So what to make of the new PPP poll suggesting that Demcorats are marginally better off passing health care than not? I take it seriously. But not too seriously, for the following reasons:
1. It’s a national poll, but congressmen are running in local
races. The poll shows that Democrats say they are more likely to turn
out, and independents who like health care reform say they will like
their representatives better, if it passes. But we don’t know where
those base members and HCR-favoring independents live. They probably
are not clustered in a state like Arkansas, where over 60% of the
voters polled by PPP (a Democratic outfit) reported that they were
against health care reform. Motivating the base in California in New
York isn’t going to save Blanche Lincoln.
2. Polls are an okay
guide to public opinion about things (with the usual caveats about
framing). They are not a good guide to what people will do. Just ask
the executives who brought you New Coke. The customers they surveyed
overwhelmingly said they’d switch to New Coke. They weren’t lying;
they just didn’t know what they were actually going to do.
3.
Another round of health care legislating might drive its popularity
down even further in the polls. Which would make passing the
legislation even more costly.
4. Passing HCR has opportunity
costs. Time spent negotiating this is time not spent passing some
other piece of legislation that might actually move your popularity
upward in November. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care about such fripperies;
her seat is safe. But anyone in danger cares very much.
5.
Passing health care will refresh the public’s memory of it. The longer
ago an electoral initiative happened, the less salient it is. In an
election year, even three months matter.
6. Evidence from an actual election offers some counterevidence to the PPP poll:
There were two controversial pieces of legislation that defined the
Clinton Administration for Republican-leaning voters: the assault
weapons ban and the first Clinton budget (a.k.a. the tax hike). If we
look at the fifteen Democrats who voted against both pieces of
legislation, only one lost (she represented a district that gave Bush a
15-point win in 1992). In fact, about half of them saw their share of
the vote increase or stay roughly the same from 1992!Let’s move on to Democratic incumbents who represented
Republican-leaning districts who voted for only one of these two pieces
of legislation. There were thirty-seven such Democrats. The casualty
rate here is a little higher; thirteen of them, or thirty-five percent
of them, lost. And of the twenty-two Democrats from Republican-leaning
districts who voted for both pieces of controversial legislation, ten of them (45%) lost.In other words, the problem for Democrats in 1994 was not that they
didn’t support Clinton’s agenda enough. It was that they got too far
out in front of their conservative-leaning districts and supported the
President too much.
Maybe I’m a heartless econblogger type, but I’ll take revealed
preference over stated preference every time. Now who is willing to
take the other side and argue that it was no easier for Republicans to
campaign against real, existing, hated laws than to campaign against phantom ClintonCare?
