconds after that, noting “#PanettaBurns increases spending to 33% of GDP in order to purchase every American a unicorn.”
Jensen’s memo on the poll, including details about the relative approval numbers for things like seceding from the United States and GOP dark lord Grover Norquist, is below the cut. You can download a PDF with even more details—like whether America has more trust in Nate Silver or the Gallup poll—here.
PPP’s first post election national poll finds that Republicans are taking the results pretty hard…and also declining in numbers.
49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.
Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren’t sure.
One reason that such a high percentage of Republicans are holding what could be seen as extreme views is that their numbers are declining. Our final poll before the election, which hit the final outcome almost on the head, found 39% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans. Since the election we’ve seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%.
Other notes from our national poll:
-Grover Norquist is largely unknown nationally, and among voters who are familiar with him he is generally disliked. Only 15% have a favorable opinion of him to 37% with a negative one, with 48% not holding an opinion one way or the other. Even among Republicans just 18% see him positively, while 23% have an unfavorable view. Only 23% of voters think it’s important for politicians to follow Norquist’s tax pledge to 39% who think it’s not important and 38% who don’t have an opinion.
-President Obama’s received a modest post election bump in his approval rating. 50% of voters now approve of him to 47% who disapprove, up a net 4 points from 48/49 on our final post election poll. Voters trust Obama over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Libya by a 48/45 margin, suggesting that their attacks on the issue aren’t getting much traction.
-As much of an obsession as Bowles/Simpson can be for the DC pundit class, most Americans don’t have an opinion about it. 23% support it, 16% oppose it, and 60% say they don’t have a take one way or the other.
The 39% of Americans with an opinion about Bowles/Simpson is only slightly higher than the 25% with one about Panetta/Burns, a mythical Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo we conceived of to test how many people would say they had an opinion even about something that doesn’t exist.
Bowles/Simpson does have bipartisan support from the small swath of Americans with an opinion about it. Republicans support it 26/18, Democrats favor it 21/14, and independents are for it by a 24/18 margin. Panetta/Burns doesn’t fare as well with 8% support and 17% opposition.
-David Petraeus has a 44/30 favorability rating nationally and is seen much more favorably by Democrats (47/25) at this point than Republicans (38/36).
This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 5, 2012.
Every time some republican makes a noise admitting the possibility of allowing a revenue increase, or worse, a tax increase, the reporters go scampering after Grover Norquist to get his reaction. Why? Who cares? This is what’s wrong with all the “inside the beltway” reportage and punditry. Nobody cares, except the Washington “horse race” touts.
Obama, who promised to bring us all together, is now threatening to let the economy go over the cliff if he doesn’t get his way, purely to make Republicans look bad to the same idiots who responded to these hoax polls. Is any wonder that Republicans are upset over his election?
There is no cliff. If nothing is done by January, some taxes will rise and some spending will be limited (not cut off); no serious effect will be felt right away (panicking idiots on the stock market and republican propagandists excluded) and they will come to an agreement which can be retroactive to the start of the year. The worst that can happen is a bungee-jump over the cliff, if there were a cliff.
49% of republicans believe that a company no longer in existence stole the election from Romney? That speaks volumes about the collective intelligence of the Republican party.
Keep bashing republicans, Jim Nitzel. You never know how many of them were potential or are soon-to-be-ex sponsors of your sister publications, you know, the one that aren’t free. Have a civil day.
I in Cochise, Republicans use those buzz phrases like fiscal cliff and entitlements because they know they work. Fear overcomes intelligence. Republicans don’t need any information to form an opinion. All you need to do is read some of the readers comments on the internet to see that.
Watch how the “voter fraud” argument falls apart under public scrutiny in this exchange between Brad Friedman and David Horowitz:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9756
The real issue is election fraud.
Those who are concerned about how public funds are acquired and distributed through your local municipalities: Many are looking at closing a number of public schools in lieu of expansion of roads through the RTA and repairs of the same roads through Proposition 409. Is the how the pubic wants to spend its money?
