The Partisans

[Matt]

Via Larison, some interesting polling from GQR for NPR. They test some different Democratic and Republican messages head-to-head. And they do them two ways. In one round, each message starts "Democrats say..." or "Republicans say..." whereas a different batch of people get the message test with just "some people say..."

In all instances, the Democratic message beats the Republican message fairly badly. But identifying the Democratic message as "Democrats say..." uniformly results in a slight decrease in its popularity whereas identifying the Republican message as "Republicans say" slightly increases the message's popularity. I'm not 100 percent sure how to interpret that -- on the one hand, it speaks to some enduring strengths of the GOP brand, but on the other hand the Republican messages poor very poorly overall so their brand is hardly in good shape.

Comments

Seems pretty simple to me.

What's happening is that not only do virtually all Democrats prefer the Democrat's messages, a lot of Republicans do as well. However, when you identify the messages as being Democratic or Republican, some of those Republicans "realize" what they're doing and fall back to their party ID.

Posted by Adam Smith | May 30, 2008 4:22 PM

I'd guess that what's going on here is that you have some Republican respondents who, absent any partisan identification of the message, dislike it. However, once they hear that it's a Republican message, they decide to support it simply because it's labeled 'Republican' (or when they hear it's a 'Democratic' message, they have a more negative view of it). Basically, the label is providing signaling to these individuals.

The question would be why Democratic respondents seem to not be responding to the signaling (if they were, the effects would cancel each other out, assuming an equal number of Republican and Democratic poll respondents).

Posted by MattP | May 30, 2008 4:24 PM

I'd guess that what's going on here is that you have some Republican respondents who, absent any partisan identification of the message, dislike it. However, once they hear that it's a Republican message, they decide to support it simply because it's labeled 'Republican' (or when they hear it's a 'Democratic' message, they have a more negative view of it). Basically, the label is providing signaling to these individuals.

The question would be why Democratic respondents seem to not be responding to the signaling (if they were, the effects would cancel each other out, assuming an equal number of Republican and Democratic poll respondents).

Posted by MattP | May 30, 2008 4:25 PM

Off the top of my head, if the Democrats are doing better than Republicans, then the "swing" group consists of Republicans or Republican leaners (since the population is approximately evenly divided), so it's only natural that some of them prefer the Republican brand and revert to it (o away from the Democratic brand) when it is identified.

Posted by simple | May 30, 2008 4:26 PM

The question would be why Democratic respondents seem to not be responding to the signaling

I would assume that's because (virtually) all of the Democrats already agree with the Democratic messages; in other words, there are no Democrats left to signal.

Posted by Adam Smith | May 30, 2008 4:28 PM

Hmm. . . Republicans in a nutshell: "We don't like your brand, but we like your product even less"?

Posted by RSA | May 30, 2008 4:36 PM

What an odd poll. The Democrat message on taxes is "middle class tax relief"? In what universe???

The Democrat message on taxes is "repeal the Bush tax cuts!" And, lest we forget, the Bush tax cuts included significant middle class tax cuts.

A fair poll question would say that the Democrat message on taxes is "raise taxes on the middle class, and raise taxes on the rich too."

Posted by Al | May 30, 2008 4:48 PM

Actually, Al, I don't think any Democrat is proposing repealing Bush's modest tax cuts for the middle class, though I agree that middle-class tax relief hardly qualifies as a Democratic message either. What Democrats are proposing this year is a rollback of the Bush tax cuts on the highest earners, not the middle class. More accurately, they'd let the cuts expire as they were originally scheduled to do.

There may be some modest middle class tax cuts in there too, but both parties like to pander with reckless tax cuts these days.

Posted by Rob Mac | May 30, 2008 4:54 PM

I hear McCain is going for the all-out alpha male vote during his jaunt across the West by wearing a squirrel pelt plastered to the side of his head by a rubber band, banging a gong whenever he walks through a door, and restricting his diet to boar jerky and corn liquor. Goes along with his whole "we don't talk to our enemies - we sulk, then we bomb them" theme.

Posted by edsbowlingshoe | May 30, 2008 4:57 PM

First, I'd say just take the numbers, regardless of the registration of the people polled. In other words, on the whole, Democratic views scored higher than Republican views until the affiliation was known, then the difference decreased. I'd caution not to look too closely at the party affiliation of the responders, because many everyday (read: non-politically involved) people choose a party without much thought, or with a logic that would be foreign to all of us.

