Michael Nacht Distinguished Lecture on Politics and Public Policy

good evening my name is Henry Brady on the Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and it's great pleasure that I welcome you here tonight for an opportunity hear from an individual whose finger has been on the pulse of the American electorate for over 40 years peter hart is going to give a lecture tonight it's the first annual Michael nacht lecture in public policy let me just say a word about Michael Michael is formerly Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy he's currently assistant secretary for strategic Global Affairs a great title in Washington DC at the Defense Department he is a veteran policy analyst through many years of working at the State Department then in at the Kennedy School and at our school right now he's been deeply involved in the Nuclear Posture review that just came out about two or three weeks ago and in the nuclear summit that had something like 40 of world leaders who came and talked about nuclear weaponry and nuclear materials so Michael is a distinguished policy analyst unfortunately he couldn't be here tonight because as he put it he's actually leaving may 15th I think it is to come back to the Goldman School and we're thrilled and they said to him that's a Friday they said will you be leaving at 10 p.m. or 12 p.m. so his job is a job it's been all-consuming he hasn't had a moment to really get away from it especially given the important things he's been working on but we really look forward to having him back into continuing this series next year with him present but right now we're lucky to have Peter Hart here let me tell you a few things about Peter well actually first let me tell you a little bit about procedures I'm supposed to do this there have been question cards handed out and if you don't have question of cards there'll be somebody who come and pass them to you if you have a question write it down then there'll be people who will come through the audience and pick them up we'll then collect them and I will choose a representative sample of the questions using statistical techniques that are quite arcane and sophisticated you can watch me as I do it let me tell you about our speaker among polling insiders Peter Hart is the pollsters pollster nobody is better at formulating and writing polling questions nobody is better at interpreting polls and absolutely no one is better at placing polling results in the context of American politics peter is so good that he's worked with over 40 US senators and 30 governors including hubert humphrey jay rockefeller Lloyd Benson and Bob Graham he has done work around the world and he frequently appears on television programs including The Today Show and the news hour with Jim Lehrer he is truly a veteran pollster all of you may know this what you may not know is that he's a superb teacher recently he taught in my public policy 101 introduction to public policy class most practitioners who come have stories to tell and anecdotes and it's great they help to humanize public policy they help to give some sense of what it's all about and Peter did all this but he did much more he came with a lesson plan he actually came with a set of goals that he had in mind and he presented a case study of polling on raising taxes for fixing roads the poll is one that he had done for governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina in the early 1980s he even admitted that his clients went ahead and actually taxed and fixed the roads and then lost the election in the next election so pollsters don't typically do that by the way they tell you about their successes and not their failures although in this case it was sort of a mixed case because Jim hunt at least did get the roads paved which is a public policy success even though it led to a political failure for him in the next election although eventually he became elected governor again of North Carolina perhaps because he had paved the roads following his lesson plan Peter led to class was extraordinary command of the Socratic method I've seen very few people who are as good as he is in a classroom at asking questions eliciting ideas summarizing them putting them together and allowing students to learn through their own active involvement in the class and I think he left the students with some deep and enduring lessons information about the nature of leadership the nature of polling and the possibilities and limits of public policy and he did this all with great good humor and fantastic anecdotal detail as a longtime survey researcher I knew about Peters talent as a pollster but I was also thrilled to find out that he's a great teacher so buckle your seatbelts as we all take a fast-paced and exciting ride with Peter to find out about the mood of America and the 2010 elections veteran pollster Peter Hart thank you I thank you Henry I am thrilled and delighted to be here and I have to tell you the the honor of being able to deliver the first Michael knock leg in lecture is a particular pleasure for me because it was Michael knocked who was kind enough as Dean of the Goldman School to invite me to Berkeley some five years ago and asked me to come and come and teach at the Goldman School and that introduced me back to Berkeley which is my hometown and for the last five years we have been back here teaching on the Berkeley campus my wife has been taking classes at Berkeley so we have been taking the full advantage and I'm only more than delighted to be here I've got to tell you Henry when I get invited or somebody says veteran pollster oh do I cringe because I know what people are thinking oh my god 10,000 years old I have to tell you in my class last year after my first class it was obviously 2009 just after the just after the inauguration of Barack Obama one of my young students came running up and said to me you gotta tell me what was the most exciting election you've ever been in was it Obama wasn't Kennedy was it Roosevelt look looked at her in mock and said Roosevelt I wasn't even alive for Roosevelt and she said no no I meant Franklin not Teddy so when whenever I hear whenever I hear the fact that I'm a veteran pollster I know that it's trouble because people usually want to talk to me about the Garfield administration there is something like that but what I do want to talk to you about a lot is what's happening today where America is going and then I want to talk to you a little about my profession and where things are at and this morning as I was getting ready and going over my notes I said to Florence my wife I said I'm afraid this might run a little bit long and she looked at me and rolled her eyes and I know what the rolling of the eyes means and she said to me just remember what Muriel Humphrey said to Hubert and I said what what was that she said a speech doesn't have to be eternal to be immortal so I will try and remember that and I'll try and go through this and give you some sense of where things are at and let me just talk about the mood of America as Henry has noted I've been doing the NBC Wall Street Journal poll for now this is the 21st year we do it with Bill Mac & Turf the Republican pollster and the two of us have been combining on this and the data for the most part is from our most recent poll and it sort of measures where the public's at and probably the best place to start is really to just look at a sense of what we call the EKG of American public opinion are things headed in the right direction or seriously off on the wrong track that gives you a better sense than anything else about how the public is feeling and as you can see at the moment that the president was inaugurated did the public was for the first time feeling almost back to dead even we've been in a total funk about the performance of America during the Bush years certainly during the second term and so at this stage of the game we had about equal number saying right direction and wrong track and as you can see as the administration has gone along and the economy has had a hard time the American public has been more and more negative and at this stage of the game almost six in ten Americans say things are seriously off on the wrong track and obviously that's a challenge and a difficulty for the president some of it obviously reflects his leadership but an awful lot has to do with how we feel about how we feel about the economy in general it should be noted that the key segment of this electorate has to be independent voters they represent about one in five Americans if you look at this you now have almost two thirds of them saying the country seriously off on the wrong track and that sort of sets the mood and against which the president is challenged but as I look at the president and his performance the American public looks at him in so many different ways as they do with every president and when it comes to how they feel about him as you know first family and all of that mood is unbelievably positive as you can see 7 and 10 say if they have positive feelings about the president in terms of that in terms of how they see him as a person naturally put bow the dog in there because I figure you know everybody loves the dog but 65% of the public is basically positive about him as a person so on a personal level he stands very well the other thing that has been fascinating is on a couple of other fronts there's been a lot of challenges back and forth does he have leadership ability can he be seen as a strong leader at this of the game the American public a majority say yes I see him as a strong leader I see him in a positive in a positive fashion and he has done well the other thing which is exceptionally important is the American public believe of him believe him to be a leader on the world stage and everywhere he's gone there has been a change of mood and change of attitude the Pew Research Center does some of the best polling in America and and around the world and one of the things they've done is check the confidence of how people feel about the president overall and if you look in terms of America's standing abroad in almost every country the mood has improved by 10 to 20 percent in terms of the country and how we feel about the United States and it's that leadership that the public appreciates and so when he goes abroad whether whether it is to Europe or to Africa or the Middle East in every case it is a much more favorable view than we had at the end of the Bush administration but against all of that is is two things one thing is how does the American public see him as commander-in-chief here he hasn't necessarily been tested but overall the American public say as commander-in-chief I'm I'm more divided about half se+ 46% the rest are negative so he hasn't necessarily earned that title in part because they haven't seen them that much in that role even though we can talk about Afghanistan and even Iraq and finally in terms of his stance on the issues this is where the divide has come with the American public only four in ten say I see him in a positive fashion so the president really ends up in two different venues one is the personal side and the other is the professional side and if you look at this report card on the personal side things are exceptionally favorable they see him as easygoing they see him as likable they see him as inspirational they see him as a strong leader they see him as honest and straightforward and representing American values overall the average mark is 58% a very solid and a very good mark for the president in United States but then you go to the professional side of the category and the president's average rating is 43 and a way to think about this is the difference in temperature outside think about how you dress and how you feel when it's 58 degrees and when it's 43 degrees very different between the two and if you look all of those marks sort of start where the other marks left off 51% all the way down to 30% let me draw your eye to two very important findings here one is achieving his goals 40% that's a very low mark now let me make a point that was pre health care that mark will probably go up some I don't know how much but overall the sense that is this a person who's accomplishing a lot getting his agenda done yeah are things happening the public's much more divided and on the negative side and more importantly there is the second element and that is changing business as usual and what we find here is that what was his slogan when you run on well change what change we can believe it and if you stop and you look at this stage the problem is people look at Washington and they say it's all the same it's exactly as it was before they look at they look at all the corruption they look at all the scandals and everything else that is happening in the Congress and otherwise and the public says that's not the change that I voted for and so the president is seen as perpetuating the status quo rather than changes and so one way or another the covenant that he made with the voters were really basically two things one that I'm going to get things to happen we're going to have change and secondly it is going to be a different culture in Washington he hasn't been able to deliver on that and you want to understand why his standing is not as great that's what it's about now let me ask you a question I figure Henry it's all right if they do the work isn't it absolutely okay one of the things I love to do is to ask people in focus groups tell me this or tell me that about the president and the question I asked in a recent focus group was if President Obama could have any trait from another president in the last a sense Kennedy so I'll move it from Kennedy all the way through George W Bush what trait would you give him see you thought you were just going to get to listen okay what president what trait and what president do you think Lyndon Johnson how about yourself more aggressive such as Reagan what do you think yeah okay who LBJ okay what quality what President okay good toughness okay humility Gerald Ford who high-five for that not a bad answer I haven't had it before you got one root of of LBJ okay you're very close on one you've got it on the other you haven't and that is they said Bill Clinton they said Ronald Reagan and they said George W Bush and