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Pollsters are perplexed. Many believed that the polling errors we saw in 2016 had been adequately addressed in time for the 2020 presidential election. But once again, the polls underestimated support for Donald Trump (and support for Republicans across the board). Now, more than three months out from the election, we still dont have a great sense as to why.

A number of theories may offer some clues, though. For instance, one popular explanation is that pollsters likely voter models were off. Survey screening for likely voters may have failed to adequately gauge voter enthusiasm. Or attempts to contact inconsistent or infrequent voters who tend to be harder to reach in surveys may have failed in reaching those more favorable to Trump. Also, due to the pandemic, Democrats chose to limit typical methods to increase voter turnout, like door-to-door canvassing, which may have affected actual turnout. Then again, maybe the polling error was due to sampling problems. If Democrats were more likely than Republicans to stay at home during the pandemic, they would more likely be available to take surveys. Of course, its not necessarily an either-or situation. Both of these theories could be true (not to mention a whole host of other explanations), but its also possible that something bigger is at play here since the polls misfired in similar ways in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections: Pollsters may be systematically missing certain types of Republican support.

This is a relatively new phenomenon, but pollsters have increasingly found evidence of partisan nonresponse that is, particular types of Republicans are just less likely to take surveys, so these voters opinions are not reflected in survey data. This was especially relevant in understanding Trumps support, too, as many of these voters broke for him and other Republicans in 2020.

But why are some Republican voters more reluctant to take surveys? As the director of polling at the Cato Institute, I, as well as other pollsters, am studying this and currently have two working theories for why this is happening. First, Republicans are becoming more distrustful of institutions and society, and that may be extending to how they feel about pollsters. Second, suburban Republican college graduates are more likely to fear professional sanction for their views and are therefore self-censoring more, including in surveys. Now, of course, understanding who isnt responding to a survey is inherently difficult because well, they arent taking the survey, and at this point, we dont know whether these two things are happening independently or are part of the same phenomenon. However, it indicates to me that some of the polling error we saw in 2020 is part of a long-standing issue that isnt unique just to Trump.

Long before Trump took office, Republicans were already losing trust in our society and its institutions. But there are now signs that lack of trust could be driving the nonresponse and distrust we see among Republicans in polls. In his examination of what drove survey nonresponse in the 2016 election, Alexander Agadjanian, now a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, found that in the past 40 or so years, Republicans trust has declined considerably. Initially, they were much more likely than Democrats to say that people could be trusted, but now the gap between the two parties has narrowed. If we look at more recent data, from 2018, we see that trust among Republicans is now at the same level as trust among Democrats: In 1972, 56 percent of Republicans said other people could be trusted, as did 41 percent of Democrats. In 2018, those figures declined to 35 percent among both groups a 21-percentage-point decline among Republicans and a 6-point decline among Democrats.

Declining trust in institutions also breaks down along very partisan lines with more Republicans than Democrats saying they lack faith in institutions. Take the share of Republicans who believe the national news media has a positive effect on the country. That figure plummeted from an already-low 24 percent in 2010 to just 10 percent in 2017, according to the Pew Research Center. For academia, the decline in confidence among Republicans has been even more dramatic. In 2010, Pew found 58 percent of Republicans thought colleges and universities had a positive effect on the country, but that share dropped to 36 percent by 2017. In contrast, Democrats confidence in both the media and higher education has gone up slightly since 2010, by 5 points and 7 points, respectively.

So, why are Republicans losing confidence in institutions?

According to Gallup, the most common reason Republicans gave for their low confidence in universities was that they believed they were too political and biased. Similarly, a 2017 Cato Institute/YouGov survey I worked on found that Republicans tended to believe many major news outlets had a liberal bias while an outlet like Fox News had a conservative one.

To be clear, these trends predate Trump, but he likely also accelerated them. Think of all the times he called the news media an enemy of the American people and claimed that the polls were fake that is, unless the results were favorable to him.

And this perception that knowledge gatekeepers like the media and academia are politicized may have given some Republicans the impression that other institutions like polling are politicized too. Or at least this is a working theory I have. Take the fact that media organizations and colleges or universities are often frequent sponsors of polls (e.g., CNN, The New York Times, Monmouth University). In fact, in my analysis of the polls included in the Real Clear Politics polling average one month before the 2020 election, I found that 79 percent of the polls were sponsored by either a media outlet or a college or university. Consider that the sponsors of these polls often explicitly identify themselves when they contact respondents and ask them to participate in a survey. If most Republicans believe journalists and academics are politicized, it stands to reason they might assume the polls they sponsor are politicized, too.

Taken together, its plausible at the very least that as Republican confidence in societal institutions plummets, so does their trust in polls and pollsters more generally. And, as a result, some Republicans in particular, Trump voters who have lower levels of social trust are less likely to take surveys.

But Trumps anti-establishment rhetoric and Republicans declining trust in societal institutions is probably not the whole story either. Polls of the 2018 midterm elections held in the middle of Trumps presidency performed reasonably well. This indicates that something else may also have been at work.

One possible explanation? Republicans may be more likely to opt out of election polls because they increasingly fear retribution for their views. A Cato Institute/YouGov survey I helped conduct in July found, for instance, that 62 percent of Americans have political views they are afraid to share given the current political climate. Republicans were overwhelmingly likely to say they self-censored their political opinions (77 percent) compared with Democrats (52 percent).

Not only were many Republicans afraid to express their political opinions, but those with more education were also more likely than Democrats to say they feared getting fired or missing out on job opportunities if their opinions became known. Interestingly, Republicans with a high school education or less (27 percent) were about as likely as their Democratic counterparts (23 percent) to fear their political views could harm them at work. But Republicans with college degrees (40 percent) and post-graduate degrees (60 percent) were far more concerned than Democrats with college degrees (24 percent) and post-graduate degrees (25 percent) in this regard.

Several other studies have also found that more educated, affluent, white suburban Republicans were hesitant to share their political views. Public Opinion Strategies, for instance, found that Trump voters were more likely to keep their vote a secret from their friends (19 percent of Trump voters versus 8 percent of Biden voters) and that this demographic was more likely to be college-educated white women. Wes Anderson of OnMessage, a Republican consulting firm, also told me that in their research they found that higher-income, college-educated white voters were more likely to say they knew someone who was uncomfortable telling people they were voting for Trump, and whats more, they were more likely to say that description could apply to themselves.

There is also some evidence that these voters might be less likely to reveal their voting preferences in a live telephone interview, although we want to be careful about putting too much stock into shy Trump voters. That said, the pollster Morning Consult did find in 2015 and 2016 that more affluent and educated voters were slightly less likely to indicate that they would vote for Trump in a telephone interview, which carries social desirability pressure, than in an online survey. In 2020 they found limited evidence for an education effect but slightly higher Trump support among higher-income households online. A team of academics also found in an online survey of registered voters that Republicans were about twice as likely (12 percent) as Democrats (5 percent) to say they would probably or definitely not share their true voting intentions for president with a pollster in a telephone poll.

