July 28, 2020--Playing The White Card

There was a tsunami of political polls last week.  They tell one consistent story--Joe Biden is increasing his lead over Trump in every demographic category but one. 

Be it the ABC-Washington Post, Quinnipiac, or even the Fox News poll, Biden has opened double-digit leads among senior citizens, young voters, Hispanics, and African Americans among others.

The one demographic outlier is support for Trump among white voters. In the aggregate, across all age groups, 49 percent of white voters support Trump while 42 percent say they plan to back Biden. And with white people without college degrees Trump's lead is even larger--an unfathomable 57 to 35 percent.

This is both curious and significant. Curious because it stands out so starkly while on the other hand it is concerning since white people make up 61 percent of all voters and that means if Trump does exceptionally well among them he has a fighting chance to be reelected.

Is it "only" racism that is responsible for these numbers? 

I suspect for a good half of them it is. But that gets us just part way there. Racism is deeply rooted. Slavery, for example, has existed in America for more than 400 years. That is the definition of deeply rooted.

What then about the other reasons a majority of white people appear to support Trump?

Is it racism that a large percent of them are attracted to Trump's tell-it-like-it-supposedly is style? Especially when he attacks the coastal elites in the media, universities, and among the professional class?

Is it racism when Trump talks about the concerns of suburban "housewives" and a percentage of "stay-at-home moms" find his message resonates? And then there are Trump men who, proverbially, want their woman "barefoot and pregnant."

Is it racism when some white women like their men extra-macho and somehow, though hard to believe, find Trump to be attractively so?

Of course, some of this also includes a racist component. For example, the suburban women he is desperate to appeal to are white women, the same white women 52 percent of whom voted for him in 2016. When Trump turns his attention to suburban women he is not thinking about women of color.

My bottom line--the business of gender and race and voting is more complicated and unpredictable than it at first might seem. Thus the reasons why, say, a large percentage of white women voted for Trump four years ago and might do so again needs to be understood, even if one dislikes what is discovered.

July 1, 2019--18.1 Million

A number of friends have given me grief recently, accusing me of being too "gloomy" and obsessed with what I have been writing about the Democratic candidates seeking the 2020 nomination.

I will admit to being obsessed with this, an endlessly long seven months before the Iowa caucuses. Not necessarily a good thing, but since it is urgent that we nominate someone who has the best chance to unseat Trump I feel it is none-too-soon to, well, be at least a little obsessed.

If Biden is the one, so be it; if now after Thursday's debate Kamala Harris is the one, even better.

My gloom, though, has been that neither they nor any of the other frontrunners thus far--for example, Elizabeth Warren (a rising star) or Bernie Sanders (a waning star)--lift my spirits when I imagine them going toe-to-toe with Trump.

But then there were the 18.1 million who watched the debate live Thursday night--the Harris-Biden night--which make me feel less gloomy.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the public has the good sense not to pay serious attention to national elections until after Labor Day just two months before the actual voting. And so to have a record number tuning in to the debate two months before the first of the two Labor Days  prior to the voting suggests an inordinate level of interest in the Democratic campaign on the part of the electorate.

As a result I feel my gloom lifting.

If you add the 15.3 million who watched the first half of the debate (let's call it the Warren half since most observers feel she won) that means a total of 33.4 million watched both halves, easily surpassing the record 24 million viewers who looked in on the first of the Trump debates on Fox in 2016 as his popularity was peaking.

This is significant since pollsters say that most important when attempting to predict voting outcomes of those voters most likely to actually turn out to vote are the number of "engaged" or enthusiastic voters. One measure of this is who pays attention and who gets involved early in the process. By this measure it may in fact be looking better for Democrats than I have been fretfully speculating.

I promise to try to cheer up and even write a few more happy pieces at the request of my friend John. Pieces, he urges, not about politics. And so for Tuesday I will try to finish a piece I'm working on about when as a 10-year-old I turned my family's East Flatbush apartment into a sweatshop.

Kamala Harris

December 28, 2015--Social-Desirability Bias

Over coffee at Balthazar, a friend looked around furtively, leaned close, and whispered, "You promise not to tell anyone?"

"Of course. Always. About what?"

"I can't believe I'm about to say this." She was unusually agitated.

I wondered what might be on her mind. "It's OK," I tried to assure her.