There was a recent article in the Arizona Daily Star quoting Mayor Rothschild’s reaction to the passage of Proposition 409:
“The city of Tucson is going to earn the trust the people of Tucson have placed in it to do this work as promised,”
What about the process to determine whether the public actually agreed to this flow of revenue? Has this process earned our trust? Pima County Elections earned our trust?
We know that Proposition 409 passed by 953 votes after 11,000 provisional ballots were tabulated. Provisional ballots are not subject to a hand count audit.
Why was a law passed in 2006 to audit a random portion of the ballots after an election? You could ask Ted Downing, the State Representative at the time who championed the bill for hand count audits in the state. Downing witnessed first-hand Pima Election Division’s improprieties surrounding the Regional Transportation Authority’s (RTA) two-billion dollar bond election in 2006.
Through the courts, some of the nations best election integrity advocates pursued prospective relief in rigged elections after discovering an overwhelming body of evidence indicating fraud in the 2006 RTA election. This included an embarrassingly inadequate investigation by then Attorney General Terry Goddard, who refused to perform a proper audit of the ballots. The Attorney General’s office also refused to perform a forensic investigation even when there was good cause to do so. Those following the issue at the time stood there in awe as Terry Goddard noted how close his count was to the reported outcome of the election while four precincts were missing from his count.
Discovery of criminal activity in the elections division is an ancillary outcome that is part of the process for the hearing to provide prospective relief against rigged elections in Pima County. Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry has been pushing his attorneys to use all conceivable tactics to delay and obstruct the procedure, which would ultimately benefit the nation as a precedent-setting court case aimed at improving election integrity. This has resulted in wasting over 1.3 million dollars of taxpayer’s money. Huckelberry is now willing to contradict past statements of how he would be vindicated by the scrutiny he pretends to welcome as justice looms on the distant horizon. Justice, unfortunately, is still a vague unobtainable outcome lost in the gears of Pima County’s political machine.
Before any court orders affecting election procedures are issued, the hearing needs to complete the fundamental tasks ignored by Attorney General Terry Goddard. The court must allow for the actual audit of the ballots and a forensic examination of the ballots. In fact, if the audit and forensic exam do not turn up evidence of foul play, the court does not have sufficient cause to issue orders for prospective relief. That outcome would end the case.
So why is Pima County the primary obstacle to this investigation?
All local media outlets fail to articulate this inescapably simple resolution that Pima County avoids. Everyone endowed with basic cognitive skills are left with the uncomfortable realization that Pima County has been caught cheating and they are staving off the inevitable with taxpayer’s dollars.
Before any schools are closed, before any dollar is spent on behalf of claiming such spending is “voter approved”, shouldn’t we demand to know the truth about our elections?
@conservativecapitalist: Sure hope you’re not defending all those ignoramuses and claiming them as fellow Republicans.
I’m not a Republican, and it’s pretty obvious to me that Obama stole the election.
Skokum? Do you have any documentation that President Obama “stole” the election?
The Republican party truly is the party of the demented, as evidenced by the poll and some of the posts herein.
-David Petraeus has a 44/30 favorability rating nationally and is seen much more favorably by Democrats (47/25) at this point than Republicans (38/36).
And, this has what to do with the claim that Obama stole the election? David Petraeus is seen as an adulterer, plain and simple. He broke the heart of his wife, to whom he was married for many years. Aside from his amoral behavior, he is pretty damn competent. Too bad he couldn’t keep it in his pants.
President Obama did not steal the election. The Republicans gave this election away, just as I predicted they would.
And for the very same reason the Democrats gave away the 2000 presidential election, which by the way, many Democrats still believe that Bush stole, even though study after study has debunked that.
The reason? They could not control their fringes. In 2000, it was the gun control nutcases that caused Gore to lose his home state of Tennessee. In 2012, it was the social/religious right nutcases that caused a loss of independent votes nationawide, and especially in the swing states.
Remember, the popular vote was only 50.6 – 49.4, not a big differential.