But why are these Republicans resistant to telling pollsters their true preferences? Theyre likely afraid their opinions might get out, even though polls are conducted confidentially. In the aforementioned study, the voters who admitted being unlikely to tell pollsters who they were voting for were asked why that was the case. As one respondent put it, I dont believe the information would be confidential and I think its dangerous to express an opinion outside of the current liberal viewpoint.

Another said, I would not give my real opinion for fear of reprisal if someone found out. These quotes are not just cherry-picked either. The researchers categorized all the open-ended responses and identified six primary reasons why respondents wanted to keep their opinions private, and four of those six reasons involved a fear that ones political opinion could be traced back to them and prove harmful. Republicans considerably outnumbered Democrats in these fears.

Its possible, of course, that this second theory of mine isnt telling the whole story either. It may be that two separate phenomena are occurring simultaneously. Perhaps a sliver of college-educated affluent suburban Republican voters are reluctant to express their views with pollsters, as was detected by Public Opinion Strategies, OnMessage and Morning Consult. And its possible that this group is entirely different from another set of low-trust Republican voters who refuse to take surveys. Or maybe these two theories overlap more than we realize.

Nevertheless, this second theory does help explain, in part, why Republicans did better than expected in more affluent suburban House districts. Most Republican incumbents in suburban districts won, and instead of losing seats nationally, as was forecasted based on pre-election polls, Republicans actually picked up a net gain of 12 House seats (and flipped 15) primarily in suburban areas.

Its easy to think something may be unique to Trumps being on the ballot considering we saw such a large miss in the 2016 and 2020 polls (the 2018 midterm polls, on the other hand, performed well), but although Trump did play a role in creating a contentious environment, we should avoid jumping to the conclusion that polling will return to normal now that hes out of office.

Thats because our country is in the middle of an uncivil war, full of partisan rancor and loathing. This predates Trump, of course, but many believe he brought a persons political identity to the forefront in both 2016 (immigration) and 2020 (immigration, but he also painted Democrats as politically extreme) to the extent that people are now changing their views on race and gender to match their political party. This, in turn, has meant political discourse in the U.S. is harder. For instance, a Yahoo News/YouGov survey conducted in late May 2020 found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) thought Trump was a racist. With those stakes, agreeing to disagree is simply hard for many to do. And those who think that Trump administration policies did more good than harm, on balance, may opt to not participate in polls in order to keep those views private given the stakes.

But this isnt unique to Trump. Other elections where political identity was pivotal to the outcome have also produced polling misses. Take the Brexit vote, the 2016 referendum in the United Kingdom to either leave or stay in the European Union. This vote, too, became strongly associated with issues of identity and immigration and had a surprising electoral outcome because polls systematically underestimated the conservative vote for Leave, which in the end won by nearly 4 points (52 percent Leave versus 48 percent Remain).

Notably, Leave support had actually dropped in the polls after a far-right extremist assassinated Labour lawmaker Jo Cox, a staunch Remainer, because of her views on immigration and globalization. But SurveyMonkeys Chief Research Officer Jon Cohen told NBC News that he thought the drop occurred because many Leave voters didnt want to be associated with Coxs murder; they may have just opted out of surveys even though they were still voting in favor of Leave because they were concerned about immigration. And this is a trend I think is likely to continue as long as sensitive, politically divisive issues like immigration, race, identity and citizenship frame the way voters think about what their vote means.

Provided this interpretation of the data is accurate, pollsters will have to contend with societal forces much larger than the industry itself. The perception that societal institutions are politicized, the belief that a growing illiberal zeitgeist will punish dissenting viewpoints, the inherently sensitive and salient issues of immigration and identity these all combine to undercut the social trust needed for accurate polling. Without Trump on the ballot, the issues at stake could very well change. But it seems unlikely that the highly contentious issues over the past four years will fade into the background simply because Trump is no longer in the White House. Indeed, these issues will likely remain in the forefront in future election cycles, especially if he runs for office again. And unless pollsters can regain respondents trust, todays reluctant Republican survey-takers may continue to conceal their political positions, only to reveal them at the ballot box.

Originally posted here:
Why Did Republicans Outperform The Polls Again? Two Theories. - FiveThirtyEight

A counterprotester gives a Nazi salute at a Black Lives Matter event in Milwaukee. Screenshot from a March 3 presentation by Milwaukee Jewish Federation.

Recent national events are now part of history: The man storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 wearing a Camp Auschwitz shirt. The chants of Jews will not replace us in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2019. U.S. Congress member Marjorie Taylor Green and her Jewish space laser theory.

Closer to home, incidents of antisemitism are on the rise, including social media attacks on two Jewish members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

According to an annual audit released March 3 by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Wisconsinites experienced 99 incidents of antisemitism in 2020, a 36% increase from the year before; the group says these are reports that are verified and corroborated.

We are seeing a significant increase in overt antisemitic expression laden with conspiracy

theories and hate group rhetoric, said Brian Schupper, chair of the JCRC in a statement. The audit helps us discuss these worrisome trends with our community partners and understand where we need to focus our efforts.

Several of the troubling incidents involved Nazi imagery, including reports of people doing the Nazi sieg heil salute at a Republican Party of Milwaukee Protect the Vote Rally on Nov. 7, and a posting on Aug. 26 from a Kenosha middle school teacher posing in front of a swastika, writing, Glad they finally got rid of 2 terrorists in Kenosha [referring to Kyle Rittenhouses victims]. Now get rid of the rest.

It appears most Wisconsin legislators, regardless of party affiliation, believe one way to counter the spread of hate is through education. On Friday, the Senate Committee on Education passed a bill that would mandate Holocaust education by inserting it into the states social studies standards, requiring instruction on the Holocaust and other genocides in grades 5 through 12.

The bill, authored by two Republicans and one Democrat, has more than 40 bipartisan sponsors. It is aimed at countering a lack of knowledge among younger generations about this chapter in history. Recent surveys reveal a shocking learning gap regarding the Holocaust, the event that extinguished the lives of 6 million Jews in addition to Roma (gypsies), gay men, people with disabilities, ethic Poles and Soviet civilians during World War II.

According to a national survey released by Claims Conference, 58% of people surveyed believed something like the Holocaust could happen again. Forty-nine percent of millennials surveyed could not name one of the 40,000 ghettos or camps where Jews were slaughtered. And 22% of those did not know about the Holocaust at all.

I can remember interviewing Holocaust survivors when I was a teenager as part of a

youth group project to preserve their stories. While they shared survival stories that were nothing short of heroic, their stories were also those of tragic loss, Rep. Subeck (D-Madison), one of the bills authors and one of Wisconsins three Jewish legislators, said in a statement. Unfortunately, todays children will likely never meet a Holocaust survivor. While they will not have a chance, as I did, to listen to their firsthand stories, it is incumbent upon us to make sure this history is never repeated.

Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills ), another author of the bill, became a champion of Holocaust education after a visit to Auschwitz in Germany. At the Feb. 23 meeting of the Senate Education Committee that she chairs, Darling and several other co-sponsors spoke with passion about the need for such a measure. She said this history helps us learn and become sensitive to mans inhumanity to man, and to learn from that experience, so that experience of inhumanity isnt repeated again.

Darling and the other members of a delegation saw a film before their tour of the camp. The film was about people getting on the train, who are going to go to concentration camps, Darling said. It hurt the heart so much to see families going on this train, knowing what was going to happen to them. And I was very struck by one particular image of a mom holding the hand of her child . and then youd see these shoes of children who had been exterminated. And seeing these little shoes really, really bothered me. So this just moved me to the point that I thought if I ever have the opportunity, Im going to work on making sure that people understand what happened there.

Darling believes the bill could help address the knowledge gap. My concern was that if we dont have people understand what happened there, I imagined this atrocity could happen again. What happened with the Holocaust is that Hitler decided he needed a scapegoat because the economy was so bad. So he chose the Jewish population to be the scapegoat.

Nancy Kennedy Barnett, spoke at the hearing as a representative of the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center (HERC). The center has a speakers bureau that presents educational programs around the state. If the bill passes, it will provide support and curriculum to educators.

I am the child of a Holocaust survivor from Budapest Hungary, and Im a second generation speaker teaching my fathers story of survival, Barnett said. We have lost witnesses to this horrific time in history, but the lessons and messages cannot be forgotten. When I teach, I dont only speak about the atrocities of the past; I use it as a lens to illustrate what can happen when hatred and bullying is left unchecked.

Barnett recalled an incident that happened in one of classrooms where she taught in Hartland, Wis., after a group of 8th graders had visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Ill. After I had spent about an hour with them telling my fathers story, an eighth grade girl raised her hand and, clearly troubled, said to me, I was talking to my mom last night, and my mom says that she has a friend that said the Holocaust never happened.

Barnett said students need help separating fact from fiction, and can apply lessons from Holocaust studies to other incidences of hate and discrimination. Students must understand the consequences of hate. They must not be bystanders, she continued. They can be an upstander instead, by being someone who gets involved. They can be proactive and have the courage to speak up and care, but they must know the truth. Holocaust education teaches an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping, and an examination of what it means to be a responsible and respectful person.

Many members of the committee appeared moved by the virtual testimonial of Eva Zaret, a Holocaust survivor from Budapest, Hungary, who came to the U.S. when she was 20. Zaret, who is Jewish, lost most of her family in the camps, and has devoted her later years to teaching about the Holocaust in middle schools, high schools and colleges.

I get such a response from the children, said Zaret. They are waiting to hug me and sometimes that takes an hour and a half after I speak, and they cry and they want to learn. I feel that this is the most important thing we can do as human beings is teach our

children.

Holding up a photograph of her parents, she talked about attending first grade at age 6. After my father was taken, my friends didnt want to speak to us. All of a sudden, I realized that we were different than my friends. They told me I killed Christ and cannot talk to me, she recalled.

Zaret said she will never forget the hate, violence and horrors she witnessed. I escaped from Vienna to come to the United States, she continued. And this is my beloved country. I want people to learn about the Holocaust and atrocities, because its not just the 6 million Jews who were killed. How about the other millions of people who stood by or did nothing or hated us just for being Jewish? I will do anything possible to help while Im alive.

Mark Miller, chair of the board at HERC, tells Wisconsin Examiner he is extremely encouraged by the bipartisan support for the the Holocaust Education Bill, which passed the Assembly in early 2020 before COVID-19 derailed everything, including pending legislation. He says the universal support for the measure speaks volumes.

Miller says the generation of Holocaust survivors is dying, so it is up to the next generation to carry on the knowledge. It was one of the most horrible events ever in the history of mankind, he says. And it will translate to other injustices also; it gives young people a perspective that they need to have to be better citizens.

In addition to teaching about what happens when hate goes unchecked, studying resistance can help students understand how to overcome prejudice. And, he adds, education itself is a victory. Clearly, we want to honor the 6 million people that didnt die in vain. This is a way to tell their story. They didnt die in vain. They actually won, and became educators for a better society.

The Holocaust Education Resource Center is setting up a website and will make curriculum available for free, says Miller. Teachers have a lot on their plate. But our commitment here is to provide a resource that everyone can go to, to pull lesson plans, to teach their young people about this, he continues. If you dont want this to happen again, and you see the way society is fraying, and split up, then you have to educate young people because theyre the future.

Miller got involved in HERC because his wifes family survived the Holocaust and he has learned from their stories. If youre a survivor, you live it every day, you talk about it every day, he says. Its how you survive. The weight of the atrocities very few human beings mentally can handle that. And the way you handle that is by talking about it by sharing, by interacting with other people.

This story needs to be told because thats how they win, says Miller. These people didnt die in vain. They are going to become the educators. And that I know up in heaven, that theyre going to have a little smile that they won that Hitler didnt win.

Jonathan Pollack, an instructor in the history department of Madison College and an honorary scholar in UW-Madisons Center for Jewish Studies, tells Wisconsin Examiner he finds the Holocaust Education bill really kind of refreshing. Despite the level of party-based rancor in Wisconsin, he calls it a bipartisan slam-dunk bill, and I feel like we dont see many of those.

Because of the range of opinions in the Jewish community and beyond on the actions of Israel, he was glad to see that the bill avoided the trap of labeling criticism of the Israeli military and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu as antisemitism. It was pretty straightforward, he says of the bill. And there was no weird, hidden agenda in there.

Pollack says incidents like the Baraboo high schoolers photographed in 2018 doing a Nazi salute showed the importance of education. In the aftermath of that, people were saying there ought to be something in Wisconsin that mandates Holocaust education, because they just dont know.

Most of Pollacks classes cover modern U.S. history, including African American and Native American history. In each of these, the subject of genocide comes up, in Native American history, first and foremost, he says. But I certainly avoid Holocaust comparisons. I really like to talk about the differences.

Pollack taught a semester course in Jewish history and found that the Holocaust loomed so large for many Jewish students that they lacked much context for the rest of their history. The story of American Jewish communities and the Holocaust is really complicated and weird because the U.S. didnt officially want to recognize it, and American Jews were too insecure about their own position here to truly speak up a whole lot about it.

Pollack said most of his college students have possessed at least a basic knowledge of the Holocaust and he hasnt experienced Holocaust denial or students believing the Jews caused the Holocaust, another disturbing finding from the Claims Conference study.

However, says Pollack, progress toward racial equity in this country is slow, despite ethnic studies requirements that became part of college curriculums in the 1980s.

