Poll angst is a Democratic pastime but it’s a waste of time and energy
If you are fretting about the NY Times poll (which polled 900 people) that everyone is fretting about, here’s a reminder of a time in the not too distant past when everyone was fretting about another NY TImes poll from Joan Walsh in 2022:
It’s said to be wrong to kick a person when he or she is down. If Monday’s New York Times/Siena poll were a person, it’s been stomped so severely that a compassionate observer would step in to stop the fight. But even though the poll that launched a thousand headlines claiming the midterms are moving back toward Republicans, and that the so-called Dobbs effect—a shift to Democrats after the Supreme Court did away with a 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion—is subsiding, has been pretty thoroughly debunked by pollsters and progressive analysts, it still deserves attention (but no kicking here, folks).
It’s a case study of what even “good” polls can do wrong, and, maybe more important, of how journalists looking for a “new” story line hype outlier polls without understanding the first thing about what they mean—as well as the way voters should think about new polling as we get closer to the crucial election.
In case you were without a computer or television earlier this week, here’s the gist of the poll of 792 “likely voters.” In September, those polled by New York Times/Siena favored Democrats on a “generic” congressional ballot, by one point. A month later, those polled back Republicans by four. The big news, from the Times headline: “With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights.” The economy, the poll found, mattered much more to voters than abortion.
And despite the fact that a “gender gap” showing women favoring Democrats has been a defining feature of American politics since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, the poll showed women dividing their votes equally between the two parties. “The poll showed that Republicans had entirely erased what had been an 11-point edge for Democrats among women last month in 2022 congressional races to a statistical tie in October,” the Times wrote.
The detail that got the most hype, though, from the Times write-up: “The biggest shift came from women who identified as independent voters. In September, they favored Democrats by 14 points. Now, independent women backed Republicans by 18 points—a striking swing given the polarization of the American electorate and how intensely Democrats have focused on that group and on the threat Republicans pose to abortion rights.”
Wow. That’s a 32-point swing. Big if true.
Fun fact. It wasn’t true:
After polls closed on Nov. 8, Democrats held on to more seats in the House and Senate than is typical for the in-power party in a non-presidential election year, and they retained control of the Senate.
According to ABC News exit polling, that competitiveness was fueled by a number of factors, including voter passion about abortion access and antipathy to Trump-style election denialism and extremism…
In strong Republican years, ABC exit polling shows, independents typically break for the GOP — by 7 points in 2016, 14 in 2014 and 19 in 2010. This year, according to exit polling, independents voted for Democratic House candidates over Republicans by 2 points.
Walsh continued:
Bonier, Lake, and other pollsters agree: The decisive “tell” that the poll was flawed was its finding that women are splitting their votes evenly between Republicans and Democrats. “Do you really believe just months after losing a fundamental right, women will split their votes [between Republicans and Democrats]?” Bonier asks. “Have we ever since the ’90s had a situation where women didn’t vote more Democratic than men did?” pollster Anna Greenberg asked rhetorically in The New Republic.
Lake was more scathing: “There isn’t another poll in America that shows that,” she says. “If I did an outlier poll like that for a candidate, I’d have to do it over again at my own expense.” The Times should have tossed its October findings and started over, she says.
This latest NY Times poll shows the same thing, that the gender gap has disappeared. And it’s ridiculous.
The 2022 election results proved them wrong:
According to CNN exit polls, women constituted 52% of the vote and men 48%. That is an enormous difference. Let’s assume that turnout in 2022 ends up being about the same as the record 2018 turnout—roughly 116 million votes. The women’s share of that vote? 60,320,000. Exit polls also show that 53% of women voted Democratic. That’s 31,969,600 votes—a big number. Hillary Clinton, who clearly shares our frustration with those who discounted the women’s vote, tweeted out the following clearly sarcastic comment: “It turns out women enjoy having human rights, and we vote.”
Apart from the sheer magnitude of the women’s vote is the issue of intensity. Unlike men, women spend a great deal of their lives thinking about reproduction. They have no choice. Even in the 21st century, pregnancy is still a dangerous business, and women’s health care is no place for government bureaucrats. No wonder that women think abortion is a lot more important than men do. As the election season entered its final stretch, and many Republican candidates got a crash course in obstetrics, some pulled back and/or softened their previous hard lines on abortion.
The importance of the issue was seen most clearly in the Senate debate in Pennsylvania. Although the Democrat, John Fetterman gave a halting performance because he was still recovering from a serious stroke, his opponent, Republican Mehmet Oz, managed to make what had to be one of the most damaging comments on abortion ever: “I want women, doctors, and local political leaders…” to make these decisions.
The sheer absurdity of that comment went a long way towards distracting voters from the issue of Fetterman’s health and reminded many that government shouldn’t be making those decisions.
Finally, abortion is fundamentally different from inflation. Inflation is unpopular with both parties—there is no pro-inflation and anti-inflation party. In fact, if we’ve learned anything about politics in our polarized time it’s that voters see almost all issues through their partisan lens. Democrats worried about inflation could think that Joe Biden was dealing with it and Republicans that Joe Biden caused it. But abortion is different. One party is clearly in favor of keeping it legal in most or all circumstances and the other is not.
If you put together the sheer size of the women’s vote, the intensity of the issue and the fact that, unlike inflation or the economy, the two parties have stark differences on the issue, you get a powerful driver of the vote. There were five states with abortion referenda on the ballot and in every single one—including the deep red state of Kentucky—the pro-choice position won. In Michigan, where the abortion referendum won by 13.4 percent, it is not far-fetched to assume that it helped the Democrats keep several congressional seats. And in Pennsylvania, where abortion topped inflation by 9 points, Democrats picked up the only Senate seat so far.
The following table shows the percentage of voters in each of the crucial states and how they rated inflation and abortion. In most cases abortion was a close second; in Michigan and Pennsylvania it was far ahead of inflation.
TOP ISSUES IN THE 2022 MIDTERMS (%)
*Results according to CNN exit polls
Central to the story of the 2022 midterms, then, is an issue central to women’s lives, powerful enough to snatch victory from the Republicans, and durable enough to send a message about the future.
They will prove these polls wrong again, at least on that count. A majority of women are not gravitating to Trump and they haven’t stopped caring about reproductive rights as a matter of basic human rights and everyday economic rights. It’s bullshit. Right now, states are banning IVF, women who have miscarriages are being arrested, rapists are being given joint custody of the child their 12 year old victim was forced to bear, women are almost dying because they can’t obtain abortion care and the right wing is talking about outlawing abortion and birth control using the Comstock Act from 1873 in a 2nd Trump administration. I really don’t think the majority of American women are signing up for that.