The Long, Long Trail A-Windin'

Who: Nate Silver
What: "G.O.P. House Majority at Risk", FiveThirtyEight
When: August 12, 2011

There has been various circumstantial evidence that the public's dissatisfaction with the performance of Congress, particularly during the debt ceiling debate, could threaten the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Disapproval ratings for the Congress are at record highs, as are disapproval ratings for the Republican Party. Other polls show record numbers of Americans saying that their representative should not be re-elected, that most members of Congress should not be re-elected, or both.

What we haven't had, however, are polls comparing Democrats against Republicans in a direct way. That's why the poll that Gallup published Friday ought to concern Republicans. It shows a 7-point Democratic advantage on the generic Congressional ballot — meaning simply that more Americans told Gallup they plan to vote for a Democrat for Congress next year. Although the generic ballot is a crude measure, it is probably the best macro-level indicator of the direction that the House is headed in.

Last year, Republicans won the popular vote for the U.S. House — essentially what the generic ballot is trying to measure — by 7 percentage points. So a poll showing Democrats 7 points ahead instead is a pretty significant swing.

But does it mean that Democrats are now favorites to take over the Congress next year?

No, not exactly. Instead, it points toward control of the House being more or less a toss-up. There are three structural issues that Democrats will have to contend with that take a little bit of the sheen off this poll ....

While it is true that the polls savaged Congress, and battered Republicans far worse than Democrats, the question of whether or not a generic ballot poll over a year before the election really tells us anything is a dubious inquiry. Largely, the problem is that American voters are notoriously fickle, and, furthermore, the way scandals break, spread, and reshuffle public opinion is dangerously unpredictable.

A Fundamental Question: What, exactly, are we doing?

Who: Paul Krugman
What: "Eat the Future", The New York Times
When: February 14, 2011

Republican leaders like to claim that the midterms gave them a mandate for sharp cuts in government spending. Some of us believe that the elections were less about spending than they were about persistent high unemployment, but whatever. The key point to understand is that while many voters say that they want lower spending, press the issue a bit further and it turns out that they only want to cut spending on other people.

That's the lesson from a new survey by the Pew Research Center, in which Americans were asked whether they favored higher or lower spending in a variety of areas. It turns out that they want more, not less, spending on most things, including education and Medicare. They're evenly divided about spending on aid to the unemployed and—surprise—defense.

The only thing they clearly want to cut is foreign aid, which most Americans believe, wrongly, accounts for a large share of the federal budget.

Pew also asked people how they would like to see states close their budget deficits. Do they favor cuts in either education or health care, the main expenses states face? No. Do they favor tax increases? No. The only deficit-reduction measure with significant support was cuts in public-employee pensions—and even there the public was evenly divided.

The moral is clear. Republicans don't have a mandate to cut spending; they have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic.

Strange times.