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State-mandated standards are certainly a step in the right direction, but not enough to make lasting change. Theres still racism, still institutional racism, and all the ethnic studies in the world isnt going to help especially students of color who dont have the money to pay full tuition, says Pollack. Does this make a difference? Will there be no more Baraboo because theres this line in the state statutes that governs what goes on in Wisconsin schools, that there has to be X amount of time spent on the Holocaust? I doubt it.

If the bill sails through, as expected, it will be interesting to follow the progress of Holocaust education in Wisconsin, says Pollack. His hope is that the Holocaust will be taught as part of a historical context, including important stories of resistance. At the university level people studying the Holocaust began looking at at genocide and looking at the the atrocities and the victims and so forth, and that where recent scholarship has gotten more into the Warsaw ghetto and the various partisan movements around Europe, he says.

Too much focus on atrocities can leave students feeling despair, he adds. Even with Jewish students who came up through Jewish day schools in Chicago and in New York and elsewhere, our modern Jewish history education is just focused on the Holocaust, says Pollack. It was just like looking in a bottomless pit. Theres more to Jewish history than that. Theres more to even the Holocaust than that.

He credits his mentor David Sorkin, a former UW-Madison professor now at Yale, for his ideas on how to teach the Holocaust. He said to teach a class entirely on the Holocaust is to rob it of its context; to carefully understand the Holocaust, you have to look at it in the context of the Jewish experience in Germany and the rest of Europe.

Kiel Majewski, the co-founder of a grassroots truth and reconciliation organization called Together We Remember, was the first executive director of CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. He shared an office with Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor, who was subject to medical experiments in the camp. An arsonist destroyed the museum in 2003.

We need this education, and it would be most useful if it leads us to address the history of genocide and atrocity in the land now known as the U.S. Majewski says, again citing the Claims Conference study on how many millennials cant name a concentration camp. Compare that to a survey released the same year by Southern Poverty Law Center which found that only 9% of high school seniors in the U.S. 9%! could name slavery as a primary cause of the Civil War. Is it any wonder that in the mainstream we have trouble recognizing structural racism and its longstanding effects?

Majewski believes the Legislatures attempt to bring these stories into classrooms will strengthen the education of young people. The Holocaust is unique, and all genocides are unique in their own right, he says. Looking closer at them reveals both parallels and pitfalls in connecting the dots from past to present and across cultures. We can and should educate students to understand the nuances while appreciating how these moments in history are connected and part of the bigger challenge of bending the arc toward justice for the planet and all of its people.

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Republicans and Democrats agree on this: Teaching the Holocaust - Wisconsin Examiner

COLUMBUS, Ohio The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.

Ohioans were living with the coronavirus for about two months before GOP lawmakers initiated what would be a nearly yearlong effort to squash the state health departments ability to issue public health orders.

The earliest version of the idea was to limit any order issued by the Ohio Department of Health to a two-week window. After that, a small panel of lawmakers would need to approve the order for it to stay in effect any further.

We are clearly on the downside of the curve, there is no longer a risk of overwhelming the health care system, said now-former Rep. John Becker to the House State and Local Government Committee, setting one of the first legislative attacks on the health department in motion via Senate Bill 1.

Im not sure there ever was, but that argument did make sense to me initially.

Ten months, three gubernatorial vetoes, and more than 520,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 later, little has changed. The Senate passed a similar version of the idea last month on a party-line vote.

A review of emails obtained by public records requests, committee hearings, interviews and contemporaneous media reports highlight just how absent public health was from efforts to wrest power from the health department during a pandemic.

In several instances, abortion politics, coronavirus infections among lawmakers, and overly rosy assessments of the pandemic from Republican leaders played a larger role in the legislation than the coronavirus itself.

SB 1 died an unusual death last May when every state Senator even the bills sponsors voted it down. Its supporters gave varying explanations from the Senate floor. They said it didnt have an emergency clause, meaning it wouldnt take effect for 90 days; and it was clumsily drafted.

Then-Senate President Larry Obhof, one of the most powerful Republicans in the state, later told constituents that Senators killed the bill, in part, because it could have expanded womens access to abortion.

A prominent Right to Life organization pointed out that the language, as written, could allow lawsuits challenging health orders that regulate or close abortion clinics, he said in an email obtained in a public records request.

Thus, the language could have been used to protect abortion clinics.

The concern came from a letter the Greater Columbus Right to Life sent to lawmakers. Ohio Right to Life, which operates independently of the Columbus organization, disagreed, according to its director, Michael Gonidakis. However, he tried to stay out of it.

We had no desire to be involved in that debate, he said in a recent interview.

Sen. Tim Schaffer, R-Lancaster, later wrote on Facebook that the bill would have limited the states ability to shut down illegal abortion clinics. Then-Speaker of the House Larry Householder, R-Glenford, prior to being indicted in an alleged racketeering scheme, commented on the post.

He told the senator to grow a pair and called his rationale bullshit.

SB 1 was hardly unique. Lawmakers have introduced a flurry of bills aimed at curbing ODHs public health powers. Several passed at least one chamber including:

The Ohio Department of Health, the Ohio Hospital Association, the Ohio State Medical Association, and a vast majority of health professionals pleaded lawmakers to kill Senate Bill 311, another bill to grant themselves the ability to vote down public health orders. It also would have banned statewide lockdown orders from ODH.

Undeterred by surging hospital rolls and a crush of COVID-19 deaths, the Senate passed the bill in September. The House passed it in November.

Both chambers had to navigate plague among their own members to pass the bill.

The Senate delayed its September vote on SB 311 after a member contracted COVID-19, according to an email obtained via public records request.

We had hoped SB 311 would pass this past Wednesday, but session didnt happen due to a member whose vote we needed coming down with coronavirus, a Roegner aide emailed to a constituent in September.

At the time, WOSU reported that state Sen. Bob Peterson, R-Washington Court House, tested positive for COVID-19, which required Obhof to quarantine.

In the House, Becker, an early COVID-19 skeptic, missed the SB 311 passage vote due to a mystery fever along with fatigue, sore throat and mild congestion, he wrote on Facebook. At least five lawmakers contracted COVID-19 in early December, including two Democrats who were hospitalized.

The House passed SB 311 with 57 Republican votes three short of enough to override Gov. Mike DeWines eventual veto. On the last full legislative day of the session last year, Obhof claimed the House didnt have enough healthy members in attendance to override the veto.

Obhof opted against initiating the override in the Senate.

I think there was a core group of people in my chamber, and Im sure there was in the House because I heard from some of them, who said maybe this isnt the right time to have this fight, Obhof said in an interview.

A rosy outlook

Since May, Ohio Republicans have insisted COVID-19 isnt as bad as health officials say.

Early in the pandemic, Dr. Amy Acton, then-director of ODH, emphasized the need to flatten the curve slow down the rate of viral transmission to prevent an overload on the health care system, and to wait out a vaccine.

As far back as April, Republicans worked the phrase into the past tense.

