When Did Chris Cillizza Stop Beating His Wife?
I titled this post of mine yesterday, “I’m so, so tired of political journalists (including some who I think are generally excellent) misconstruing certain types of poll results. And of pollsters not asking the obvious direct question they need to ask.” The post dealt specifically with a blog entry by Greg Sargent yesterday morning in which he interpreted the answer to poll question asking what the issue the respondent considered most important (for next year’s national elections) as proof positive that the public doesn’t care about the effect of huge amounts of money by very wealthy donors in determining the policy proposals of the candidates and the actual policies instituted or supported by elected officeholders.
Almost no respondent listed huge amounts of money by tiny numbers of people funding campaigns as the issue that they were most concerned about, but as Sargent’s post itself indicated, answers to several other questions—questions that addressed that issue specifically—made very clear that a huge portion of the public considers it a critically important issue, because they do recognize the clear, direct impact of it on candidates’ stated policy views and on actual government policy.
I opened my post yesterday with a two-paragraph excerpt from Sargent’s post:
If ever there were a cycle that seemed poised for a serious argument over what to do — if anything — about the torrents of money sloshing through our politics, you’d think it would be this one. We’re seeing a parade of billionaire sugar daddies looking to sponsor individual GOP candidates. A profusion of clever tactics such as turning over campaign operations to a friendly Super PAC, and running a full-blown presidential campaign while pretending you haven’t declared. Outside groups on both sides pledging enormous expenditures. Relentless media attention to foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation. And so on.
Yet despite all this, the chances of turning campaign finance into a major or compelling issue appear remote: A new poll today finds that fewer than one percent of Americans see it as the most important issue facing the country.
I then asked whether this might be because most poll respondents think they’re being asked directly about the issues that they want politicians and officeholders to address, rather than, y’know, the reasons why politicians and officeholders aren’t dealing effectively—or at all—with those problems and often make policy that worsens those problems. Although the question was rhetorical (okay, sarcastic), I answered it, saying that it turns out that the answer is yes, and referencing the answers to the poll questions that specifically addressed the issue.
In the comments thread this morning, reader Dale Coberly commented that “polls tell the p.r. firms how well they are doing” and that “you can’t win by ‘taking the money out of politics’ or rewriting the poll questions.” I responded:
Dale, the very last thing I’m trying to suggest is that candidates or parties should try to win by rewriting poll questions. The polls at issue were the general news media polls, taken by polling organizations not affiliated with a candidate or party.
What I’m suggesting—strongly and clearly, I thought—is that journalists should really, really stop conflating answers to one question with answers to question that wasn’t even asked. They’re playing a distorting semantics game, in this instance by treating the word “issue” as having a much broader meaning than, I’m sure, most people interpret that word to mean in a generic poll question about what they think is the most important issue.
If the poll asked a question specifically about how important the respondent thinks it is to try to significantly curb the ability of the very wealthy, whether individuals or corporations, to fund particular campaigns, or even if q question asked the respondent to list in order of importance several categories of issues, and provide the categories, and include among the categories the influence large donors in controlling what positions politicians take as candidates and as elected officials, then great! But it’s ridiculous to read the question at issue in Sargent’s post and interpret the answers to it as anything but stated preferences about the things mist people actually thing the question is asking about.
After I posted that comment, I clicked on the Washington Post website and it’s The Fix blog and, skimming the post titles saw one from yesterday by Chris Cillizza titled “Can we please stop acting like campaign finance is a major voting issue?”
I don’t know when Cillizza stopped beating his wife, but his post is ridiculous. He begins:
There are two seemingly contradictory data points in a new New York Times-CBS national poll.
1. 84 percent of people — 80 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats — believe money has too much influence in American politics.
2. Less than 1 percent of people said money in politics or campaign fundraising was the most important issue facing the country.
Seemingly contradictory? I dunno. I mean … maybe. If you think the public thinks of the profound perversion of this country’s democracy as just another issue. Cillizza continues:
How can the public hold both notions in their heads simultaneously? It’s actually not that complicated — and helps to explain why we need to stop acting like campaign finance reform is a major issue in actual campaigns.
Okay, well, he’s right that it’s not that complicated, but that’s because, as I’ve said, the two notions are not contradictory at all. Unless, that is, you believe that the respondents thought the first question included consideration of the second rather than just being a question directly about such issues as the economy, immigration, college affordability, foreign policy, healthcare insurance. Rather than also indirectly about, well, all of those issued scrambled together.