Overall, this means the Republican "brand" is actually stronger than the Democratic "brand." It looks like years of right-wing radio bashing and poor representation in the media has taken its toll on the Democratic "brand." In my world this is backed up by experience: most of the non-politically interested people I know consider the Democrats to be corrupt, weak, and spineless. They despise Democrats even when the Dems' message is more in line with their own. They tend to think of Carter as the prototype Dem, followed by Bill Clinton. They see both as weak, with Clinton having the additional label of being corrupt. They may be planning to vote for a Dem this fall, but only to punish the ineptness of the current administration (Bush), and the guy they see as its ally (McCain).

Fortunately for Dems, the Democratic reality (their positions) is more in-line with people than are the Republican positions. This suggests that the Democratic candidate (Obama) could run a campaign based on being against the "typical Washington Democrat," even if he still holds relatively typical Democratic positions...and succeed.

Dems need to distance themselves from the brand in some way. That may mean starting to talk about "old-school Dems" or "Clinton-style Dems," whatever it takes to create a separation between the Dems of today and the Dems of old. They need to create a new brand for Democrats, which will likely mean tossing the old one under the bus. In my opinion, they should start to actively and publicly attack the representatives of the old-style Democrat to create this separation.

Posted by RU | May 30, 2008 5:05 PM

I crunched the numbers a bit. Stunning:

Republicans don't like republican policies. But if you tell them it's a republican policy, their support jumps by double digits.

For the Democrats, it's *exactly the opposite* (but mostly by single digits).

Who's got the branding problem?

A little table paints the picture:

http://trueconservative.typepad.com/trueconservative/2008/05/pubs-and-dems-brands-and-beliefs.html

Posted by Steve Roth | May 30, 2008 5:06 PM

Did they test poll a John McCain-Hillary Clinton ticket??

Hat tip to commenter Confidence Man in an earlier thread for raising this perverted --yet strangely fascinating -- idea on his/her? web site.

Posted by Don Williams | May 30, 2008 5:07 PM

You didn't need to put your name on this one, Matt.

"...but on the other hand the Republican messages poor very poorly overall so their brand is hardly in good shape," pretty clearly identified you as the author. Not one of your worst sentences, not by far, but still identifiably yours.

Posted by persnickety | May 30, 2008 5:11 PM

You know that John McCain is going to suggest it -- after getting Hillary liquored up like he did on that Balkan trip.

And you know Hillary is gonna respond like a Wellesley girl responding to her frat date's suggestion of oral sex -- a sigh of reluctance, a token sign of being repulsed just to keep up appearances , and then lungeing like a spring trout on a fly.

Posted by Don Williams | May 30, 2008 5:15 PM

Here's my take: When you hear "Democrats say X", the pit of your stomach knows that X is never going to actually be enacted: It'll be filibustered, or vetoed, or swiftboated, or hollowed out by lobbyists, or perhaps George Bush will say "boo" and everyone will run for cover. When you hear "Republicans say Y", you know that Y has a very good chance -- a frighteningly good chance, in most cases -- of actually coming to pass... if only because "Republicans say Y" is MSM-speak for "very powerful elites want Y to happen, and/or they know that Y is inevitable and they want credit for being on the side of Y."

Such is the outcome of years of Pavlovian training. It will take time and effort to reverse this.

Posted by Anonymous Nitpicker | May 30, 2008 5:20 PM

OT ... Steve Roth, what do you think of Peter Viereck?

Posted by DAS | May 30, 2008 5:23 PM

I don't see how this should come as a surprise to anyone. The Democratic Party and "liberals" have had a negatively associated, weak brand for a long time now, while the GOP and "conservatives" have had a positively-associated, strong brand.

Furthermore, the negative association with the Democratic Party is so extremely strong with Republicans, that I'd bet that they discount much more a policy when it's identified with the opposition than do the Democrats. The result would be a much greater measured sensitivity to party identification of a policy.

Now, why the Dem brand has become so tarnished is another, and complex, matter. I'd guess that a large part of it is bad decisions and bad marketing on the part of Dems coupled with good decisions and very good marketing on the part of the GOP. Turning "liberal" into an insult is an excellent example.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | May 30, 2008 5:23 PM

Keith: "the negative association with the Democratic Party is so extremely strong with Republicans"

What's astounding is that the negative-Dem meme so strong with Democrats! Tell a Dem that a policy they like is a Democratic policy, and they run the other way.

Check out the numbers--negative every time.

I actually think this has less to do with party brands, and far more to do with the character of constituents. Pubs are (more likely to be) authoritarian followers, while Dems are averse to being "joiners."

Posted by Steve Roth | May 30, 2008 6:24 PM

I think it's because the policies are obviously being described by liberal Democrats. (There are all sorts of signs in the way the questions are posed.) Both Republicans AND Democrats, then, are applying a correction factor to account for their expectation that the questions are slanted to make Democratic positions sound better than they really are, and Republican positions worse.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 31, 2008 10:12 AM