The curve has been flattened and Ohio will not come close to exceeding its capacity to care for its citizens, said Sen. Kristina Roegner, SB 311s lead sponsor, in an April 23 op-ed.

Rep. J. Todd Smith, R-Farmersville, made similar comments in May.

We have either flattened the curve by some of the measures that have been put in place or it was just overstated to what the effect would be, but either way, were now looking at peoples lives being crushed financially, he said during a committee hearing.

In June, 19 lawmakers wrote a letter to the governor declaring that Ohio smashed the curve long ago. Mission accomplished!

In an interview, Obhof said he may have underestimated the gravity of the pandemic early on.

I think that we thought itd be done sooner, he said. When [House Majority Leader Bill] Seitz and I talked about this in April and May of last year, wed say, In June, lets do an after-action report. Because everybody thought that by the summertime, things would lighten up. And then they didnt.

When asked about the conversation, Seitz said last week its fair to say none of us anticipated the pandemic would still be going on today.

To the extent that we believed it would end well before now, that was not an error on our part, but rather, a belief based on 15 days to slow the spread and on subsequent comments, I believe in July, that the mask mandate would result in ending COVID-19 within 6 weeks, he said in an email.

In other words, to the extent that we believed well before now, it was based on the information furnished to us by the executive branch.

Despite Seitzs belief that the mask mandate would end the pandemic within six weeks, he and the GOP caucus have consistently voted down mask mandates at the Capitol for House members and staff.

At the time Seitz and Obhof were having these discussions, a few hundred Ohioans were contracting COVID-19 on a given day. Since then, on the worst days of the (still raging) pandemic, more than 13,000 Ohioans contracted COVID-19. On Dec. 16, a record 205 Ohioans died of COVID-19.

The surge in COVID-19 deaths this winter was disturbing but hardly surprising. Public health experts warned for months that respiratory diseases surge in the winter, and cold weather drives people inside where transmission is more likely.

Last spring, Democrats struck a different and demonstrably more accurate, tone. Rep. Fred Strahorn, D-Dayton, warned that legislation like SB 1 would make then-ODH Director Dr. Amy Actons job more difficult, and would likely cost lives.

I dont think people are understanding the gravity of this, he said. This isnt going away next month. Until theres a vaccine, we are going to live with this for over a year.

People are going to die, whether we pass this today or not The question is, are we going to do things to make fewer people die? Or are we going to put up barriers in place so more people die.

Acton would go on to resign in June after massive protests opposing the lockdowns, flush with men carrying assault rifles, formed outside the Capitol. Similar, though less militaristic protests arose outside her home.

Throughout the debate, Republicans have insisted its an issue of the separation of powers. They say its an issue of checks and balances.

Early in the pandemic, the argument goes, the governor and ODH needed free reign to issue orders as they saw fit. But in a prolonged emergency, lawmakers, who have consistently voted down in-house mask requirements and regularly downplay COVID-19, must have greater say.

This isnt about politics, this is about representation, said Rep. D.J. Swearingen at the May 6 hearing. This is about input.

Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, who sponsored several of the measures, insisted in an interview the legislation is about checks and balances, not the coronavirus specifically, nor the governor, the health director or anyone else.

Only one Republican in the legislature (her term ended at the end of 2020) has consistently opposed the moves against the health department: Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering.

During a floor speech in May, Lehner, an anti-abortion lawmaker, questioned how pro-life principles apply to a pandemic that has killed 17,000 Ohioans.

For years, I, and many of the sponsors of Senate Bill 1 and 311, have said we must put life first, she said. Over and above personal liberties of any kind. Suddenly, that argument has gone out the window. Now our personal liberties are replacing the protection of life in the state of Ohio.

When the House passed SB 1, the pandemic death toll in Ohio was 1,459.

When the Senate passed SB 311, it hit 4,883. When the House passed it, 7,321.

When the Senate passed Senate Bill 22 (the latest version of the same idea): 17,058.

Leaders in the legislature, when asked, were unfazed by the rising statistics.

A lot of folks have died from COVID-19, and does that affect what we did or what I think about Senate Bill 22? And the answer to that, of course, is no. Im very much in support of the bill, said Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, in a press conference.

House Speaker Bob Cupp, R-Lima, made similar remarks, though he noted a recent reduction in infection rates and hospital burden.

I think this is an institutional question, a matter of checks and balances, he said. It really doesnt depend on any specific statistics.

Roegner declined an interview request and did not answer specific questions. In a statement, she reiterated her support for SB 22.

We must be able to respond in a manner that allows Ohioans to both protect and provide for their families, she said. When asked why not just trust the executive branch with this sweeping power, I can answer that with three words: Whitmer, Newsome [sic] and Cuomo.

Here is the original post:
Inside Ohio Republicans 10-month war on the state health department over COVID-19 - News 5 Cleveland

Nothing has changed that; that trend will continue. Millennials and Gen Z have a much higher proportion of college [educational attainment], and theyre increasing their share of the electorate. The values of those voters continue to be aligned with Democratsthough I actually think they are more likely to be ticket-splitters.

If you look at the midterms versus what happened in 2020, [Democrats] had a drop-off in support with them, but I think they were acting normallywhereas Trumps new white working-class and rural voters were not. Many of them are new to the electorate and voting with a different kind of energyvoting straight-ticket to save the country. Anything short of that [level of support] is going to look like Democrats are just renting those suburban voters. But the Democrats new voters were being normal people who dont vote 100 percent [party line].

So, you see that trend continuing? Were not yet at the high-water mark for the diploma divide?

I do, at least with those people who are normal votersthat is, who are kind of in and out of elections. But on the white working-class and rural side, what happened in both 16 and 20 was this [surge of] new voters who hadnt voted before. So I have no idea whats going to happen in the midterms. I can see one scenario where, with the Democrats in control, those voters are motivated even more to turn out in huge numbers to save the country. Or they could drop off as they did in 2018 or maybe even like they did in [the Senate runoff elections in] Georgia, where Trump was not on the ballot. Are these voters anti-Democratic Party? Will they reward what looks like it might be a successful Democratic administration in the midtermswhich we havent had for a while? I have no idea.

Youve mentioned this sense, among certain Trump voters, of needing to save the country. Describe that. What animates that existential concern? Is it purely about race? Is it something else?

Yeah, racial resentment is a very strong piece. I think we underestimate how powerful a moment it was when Barack Obama won and then got reelected. To this coalition, they view Obamacare as simply paying off his base of voters with big government payoffs to ensure a permanent Democratic majority.

I think Obama campaigning in every election has given them the rationale that they have to vote. Its why Trump made reversing Obamas legacyreversing everything Obama didfeature centrally in his rallies: Obama represented a whole changed America that they had to stop.