But he doesn’t, of course, and makes that really clear, writing:
What point No. 2 shows, however, is that the public’s broad dislike for the amount of money flowing through the political system is more a theoretical distaste than a practical one. As in, when prompted to offer judgment on how much money is in politics, people agree it’s too much. But, left unprompted, they make quite clear that campaign finance reform is not even close to a top-of-the-mind issue.
Think of it like this: If someone asked you whether you should eat better, almost all of us would say yes. Too many hamburgers, too much pizza, too many frappuccinos. (Or maybe that’s just me.) But, when you go out to lunch or find yourself at the grocery story, how many of us actually make good on our stated intent to eat better? If you’re anything like me, the answer is a whole heck of a lot fewer people than say that they should be eating better.
There’s a huge difference between prompted intent and unprompted action.
There is indeed a huge difference between prompted intent and unprompted action. There’s also a huge difference between journalists who don’t actually understand what that difference is, and what it actually means. Mainly, apparently, because these journalists don’t understand the semantics of being asked generically by a pollster about “issues.”
This is serious stuff, folks. And I suggest that the Washington Post poll people about what they think pollsters are referring to when then ask generically about issues that concern them. And then ask specifically a set of questions about this issue, which most people recognize as a blanket issue encompassing a slew of specific policy issues and problems. Most people. But not most political journalists, apparently, at least not the ones whose comments I’ve read. Think of it like this.
—-
UPDATE: Reader Carol and I just had the following exchange in the comments thread to this post:
Carol
June 3, 2015 2:36 pm
There is more to it than that. The public correctly perceives the role of money in politics as a huge problem. The public also correctly perceives this as not the most important issue facing the public today. There is no cognitive dissonance here. The most important issue for most people is having a job, or enough money to not be frightened of the future. In the general psychology courses I took, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would suggest survival trumps all other issues. Once you are fed and secure, you have the time and energy to break out the tumbrils.
Beverly Mann
June 3, 2015 3:17 pm
Wow, Carol. You really think that fewer than 1% of the respondents see the connections between issues directly related to having a job, or enough money to not be frightened of the future? Most of the respondents said they understood perfectly this connection.
Wage issues (including the minimum wage, and including the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively); banking regulations (including the ones could have prevented the collapse of the economy in 2009-10, had they been in force—the collapse of the economy that cost millions of people their jobs, their life savings, their homes); healthcare insurance; interest on college loans; etc., etc. etc, etc.? Only fewer than 1% of that poll’s respondents think those issues have no tie-in to, say, who’s funding whose election campaign and may or may not fund that elected official’s next one?
Really? Really???
You’re right, Carol, that there’s no cognitive dissonance regarding the respondents’ responses. Which is the point of this post–or is supposed to be. The problem is one of semantics and these political journalists’ failure to realize that most people would understand that poll question about the most important issue to be using the word “issue” in a specific, narrow sense that doesn’t include the relationship between public policy and who’s buying the policy.
I had thought this isn’t rocket science, but maybe I was wrong. Apologies for the snideness, but ….
Updated 6/3 at 3:40 p.m.
There is more to it than that. The public correctly perceives the role of money in politics as a huge problem. The public also correctly perceives this as not the most important issue facing the public today. There is no cognitive dissonance here. The most important issue for most people is having a job, or enough money to not be frightened of the future. In the general psychology courses I took, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would suggest survival trumps all other issues. Once you are fed and secure, you have the time and energy to break out the tumbrils.
I’m curious to ask why the issues raised by Beverly in the last two posts, having to do with the less than objective approach of the new media to political issues in general, come with such indignation. It’s as though employees of the high profile news media are expected to be objective and truly investigative. Why is that an expectation? When did the Washington Post reach the level of trusted source of news? I’d not even put the NY Times at that level. Yes, there are journalists employed by these outlets who can be counted on not to obfuscate important issues. As an example I’ll offer Gretchen Morgenstern of the Times, but I’m hard pressed to name many others. Some Op-Ed contributors seem to approach a high level of objectivity and truthfulness in their articles, but even they are routinely counter balanced by the deceitful contributions of others often on the very same page.
Hold the indignation. We are not talking about trusted sources of information. We are examining only the damage done to democracy by a corporate news media that is part of the problem, not a possible source of information about the problems. The WaPo has never been different from what it is today. Keep in mind that it was taken over by members of the Army SS group shortly after WWII with money from a wealthy benefactor. The news media reports a story in much the same way that someone like Tim Geithner or Mary Jo White conducts their business. They seem to be doing the right thing, but only if you over look their deliberate intentions to avoid truly investigating the more serious deficiencies in the systems they have, or had, been a party to. You can often measure the value of a contribution to the public good by measuring the size of the compensation package provided to the seeming do-gooder. There is a high inverse correlation to the two. We have the best news media that money can buy and influence. It’s hard to be indignant about someone’s expected behavior.
