Links for February 19-25, 2023 | Americans in most states support legal abortions; New graphs for showing polling uncertainty at PBS; And evidence of economic voting from the 1790s
These fuzzy bars need more fuzz!
Happy Saturday, all
This is my weekly post for paid subscribers discussing recent uses of political data that I think are interesting and worth discussing. Comments are welcome below — and if you enjoy this, please share it with a friend!
1. A supermajority of adults, including 40% of Republicans, want abortion to be legal in most or all cases
The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade last summer has turned into one of the biggest political liabilities of recent memory. For instance, according to the exit poll, abortion was the most important issue among Pennsylvania voters during last year’s midterm elections — and voters in the state were significantly more pro-Democratic than expected. In the exit poll, over 60% of PA voters said abortion should mostly be legal.
This week, a new poll from the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows that voters in most states feel similarly. According to their survey 65% of Americans, including 87% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans, agree that “abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” In contrast, 7% of all adults (14% of Republicans and 3% of Democrats) think the procedure should be illegal in all cases. That marks a substantial increase in support of legal abortion rights among Republicans.
PRRI’s massive survey also lets researchers break support for abortion down by state. They write:
Majorities of residents in 43 states and the District of Columbia say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, and in 13 of those states and in DC, more than seven in ten residents support legal abortion. There are only seven states in which less than half of residents say abortion should be legal in most or all cases: South Dakota (42%), Utah (42%), Arkansas (43%), Oklahoma (45%), Idaho (49%), Mississippi (49%), and Tennessee (49%). Residents of nearly all states have become more likely to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases since PRRI’s last state-level data analysis, in 2018.
And here’s the chart:
Notably, there is not a majority in favor of overturning Roe v Wade in any state:
Ahead of the 2024 presidential primary and general election, it is worth taking stock of which Americans say they will only vote for a candidate who shares their opinion on abortion. According to the PRRI data, 30% of Republicans who think abortion should be illegal in most or all cases say candidates must pass the same litmus test; 34% of pro-choice Democrats, on the other hand, say the same thing. Changes here since 2020 are interesting: As federal abortion policy has become more restrictive and the status quo more unpopular, fewer Republicans place a priority on candidates sharing their values:
This is an important report. Abortion policy in America is not set nationally. Most national polls of adults are thus of limited utility. Measures of state-level opinion are crucial for analysts gauging how the issue will shape politics and elections in the future.
2. Americans want a debt-ceiling compromise (and I want more of these PBS/NPR poll charts)
You may be familiar with polling that shows Democrats are more flexible with their elected representatives than Republicans. So the new findings from this survey from PBS Newshour, NPR and Marist College will not surprise. According to the poll, 70% of adults believe that government officials should “compromise to find solutions” rather than “stand on principle even if it means gridlock” (28%). at 83%, Democrats prefer compromise much more than Republicans (54%) and political independents (69%). When explicitly asked about the debt ceiling a plurality of respondents blamed both parties equally for it.
What did surprise me, however, is PBS Newshour’s new way of visualizing their poll results. Here it is:
Compare that to this chart of the same results from Marist College, which conducted the poll:
Notice how the PBS Newshour graph shows the margin of error for the survey alongside the point estimates. This reminds me of the so-called “fuzzy bars” that the Washington Post’s forecasters use to show their live election-night predictions of uncalled races. Eg:
I think these bars are a cool way to call attention to the uncertainty of a survey — even if the traditional margin of sampling error is not nearly large enough to cover the full range of potential error in a single poll.
3. The impact of the economy on presidential elections — throughout US history
A user on Twitter pointed me to this paper recently. It is notable in that it extends the popular “fundamentals” models of presidential elections — which predict vote share with indicators of how the economy is doing, such a GDP — all the way back to 1792. See here:
The authors find evidence that voters punished presidents for low growth as far back as the country’s second presidential election in 1792. They look through old newspaper archives and find evidence of anti-administration partisans decrying George Washington’s leadership:
The contraction in Washington’s eighth year began with a land speculation bubble bursting centered around Washington, DC. Benjamin Bache’s Aurora General Advertiser directly blamed Washington: under his leadership “our ears are dinned with the tales of bankruptcy, the ruin of our commerce, and the distress of our citizens” (Mann 2002, 168). Shortly before Wash- ington announced his retirement, it charged that the “insidious and ambitious administration” es- tablished “funding and bank systems” that fostered speculation, and “substituted an avarice of wealth for the glory and love of country... Had America in the year 1775 been what she is now, a nation governed by stock jobbers, stockholders, bank directors, and brokers,” the colonies would have continued under British rule for fear of “suffering our lust of wealth to meet with a moment’s interruption...”
It is, of course, not surprising that people punish presidents for poor economic performance. But the paper is novel in looking at evidence for the pattern as far back as the country’s founding.
That’s it for this week’s edition of top links. Thanks for reading and being a member of the community supporting this newsletter's free version. Consider sending a free trial to a friend you think will enjoy the subscriber-only content.
Have something interesting for me to write about? Send it to me on Twitter or via email (I’m gelliottmorris@substack.com).
Have a great week,
Elliott