"But I think I'm going to vote for," she lowered her voice still further, "Him."

Now I knew where this was headed. It was not the first time I heard similar things from some of my most liberal friends. Including, most surprisingly, middle-age women.

"Trump."

"This surprises me, but . . ."

"Me too. I'm the most surprised of all. I should hate him. And in many ways I do. I'm a women, a feminist, and Hillary has the best chance to become the first female president during whatever is left of my lifetime. But . . ."

She trailed off, looking blankly across the banquette where we had so often met for breakfast.

"To balance things a bit," I said, "I know lifelong Republicans of the old, now-almost-obsolete moderate kind--the ones who voted for Javits and Eisenhower--who tell me that if he is nominated they're going to vote for Hillary. They can't stand her but hate her less than him."

"That's no comfort to me."

"So why are you thinking about abandoning Clinton?"

"I'm not thinking of it that way. So here's the thing I want to confess and ask you to not pass along to anyone we know."

"Again, I promise."

"I think he'd make a better president." She said that so softly I could barely follow her.

"I've heard this from others who one would think would be enthusiastic about Hillary."

"I don't know anyone who feels enthusiastic about her," she said, "And for the most part they're lifelong Democrats, always vote that way, and though they too don't like her that much or think she'd make a very good president--too much personal and ideological baggage--they're resigned to vote for her. Above all, to tell the truth, because she's a woman. That should be enough for me too, especially the woman part, but it isn't. Like I just confessed, I think he'd . . ."

It was as if she couldn't utter those words again.

Trying to shift the subject somewhat from what was clearly painful for her, I asked, "Did you see the piece the other day on the Internet about social-desirability bias?"

"Not really." She sighed, collapsing in her seat, but seemed pleased that I had changed the subject.

"You remember in the old days when they gathered TV ratings by asking people directly what they watched or asked their sample viewers to record their viewing habits in a diary? They still use diaries to a certain extent, but more-and-more they're doing it directly via electronic boxes attached to people's sets that automatically record what's being watched. No way too lie that way."

"I remember that. I remember being called once or twice and being interviewed."

"Well, the problem with gathering data that way was it was easy not to tell the truth. For example, Public Broadcasting always was over-represented because some people didn't want to fess up that they were really not watching Alistair Cooke but Uncle Miltie They didn't want to appear to be lowbrow."

"This is interesting--sort of--but what does it have to do with what we were talking about?"

"The same thing appears to be happening now in the political campaigns. Especially the Republican one. At the moment, he is leading in the polls with about 34 percent or so saying they support him."

So?"

"So a research organization called Morning Consult just did an interesting triple-blind experiment. They surveyed voters three ways--the traditional way by interviewing people over the phone, another sample group via interactive dialing where potential GOP voters were surveyed via an automated program, and  a statistically-equivalent group on line where those being questioned were not asked to identify or in other ways describe themselves."

"And," my friend said, "they got the Masterpiece Theater response."

"Now I'm not following you."

"The percentage of the people who plan to vote for him was higher when people were surveyed anonymously and lowest when interviewed by a live person."

"Correct. Across the board by as much as 6 percent. But he did much better among college-educated Republicans with whom it is said he is not polling well. From them he got 9 percent more confessing that they, like you, plan to vote for him."

"Wow. But I need to correct one thing--I'm not planning to do so but, in the way pollsters describe people, I'm leaning that way."

"Gotcha.

"How do they explain this disparity--between what people tell interviewers and those who respond on line?"

"They refer to it as social-desirability bias, the tendency of people to hesitate to confess unpopular views to a pollster. If, I may say so, sort of like you."

"Interesting. But it is still making me crazy that after all the stupid and offensive and bigoted things he's said, at the moment I'm even leaning . . ." She trailed off again.

"There are clearly quite a few people like you."

"As I said, I think he'll do a better job. Like with Russia. She, when Secretary of State, hit the reset button and what do we have? Cold War II. I think we need a deal maker. I hate to say this--a larger-than-life figure for our larger-than-life problems. A . . ."

"I think I understand."

"I wish I did," my friend said, shrugging and finally smiling.

"Have you talked to your therapist about this?"

"I plan to. But in the meantime do you think it's too early to move on from coffee to Jack Daniels?"

Uncle Miltie