That actually sounds a lot like an aspect of the Reagan Democrat dynamic you identified in Macomb County, Michigan, in the 80s and 90s. You wrote about those focus groups in 1995s Middle-Class Dreams: These white voters expressed a profound distaste for Black Americans, a sentiment that pervaded almost everything they thought about government and politics. Blacks constitute the explanation for their vulnerability and for almost everything that had gone wrong in their lives; not being black was what constituted being middle class. Is that the same dynamic at play now, decades later?

No. Theres a step in this history: In the end, these Reagan Democrats voted for Obama. It was competitive in 08 and 12, but when you listened to these voters, they decided Barack Obama was not Jesse Jackson: He was not a candidate they saw as running to represent his people. They thought he would fight for all Americans, and they ultimately voted for himwhich is pretty astonishing. What they were most concerned about was NAFTA, corporations sending jobs to Mexico, CEOs enriching themselves and not investing in their own companies. They were incredibly focused on globalization. They were on the front lines of people angry about what was happening with corporate America, and were voting for Democratsand for Obama, specificallybecause they thought he would take up those issues.

When you look at [Bidens] economic plan, a lot of it was about America First. It was about building in America. It was about stopping outsourcing. Its still part of build back better.

That competed with this racial dynamic. Obama benefited from it. But Trump benefited from it, too, because he ran on reversing all these trade agreements, and Democrats were pansies on talking about trade in 2016. Hillary Clinton was really for [the Trans-Pacific Partnership], and Trump was authentically campaigning against NAFTA, against TPP and was depicted as fighting for working people, which Democrats hadnt done for a long time. Trade was key to that. It was a key part of why he was winning these votersnot just because of race, but because America First represented fighting for American industry and American manufacturing, and Democrats were about globalization and trade and were actually embarrassed to attack some companies for moving jobs to Mexico.

That changed with Biden, by the way. Biden, when he came out of the basementas Trump described ithe very self-consciously went right to these states first, and said, I hear you. Im listening. Im not of that school. He didnt say the word deplorable; he said, Im listening to you. And when you look at his economic plan, a lot of it was about America First. It was about building in America. It was about stopping outsourcing. America First rhetoric was a part of Bidens campaign. Its still part of build back better.

Right now, polling shows overwhelming public support for Bidens $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Im curious how you read that. Is it a sign that the Reagan-era consensus about small government is over?

I dont think the Republicans are as disillusioned with Trump as polls suggest, but I do think theres huge support for the relief package. Trump voters, a large portion of them, want a welfare state that is dependable for working people. The Reagan Democrats and these white working-class voters are incredibly pro-Medicaid expansion. Look at what happened in any of any of these Senate races in 18 in states [with initiatives on] on the minimum wage or Medicaid expansion. The minimum wage and Medicaid expansion won by much bigger numbers [than the incumbents]. I mean, it won in Utah.

To put a fine point on it: Do you think that the Reagan Democrat era is over? Is it still a useful lens for us to look at U.S. politics?

Well, look: There is a kind of suburban, white working-class voter today who faces a lot of competing dynamics that are similar to the Reagan era. Its globalization and the welfare state, and whether that is going to work for them.

But there are also new voters coming in who are responsive to [appeals to] white nationalism and racial resentment, and whose overwhelming motivation is a deep worry that Black people and immigrants will control the country. For these new voters, thats still issue number one; its not competing with trade. Its the reason theyre voting. Its the reason why theyre registering.

But the Reagan Democrats were not Republicans. That was the piece that was central to them: They did not become Republicans. They were for Reagan, but they wanted to be for Democrats. And I think its still true that we still have a lot of these voters who had been voting for Democrats recentlywhether for [Bill] Clinton or Obamawho also voted for Trump but arent Republicans.

Do you see something similar at play now, with highly educated suburban voters who had long thought of themselves as Republicans now voting for Democrats, even if they dont think of themselves as members of the party? Are Biden Republicans going to play a similar role in shaping politics in the 2020s?

I think theres two kinds of Biden Republicanstwo trends.

One of them is you saw quite affluent, very Republican towns [in suburban counties], and Biden got a very large percentage of votes from those counties. They are more affluent college graduates voting for Biden. Will they stick? They may, given how Trump is defining the Republican Party.

And the other piece is that Biden is very self-consciously campaigning for Macomb County-type, white working-class voters [for whom] race is not the only thing driving their vote, but who went to Trump [in 2016] because of globalization and their belief that Democrats are not fighting for American workers. Biden is fighting for those voters, too.

Its interesting to see how Republicans are trying to respond to this political dynamic in the suburbs. Certainly, the GOP push on school reopenings right now seems directly like a play for suburban voters. Do you see that as a promising gambit for them?

Lets see how this plays out over time. I mean, if you listen to what they said at CPAC, the reason they think its wrong for Democratic states to get this aid [in Bidens $1.9 trillion stimulus plan] is because theyve been following health protocols and opening up their economies in a paced way to reflect where they are on dealing with the [coronavirus] crisis. These Republicans are Covid deniers who want to open up the economy.

But what does this look like at the end of 2021? What does it look like after these places get their state aid? After schools are fully back in-person in the fall? Particularly if the economy is fairly strongif Bidens going forward with his infrastructure plans; if hes going forward with his tax cuts and credits to working people; if theres more affordable health care. What will politics look like when the schools are open and it looks like Bidens been successful?

Youve noted that many of the new voters Trump brought out are people who see an existential battle for Americawho see this as cultural and race-related. And that seems to be a real bind for Republicans: To win back some of these suburban districts, they may need to adopt a posture thats less driven by white grievance politics. But if they do that, they risk turning off this segment of new Trump voters who might otherwise stay home. How do they navigate that? Its like squeezing a water balloonyou get a grip on one part, and it gets bigger elsewhere.

If you look at the trends in this election, [Trumps campaign] was able to, like, wage a race war with a massive increase in turnout in the rural areas and among white working-class voters. But the percentage of eligible voters who are older than Millennials dropped by 8 points. So, for Republicans to be successful with this strategy while going against that demographic trend, you need a continually animating and increasingly intense and effective effort to turn out the vote.

[In 2020,] the percentage of millennials and Gen Z voters went up, I think, 6 points. About two-thirds of that was from the natural trend [of demography], but about one-third was from increased turnout compared to the midterms. And thats a very diverse, more college-educated, group. And Biden won them. Theres no way thats not going to be a bigger bloc in the [next] midterms and, certainly, presidential election. How do you win if you dont compete at all for those voters, and you animate their turnoutand do the same for college-educated voters who want a more open country? Its just in contradiction.

Its interesting, when you look at last weekends CPAC straw poll, only 55 percent [of respondents] said theyd vote for Trump if the 2024 Republican primary was held today. People underestimate his [level of] insecurity about his hold on the Republican Partywhich meant he had to command absolute loyalty and punish anybody who wasnt for him. That will obviously continue. This battle is going to carry on within the Republican Party. Hes going to lead the party as long as he is alive and breathingeven if hes under indictment or bankrupt, [hell blame it all] on the IRS and FBI; hell be a victim.