Whoaaaa, Jack. The information that Sargent and Cillizza provided, which was what the actual polling results for each question, was accurate. Their take on it, though, which they did indeed report as fact but objectively was not—and which anyone who read the blog posts could determine, since these bloggers specified exactly what they were basing their conclusion on, could see—is ridiculous.
This type of thing becomes a meme in politics, and candidates and their advisers and operatives conclude, without actually thinking about it, that the public doesn’t consider this a critical threshold issue, one of an entirely different nature, though, than the issues that this issue very much affects.
Wow, Carol. You really think that fewer than 1% of the respondents see the connections between issues directly related to having a job, or enough money to not be frightened of the future? Most of the respondents said they understood perfectly this connection.
Wage issues (including the minimum wage, and including the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively); banking regulations (including the ones could have prevented the collapse of the economy in 2009-10, had they been in force—the collapse of the economy that cost millions of people their jobs, their life savings, their homes); healthcare insurance; interest on college loans; etc., etc. etc, etc.? Only fewer than 1% of that poll’s respondents think those issues have no tie-in to, say, who’s funding whose election campaign and may or may not fund that elected official’s next one?
Really? Really???
You’re right, Carol, that there’s no cognitive dissonance regarding the respondents’ responses. Which is the point of this post–or is supposed to be. The problem is one of semantics and these political journalists’ failure to realize that most people would understand that poll question about the most important issue to be using the word “issue” in a specific, narrow sense that doesn’t include the relationship between public policy and who’s buying the policy.
” Their take on it, though, which they did indeed report as fact but objectively was not…”
That’s the only important part of your reply Bev. Don’t make excuses for bad behavior even if it has the gloss of being reasonable. Unfortunately the many readers who will be subject to the misleading analysis given by Sargent and Cillizza will not be reading your fine analysis of their deceit. You see it’s not your analysis that I find to be misplaced, but only the indignation that you express. The national new media is only the public relations department for corporate America dressed as an objective source of information. They’re little different from the jerks on the various Fox News shows. They’re just more subtle and sophisticated because they’re audience demands that. The Fox audience is happy with hyperbolic stupidity. But both groups of viewers and readers get the same bag of shit, one wrapped in burlap and the other in silk.
No, Sargent is most definitely not a shill for corporate America. I doubt that Cillizza is, either, but I am certain that Sargent is anything but that.
I don’t really know why they, and others–Carol, for example–think that the respondents would have thought that this cause-and-effect issue was included within the meaning of “issue” in that question. I sort of doubt that I would have, and I’m a lifelong political junkie.
Beverly
i got genuinely lost in your logic. Maybe that’s because I’m not a rocket scientist.
I would be the last person to be surprised by a misleading poll or a misleading, or incompetent, analysis of the poll. But I see no essential contradiction between seeing “too much money in politics” and not seeing “campaign finance as the most important issue.”
of course at this point i am too dizzy to be sure that is your point.
coberly is right.
American politics has been a mess since the sham imposed at the convention. 2/3 a slave equals a human for apportionment….. Property is liberty, etc.
That $$$ is the root cause is correct although for Madison it was slaves.
That 99% think there is worse stuff to worry about implies the media (like the “clubs”, pamphlets, and newspapers in olden times) machine is achieving goals, keeping the peeps off the real issue which is: “the US of sham is all there has ever been.”
“I don’t really know why they, and others–Carol, for example–think that..
Employees if the corporate news media, with rare exception, “think” what they are paid to think. It’s not any more complex than that. If you don’t know why they’re arguing one point of view versus another, and you are confident of your own perspective, I suggest you check their current financial status. The system filters out the truly investigative minds, leaves a few in place to provide the glaze of objectivity, so that the others can benefit from the halo effect that they create. If Sargent writes bull shit once it isn’t likely to be a mistake on his part. He’s just doing his job, or at least he’s doing what he’s paid to do. That he occasionally writes something that you enjoy reading doesn’t dilute the adverse effect of the crap he may also spew. No, he didn’t suddenly become stupid.
I think the research by Stanley Greenberg et al is very relevant
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2015/features/the_average_joes_proviso055824.php?page=all
He is a major pollster/Democratic stategist .
