The Republicans obviously seem to think they've got a real winner on their hands in their near-unanimous opposition to the stimulus bill. Their gusto for opposition certainly seems to have the Beltway journalists impressed. It has them going with the trusty storyline of a close race, marked on a day-to-day basis by the impact of whoever's PR offensive of the day is more bold. No wonder that Ben Pershing in his Capitol Briefing for the WaPo a few days ago asked: Who's winning the spin war over the stimulus?
So what do the polls on the question actually say? How has public opinion evolved since I posted an overview a week or two ago on Observationalism? Pershing gave it a stab and observed that the latest CNN poll "sheds some interesting light on this subject": it found that just 53% of respondents "thought that the stimulus would improve economic conditions, while 44 percent thought it wouldn't." Ergo, a closely divided nation.
That's not entirely a fair measure, though. I, for example, don't think economic conditions will improve any time soon either, and I fully support stimulus packages - the bigger the better. The first thing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is intended to ensure is to make the upcoming crisis at least less bad than it would otherwise be. So the question whether people expect the economy to not just be less bad, but actually improve thanks to the stimulus is really a separate one from whether they think the stimulus is necessary in any case. And on that latter question, the public opinion seems to clearly veer in Obama's direction.
That same CNN poll, for example, included a much more clear-cut question, which Pershing - perhaps in order to preserve the more exciting storyline of a close race for public support - skipped. Right when the subject was introduced in the poll, respondents were asked simply to favour or oppose the bill:
As you may know, Congress passed and President Obama has signed a bill that will attempt to stimulate the economy by increasing federal government spending and cutting taxes at a total cost to the government of about eight hundred billion dollars. Based on what you have read or heard about this, do you favor or oppose that bill?
As it turns out, the response wasn't evenly balanced at all: an ample majority of 60% favoured it, and just 39% opposed it. Not just that; compared with the previous CNN poll on the subject from two weeks earlier, the number of those who favoured it went up by 6 points, while the number of those who opposed it went down by 6 points.
The CNN poll was conducted on 18-19 February. Two polls conducted around the same time showed sharply differing results.
Fox News had a poll conducted on 17-18 February. The poll has come in for some criticism over manipulative question wording, involving at least one actual falsehood. Most notably, the poll first introduced the subject as follows:
How closely have you been following news about the economic stimulus and spending plan that Congress passed last week that includes spending nearly $800 billion dollars of taxpayer money?
Never mind, of course, that the bill only includes $500 billion in spending and some $288 billion in tax cuts (not sure where TPMDC's Eric Kleefeld got his number of $350 billion).
In the next question, respondents were then asked: "Do you support or oppose the nearly 800 billion dollar economic stimulus and spending plan Congress passed last week?" Some 51% supported it, while 40% opposed it. That's obviously less support than CNN found. Considering the effect question wording and ordering can have, however, you can assume that the poll understates support for the bill.
The newest poll, on the other hand, sees the numbers very differently. In their poll, conducted on 19-22 February, ABC News and the Washington Post still find overwhelming support for the stimulus bill, even if it's down somewhat since mid-January. Their version of the question read:
As you may know, the federal government will spend about 800 billion dollars on tax cuts, construction projects and aid to states and individuals to try to stimulate the economy. Do you support or oppose this plan?
In answer, no less than 64% of respondents expressed support for the bill, and just 35% opposed it.
If you ask me, the CNN poll had the fairest wording of the question. The ABC/WaPo poll did not include any falsehood, like the Fox poll did, but it certainly seems worded in a way that would evoke positive feelings.
The most sensible thing, therefore, seems to be to take the numbers of 51% and 64% approval, respectively, as representing the lower and upper reaches of support for the bill, depending on how the subject is approached.
Either way, it's hard not to declare Pershing's question answered. The Democrats are winning. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that whoever is "winning the spin war" on any given day, it has little impact on the fundamentals of public opinion at large at the moment. The pundits in DC are far more sensitive to the games inside the political arena than Americans at large are, and the single-minded focus of the Republicans on winning the spin war on any given day actually seems more of a sign of their current strategic weakness. (This is roughly what Eve Fairbanks argued in TNR today.)
The dominant trend remains stubbornly in favour of the stimulus. In all of the last four polls asking a straight for-or-against question on the stimulus, supporters led opponents by at least 10%, and the trend appears to be upward. These are the results of the polls asking such a question over the past month, and 12 out of 13 polls found a plurality in favour, with all but the three polls conducted by Rasmussen showing supporters up by at least 9%.
Why the Rasmussen polls were so out of sync with the other polls is also good fodder for speculation, but that's for another blog post ...