They are going to have to lose a few elections before there can be a new dynamic within the Republican Partyjust as the Democrats lost a lot of national elections before Bill Clinton was able to change the party.

On the racial resentment component: You were Nelson Mandelas pollster. Before your work in Macomb County in the 80s, you were polling in South Africa during apartheid. How does that experience frame the way you see the politics surrounding race in the U.S.?

Initially, I was an academic doing pollingbut not on electionsand wrote very obscure books. I wrote a book [in 1980] called Race and State in Capitalist Development that has a cult following. When I started the book, it was supposed to be equally about Alabama and the American South, as well as South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland. I got hooked on South Africa, ended up writing many more chapters about it. I interviewed business leaders, trade union leaders and leaders of farm organizations during the apartheid era trying to understand what they were bringing to the market. I was arguing that the decisions they were making were not leading to a breakdown of apartheid. The normal assumption was that if you had industrial development, capitalist development, it would lead to less racial division. I was arguing that, in fact, it will, for some period, exacerbate racial divisions before it undermines them.

What I was trying to understand was: What were the rational decisions that people were making, coming out of this racial history that they all live with? How do you use that history? That meant [exhibiting] understanding and empathy when Id go to interview the trade union leaderssome of whom negotiated and built into the employment structure a racial structure very similar to Alabama. They were making kind of rational decisions as trade unionists to limit competition [for their jobs]. But then in other industries, like government, unions were broader and more inclusive and tried to bring nonwhites into the unions. I had an empathy, trying to understand working people and the history that they live with when they make decisions, but also how their leaders made decisionsnot just political, but within civil society and the economy.

I think its part of why I was able to listen to Macomb County workers. I was arguing: If you bring them a thing theyll agree with, like universal health care, these voters arent done with Democrats. Theyre not done with Democrats if you are talking about universal issues that they can gain from. Even though [some of these voters] were clearly racist, I was not willing to say that theres not something that lies behind that that we need to understand and that enables us to find a broader coalition and draws on their better nature.

When I presented my stuff at the Democratic National Committee [meeting in Chicago in 1985], I was ostracized because I was saying that these voters had to be part of our Democratic coalition. That was a time when Jesse Jackson was competing [for leadership] within the Democratic Party. I was ostracized. Its why I ended up working for the Democratic Leadership Council: They were willing to hire me, but not the DNC. [Greenbergs work for the DLC ended up leading to his work for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who implemented the Macomb County findings in his messaging during his quest for the presidency.]

How does the racial resentment you saw in studying South Africa compare with the racial divide you see in the U.S. right now?

During the apartheid period, their fear was existential: the fear that only by maintaining this apartheid system could they maintain their way of lifeand that, no, we couldnt do this in pieces, because you once do, you began to chip apartheid away.

I dont want to put all the Trump voters in that world. There are a lot of them who havent been involved at all. Theyve been politically disengaged. But Trump has brought a segment of white nationalists in. Thats very real and that [apartheid-era fear in South Africa] does look like their world. But that isnt true of all Trump voters.

Prior to the 2020 campaign, you wondered whether Democrats were ready to use government after this decade of anti-government tyranny. Based on what youve seen so far, are they?

Absolutely, yes. Im actually stunned by how much consensus there is around using the government to really deliver for people. I think the Biden administration buys that. The gap between the progressive wing and the Biden wingif that is a wingis small. You look at the relief package, and theres like one piece theyre arguing about. But if you look at what theyre agreeing on, introducing a child benefitnot just child care, but also a child benefit, which is more of a European kind of safety netcombined with a great expansion on health care, I think youre dealing with a big change. [Full disclosure: Greenbergs wife is Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a leading proponent of the child benefit.]

Right now, everyone thinks that government needs to deliver in a big way. I think that scares Republicans. And it will be interesting to see. People are going to see real benefits, not just the $2,000 stimulus piece, but something more enduring. If you look at the proposed $3,600 per child; thats delivered [in installments] monthly into peoples checking accounts. That not only reduces child poverty; its virtually every middle-class person that we are talking about.

Obama was pro-globalization, and believed we benefited from it. He would have been embarrassed to go see a company that was bringing jobs back from abroad to build in America But Biden will.

Biden is willing to say, Im fighting to do this. Weve not had a Democrat I mean, when Clinton ran in 92, [his message] was very much about fighting for the middle class. It had a very populist and nationalist component to it. But [that was not the case] further into his administration, when [the virtues of] free trade was more part of the Democratic assumptions about the world.

Obama was pro-globalization and believed we benefited from it. He would have been embarrassed to go see a company that was bringing jobs back from abroad to build in America. He would have been embarrassed to highlight that. But Biden will. Were looking at a very different time.

At the start of every focus group, you ask people to fill in the blank in this sentence: I feel ___ about the way things are going in the country. How would you, Stan Greenberg, fill in that blank?

I feel deeply, deeply uncertain and foreboding. I think were in a battle for democracy whose outcome is uncertain.

Read the original:
The Rise of the Biden Republicans - POLITICO

Republicans in the U.S. House last week unanimously opposed President Bidens economic stimulus bill, even though polls show that the legislation is popular with the public. The U.S. Senate will consider the bill soon and it looks like the overwhelming majority of Republicans in that chamber will oppose it as well. And its not just the stimulus. House Republicans also last week overwhelmingly opposed a bill to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And the GOP seems poised to oppose upcoming Democratic bills to make it easier to vote and spend hundreds of billions to improve the nations infrastructure. All of those ideas are popular with the public, too.

Duh, you might say. Of course, the party out of power opposes the agenda of the party in power. Democrats did that during former President Donald Trumps four years. Republicans did it during former President Barack Obamas two terms. The parties just disagree on a lot of major issues.

Youve seen this movie before, right?

This sequel is a little different, actually. Obamas health care bill was only hovering around majority support as it moved through Congress. Trumps proposals to repeal Obamacare and cut corporate taxes were downright unpopular. In contrast, Biden and the major elements of his agenda are popular. And the Republican Party isnt, which helps explain why it was swept out of power in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

So if an unpopular party uniformly opposes popular policies in the run-up to 2022 and 2024, is it buying itself a ticket further into the political wilderness?

Not necessarily.

There are several reasons to think that opposing popular policies wont hurt Republicans electorally, and conversely, that implementing a popular agenda wont necessarily boost Biden that much.

The first reason that congressional Republicans can afford to oppose popular ideas is one that you have probably read a lot about over the last several years: The GOP has several big structural advantages in Americas electoral system. Because of the Electoral College, Trump would have won the presidency with around 257,000 more votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, even though he lost nationally by more than 7 million votes. The Senate gives equal weight to sparsely populated states like Wyoming and huge ones like California, so the chambers 50 Democratic senators effectively represent about 185 million Americans, while its 50 Republican senators represent about 143 million, as Voxs Ian Millhiser recently calculated. Gerrymandering by Republicans, as well as the weakness of Democrats in rural areas, makes it harder for Democrats to win and keep control of the House even when most voters back Democratic House candidates. Thats what happened in 2020.