I’d say the relevant bottom line is that the white working class Americans in focus groups were very angry about money in politics and that reading a prior message denouncing money in politics, special interest groups and bureaucrats made them more receptive to a generic Democratic party message.
I think Greenberg over states the results writing as if people were only willing to support more support for daycare, Pell grants and a more progressive tax code if they were convinced that money in politics and bureaucratic waste and inefficiency had been eliminated. This just isn’t a true statement about the responses to questions — a majority respondents declared support for all of that without conditions. It’s just even more did after the good government polemic.
Also I think the good government polemic mixed two things. One is billionaires are giving money to the best Republicans money can buy. The other was about streamlining government and making it more efficient. Thus there is no way to know whether it is the appeal to populist anger or the appeal to streamlining government which caused the significant but not huge shirt towards even more respondents finding the Democratic message convincing.
Also Ed Kilgore insists on stressing the pro reinventing government interpretation. I had considered writing a post noting the possibility that what works for Democrats is an appeal to anger at the gross open corruption of the Republicans and at the reactionary billionaires who are trying to buy our democracy.
I see an important difference between two campaigns
1) If elected I will devote time, political capital and Congress’s time to campaign finance reform
this is not a winning message as voters might think reform is hopeless
vs
2) the Republicans are totally dedicated to cutting rich peoples’ taxes (even if they have to raise yours) because they work for the rich people who have bought and paid for them.
Sure works for me, but might turn off self declared moderates.
3) don’t vote for the Republican candidate (name) he owes too much to his billionaire campaign contributor (name) that’s why he advocated (policy) which was something he gave in exchange for the huge gigantic donation of x dollars.
Here this has to wait until the Republicans choose a billionaire and his puppet.
Anyway, to end this over-long comment, there is direct focus group evidence that respondents agree more with the Democrats message soon after hearing a denunciation of money in politics (among other things).
Cilizza and Sargent are being willfully stupid.
Look I have set up a series of blogs focused on Social Security, I wrote a 46 post series here at AB on Social Security over about that many days, my e-mail for AB purposes is SocSec Defender, I run the Social Security Defenders Group at Daily Kos.
But guess what? Social Security is not even MY number one issue. And never has been. Instead that issue has been alternately the economy or the war depending on the year. And I would hope that most everybody I know (with an exception or two) would more or less share that priority. But that doesn’t mean the Social Security is not important either to the nation or to me personally, or that other things being more or less equal that I wouldn’t use it as a political touchstone.
So yes Citizens United is important. Not least because it can be seen as something between a symptom and a cause of a lot of other issues including income inequality, the military-industrial complex and its rent seeking, and denial of climate change by the fossil fuel industry. But pollsters are never going to ask about these issues as any kind of causal cluster, you don’t get to answer the question of “Which is more important: climate change or Citizens United?” with the right answer of “Yes”. Because the world mostly isn’t binary, nor does it break neatly into a ranked list.
i think Bruce and Robert are agreeing with me. Or maybe I am agreeing with them.
But I wouldn’t be surprised it you ran a poll and found that less than 50% of the people… including them… would think they were agreeing with me.
But yes, especially with Waldmann here: if you want to run on the money in politics issue it would be necessary to do your own public relations (political) campaign on the issue, and to run your own poll with questions carefully constructed to see if the people are getting your message… and of course use the poll itself to help them get your message.
in fact i think that would be a really good idea.
oh, and i think Social Security is a more important issue (not agreeing with Bruce here), because currently it is something we can “fix” once and for all…. and is in great danger of being destroyed by the ignorant right now. money in politics is something we will never fix, though we might win an election on the issue and make some improvements for a while. same thing about “the economy” and “the war”… again they are “issues” (words) you can run on and may win, but will never “fix.” meanwhile, i think the average voter wants to “fix” those things that hurt him right now, that he can understand. that is, he can understand the hurt. he… except for the lunatic fringes… doesn’t care so much about high philosophy.
Hmmm. Check out this front-page NYT story today: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/business/inequality-a-major-issue-for-americans-times-cbs-poll-finds.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0.
Seems that wayyyy lots of people care, a lot, about the issue of inequality. But apparently in the poll that Sargent and Cillizza were talking about, released earlier this week, the issue of inequality wasn’t among the most-mentioned issues that were the respondents considered the most important. Might that be because when people are asked by a pollster, generically, what the most important issue is to them, they think the question refers to a specific, narrow type of issue and not to the issues that transcend or are thresholds for the narrower issues?
Mrs. Mann you give a NY Times story that say that the US economy has improved by most measures. Where has the economy improved? Oh I forgot that it did improve for the 30% republican surveyed in that poll you gave. Also if you look at the Reuters or Pew polls things have greatly improved for the top 20-30% most of which you say are voting republican. What about the rights of corporations to exploit any where they wish, even the American workers who they are allowed to abandon freely. Is this what you mean by freedom? The freedom to exploit freely? I propose to you and all in The Angry Bear community that we should agree to pursuit a ” Balanced Trade Act of 2015″ that includes the variable rate tariff , the currency manipulation provision and includes China in the TPP. This will be far more effective to level the play field in wage disparity in America that anything else I’ve read or heard thus far.
Yeah Beverly that is it in a nutshell.
One of Atrios’ pet lines is:
“Shit is fucked up and bullshit”
typically followed by an example
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2015/03/shit-is-fucked-up-and-bullshit_27.html
but illustrating what I called the “causal cluster”.
And while I do admire many single issue activists this is only if they are actually accomplishing something, but even then it just isn’t true (to me) that whatever they are working on is the most important thing ever and that those that disagree just Need to Check Your Privilege and Stop Worrying About First World Problems. Well not everyone can be Gandhi. And some of us plug away at Social Security rather than World Peace or Global Climate Change. You do what you can.
Gretchen Morgenson?
Seriously?
Recklessly endangering the truth.
Beverly asked
“might that be because when people are asked by a pollster, generically, what the most important issue is to them, they think the question refers to a specific, narrow type of issue and not to the issues that transcend or are thresholds for the narrower issues?”
and the answer is … “yes.”
but you see most people do not connect the “narrow type” of issues to your particular grand solution. that doesn’t mean that you are wrong, but it does mean that you have a lot of work to do to convince them that your grand solution is the answer to their narrow type issues.
you actually have some help in this: you can just mention “inequality” and people will agree with you. it sounds so right. where you get into trouble is either by expecting them to take the next step and agree with you that it explains everything, and that you have a program to address it that makes any sense. and of course, if you expect “inequality” to rise to the surface of their minds without prompting when the next politician mentions some other word that has a pr firm behind it.
Beverly Mann wrote: “might that be because when people are asked by a pollster, generically, what the most important issue is to them, they think the question refers to a specific, narrow type of issue and not to the issues that transcend or are thresholds for the narrower issues? “
Your problem is that you believe that polls are reliable indicators of well thought out opinions. As opposed to off the cuff responses.
Even comparing the different results of a poll done repeatedly over time is doomed. Still too many variables. Were the same people polled? Were any of the questions related to recent news stories likely to have been seen by those polled? Did any of those polled recently have an involved conversation about any of the poll questions? Did Bill O’Reilly cover any of the questions in the last couple of weeks, regardless of the length of the segment? Etc, etc, etc.
I have come to believe that most human beings go about their daily lives without developing a well considered opinion on most subjects. (Especially those concerning politics and economics.) So they respond to questions in an off the cuff manner, more concerned with political correctness, or Fox ‘facts’.
From there it is “Garbage In – Garbage Out”.
EMichael, “Gretchen Morgenson? Seriously?”
I am truly curious to read a column by Morgenson that fits your description. I’m open to a modification of my view. Please, a link to a column that misrepresents the facts of an issue.
And sorry that I screwed up her name in my first comment.
Bingo, Robert. Just plain Bingo. It’s one of my major pet peeves that Dem candidates and consultants don’t get that people really do need to be provided with specific information, and if a subject is complicated—Keynesian fiscal economics, for example—be given a concise but clear explanation. These pols wouldn’t be caught dead using a chart or graph; uh-uh, no sir, too high-falutin’ for the masses.
I dearly hope that some superPac runs a series of ads during the general election campaign that makes specific points about these issues. Hopefully, hopefully, Greenberg’s research will actually persuade one or another of them to do that. And you’re spot-on that Greenberg’s foolish to interpret the results as he does on the point you mention that he is just wrong about. His take is bizarre, really. I mean, does anyone really think we can just snap our fingers and eliminate the influence of money in politics and eliminate bureaucratic waste? Let’s not make daycare available to everyone who wants it, because money in politics distorts public policy, and, y’know, there’s all that bureaucratic waste! Really??
And, Jim, no, I assure you that I don’t believe that polls are reliable indicators of well thought out opinions, as opposed to off the cuff responses. Sargent and Cillizza do, though, I guess.
And, Bruce, I agree with you completely.
Jack,
Don’t need a column, there is an entire book.
Strangely enough, named “Reckless Endangerment”.