Put all that together, and congressional Republicans are somewhat insulated from the public will. In turn, the advantage for Biden and congressional Democrats of being closer to the publics opinions is blunted.

Second, electoral politics and policy are increasingly disconnected. More and more Americans vote along party lines and are unlikely to break from their side no matter what it does. Some scholars argue that voters attachments to the parties are not that closely linked to the parties policy platforms but rather more akin to loyalty to a team or brand. And partisanship and voting are increasingly linked to racial attitudes, as opposed to policy. So GOP-leaning voters may support some Democratic policies but still vote for Republican politicians who oppose those policies.

Third, the last several midterm elections have all been defined by backlashes against the incumbent president. You could argue that theres nothing inevitable about this, and that former President George W. Bush (Social Security reform, Iraq War), Obama (Obamacare in 2010 and its flawed rollout in 2014) and Trump (Obamacare repeal) all did or proposed controversial things that irritated voters. Maybe if Biden sticks to popular stuff hell buck the trend. But it could instead be the case that voters from the presidents party tend to be kind of fat and happy in midterms, while the opposition is inspired to turn out. So even if Biden does popular things, GOP voters could be more motivated to vote in November 2022.

Fourth, voters may like a presidents policies in the abstract but still think he isnt doing a good job or that his policies arent that effective if those policies arent bipartisan. Think of this as the Mitch McConnell theory.

Early in Obamas first term, the last time Democrats had control of the House, Senate and the presidency, the Kentucky senator and others in the GOP leadership came up with a strategy of trying to get as few congressional Republicans as possible to back then-President Obamas ideas. As McConnell said publicly back then, he viewed voters as not especially attuned to the day-to-day happenings in Washington. Instead, he said, they evaluate a president in part based on whether his agenda seems divisive, particularly a president who campaigns on unifying the country (as both Obama and Biden did). That allows the opposition party to create the perception of division simply by voting against the presidents agenda.

Put another way: The opposition party can guarantee a lack of bipartisan support and then criticize the president for lacking bipartisan support.

Maybe history wont repeat itself. But being the Party of No in the Obama years resulted in the GOP winning the House, the Senate and then the presidency from 2010 to 2016. It is totally logical that a party still led by key figures from the Obama era (McConnell and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy) would think total opposition to a Democratic president would work again.

The fifth reason is a more complicated one: Swing voters may not swing to the party with the most popular policies either because they dont engage with politics in that way or because they are motivated by non-policy concerns. The Democratic Party and much of the media (either implicitly or explicitly) approach American politics using a median voter model of political success. That model goes like this: Some voters hold mostly liberal views, some hold mostly conservative views and then some hold views somewhere in the ideological middle. Candidates and parties who hold more centrist views will do better electorally because they will win the backing of voters in the ideological middle, as well as those on either the left or right.

Following this median voter approach, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden spent 2019 and 2020 pushing ideas that were popular with the partys base and voters in the middle. They avoided stances such as defunding the police or Medicare for All that were not as popular. This view seems intuitive. And its hard to argue that its wrong Democrats won the House, Senate and presidency in 2018 and 2020 following this approach. And its likely that Democrats would have done worse if they fully embraced unpopular ideas.

Where this gets more complicated is when considering the magnitude of this median approach. Theres clearly some electoral benefit in pursuing a more popular agenda, all else being equal. But how big is it? Its not at all clear that Republicans suffer a lot from opposing popular ideas or proposing unpopular ones. And its not at all clear that Democrats gain significantly from running on things that poll well. Trump didnt really pursue the median voter much in the 2020 election cycle think of how he expressed skepticism about mask-wearing last year, contradicting the views of a clear majority of Americans, or how he pushed to put Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, even as polls suggested that most Americans wanted to let the winner of the presidential election choose the replacement for the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Its not that Trump did only unpopular things, but he did not seem to be courting the majority of the publics support in his policy moves during his campaign or much of his tenure in office.

I think thats why many in the media and in politics, myself included, were inclined to believe polls that showed Trump trailing in the high single digits around Election Day. It fit this general median voter model Trump had governed in an unpopular way, punctuated by his handling of COVID-19, and it made sense to think that voters in the middle of the electorate would punish him severely.

Trump lost, but his 4.5-percentage-point defeat nationally was closer than most polls suggested.

Why didnt Trump face a bigger backlash? Well, the partisanship of the electorate no doubt played a big role. There were a ton of voters who were never going to back a Democrat, no matter how moderate the candidate or how many controversial stands Trump took.

That said, its possible that the median voter concept either wasnt that sound in the first place or is increasingly outdated. As FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman has written, there are swing voters but they arent necessarily centrists who choose the candidate closest to the middle. Swing voters often have either a hodgepodge of views (some on the left, some on the right) and/or dont have strongly defined views at all. That doesnt mean that either party should nominate an extremist its likely someone with extreme views will turn off more swing voters more than a candidate closer to the middle. But it suggests that a candidate who positions themself in the center may not reap large electoral benefits.

If liberals were right about how politics worked, Donald Trump should never have been possible, and his party should have suffered crushing, generational defeats in the wake of his election, especially last November, said Will Stancil, an expert on civil-rights law and policy who works at the University of Minnesotas Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity.

He added, Politics is as much irrational, emotive factionalism as anything else. But liberals only seem capable of understanding it as an orderly marketplace of ideas and will contort themselves in pretzels to preserve the fiction that voters commitments are rational and mechanical.

Furthermore, taking popular stands may not matter that much if voters dont hear about it. Or if they dont factor those stands into how they vote. So its likely that some Americans either didnt know about Bidens popular policy stands in 2020 or didnt focus on them when they decided how to vote, instead thinking more about the negative things about Biden circulating in conservative media or among QAnon believers. Biden and Trump arent on the ballot in 2022. But you can see how Democrats might again run on a bunch of policies that poll well, assume that they are reaching a big bloc of voters in the ideological middle but end up not doing that well among swing voters.

Arguing that Democrats push for popular policies or Republican opposition to them is going to sway voters views of the parties relies on an unspoken assumption that accurate news of who is supporting what will actually reach voters, said Lara Putnam, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh. But its the right wing that dominates the last mile communications infrastructure into millions of Americans homes: the memes shared in Facebook groups, the radio personalities who are known and trusted, she said.

Democrats could gain seats in next years midterms and win the presidency in 2024 because they are touting popular ideas and the GOP is opposing them. They might have the right strategy. But its not obviously true that their approach will work. Republicans are making a somewhat counterintuitive bet that opposing popular bills wont kill them electorally and there are a lot of good reasons to think that they are right.

Excerpt from:
Why Republicans Dont Fear An Electoral Backlash For Opposing Really Popular Parts Of Bidens Agenda - FiveThirtyEight