what they said is the humanity of the ability to relate the ability on a personal level here's a man who's a great visionary a great orator but they don't feel that he relates one-on-one and this just spontaneously came from these groups at this group and I actually had communication with the White House last week because I picked this up and I've already passed it along but I said how the president handles West Virginia and the and the services for the miners becomes terribly important and if you notice the pictures and the words how human how embracing and everything else and it becomes terribly important because I just told you they love them as a person they love them in terms of a first family but the problem is they don't see him relating to them second thing everybody in the audience give yourself a round of applause what they said was Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson and it was exactly as you said it was the toughness it is the Moxie it is the skill and they don't see him as having that political skill and do you know what one of the respondents said to me said if it'd been Karl Rove we would have ended up with health care in a month it is that sense that so the president's at this stage he's 16 months into office don't get ahead of yourselves and say always defeated he's reelected he's this or that he's done a lot he set himself in certain ways but the other side of this is he has definite challenges ahead of them so that's where the Presidents ad and look at those feelings what do you think of those feelings pretty impressive for two one press what do you think impressive yeah what do you think what well they would be neutral yeah so what do you think four to one you bet that's why we love Michelle Obama and and indeed what we have is an unbelievably popular first lady helps the president but she make no mistake it's been exceptionally well received and you look at this seventy-three percent of the American public see her as a role model if you look at women under 35 African and Americans and Hispanics it's practically total in fact we've got a search party John Whaley's with me from heart research we have a search party to find that one African American who said she wasn't a role model we're looking all over the country but in any respect what it all comes down to is you look at this administration it's early on there's a lot to do now let me turn from this into the whole area of what's the agenda for government and where we're at well you know it I know it and the American public knows him and that is the number one issue is the economy pure and simple it's jobs it's getting people back to work that's what we're concerned about most in second places national security and terrorism health care now no longer quite at the top and deficit spending don't don't miss the news here that's important I mention this because I can tell you that 2010 will revolve around the economy I've seen the same articles that you've been reading the economy's picking back up people are are happier etc etc until we start to really see it in the polls and we start to see this number go down as the most important issue and more importantly that 48 percent of the American public tell us that they've been affected a great deal or quite a bit bite this downturn and until this public starts to say hold it I'm turning the corner I feel safe and at this stage of the game half the American public say we haven't hit bottom yet and until we get to that side the Democrats are going to have a tough draw in 2010 and if you don't know anything else watch one number and I can tell you how this election is going to turn out and that is the unemployment number if that number is hovering at ten percent and above the Democrats are going to get slammed if it starts to get down to nine percent the Democrats may lose but not be slammed if it gets below that the Democrats will not have as bad a year but ten percent or more the Democrats are going to have a hard time and the point here is at the beginning the American public said look the situation that the president inherit any was something that he inherited at this stage of the at this stage of the game two-thirds of the American public say it's something he's inherited by the time we get to election day a majority will say it's his so it's going to be his his situation sooner rather than later maika polling compatriot bill Mac & Turf makes a great point and this is a chart that he often uses and for years and years and years and Henry you'll know this better than anybody the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index has always been the gold standard to understand how the economy is doing and where things are at and if you look we measure how people feel and at this stage of the game the overall consumer confidence index is at sixty nine point five but what Bill has done is he's gone back and he's looked at the period of time that is taken for the economy to recover between when it fell below 65 which really says deep recessionary times until it rose above 85 which is getting back to confidence and if you look we went essentially 30 months in 74 to 76 what happened in the 76 election Henry we threw out the incumbent and we brought in Jimmy Carter then we went into another recession in 1979 the lasted 45 months essentially from July of 1979 through the midterm elections in 82 and what did we do we threw out another incumbent Jimmy Carter did I say Jimmy Carter did the first time yeah I meant that we threw out Ford you know we knew that we threw out an incumbent and then what happened we went back into another recession in the early 90s and essentially we threw out George HW Bush in 92 it has always been a bellwether for how we're feeling and where we're at and if you look we're now 23 months into this recession and essentially we have no law we have no idea how long it's going to take us to get back to above 85 but I can guarantee you this is going to tell us more than anything else about how this president is going to do and how and how the congressional elections ago I'm not going to spend a lot of time on health care I just really wanted to simply mention it to say look when we went into this this has been a polarizing issue and as we went to vote the American public was absolutely divided and what you found out is three-quarters of the Democrats said passed this thing and four out of five Republicans said don't pass it and so the what you saw happen in the Congress was nothing more than a reflection of public opinion and the importance about all of this is that the ability to reach consensus is so much more difficult at this stage and we could talk a little bit more about this but it make no doubt make no doubt about this when the American public came to look at this their uncertainties became greater and greater because we always think of the fears versus what we know that we have and that's the way the public came to look at this instead of seeing the opportunities and understanding what could happen it was always the fears now that it's passed public opinion hasn't changed I believe that we really won't know about public opinion on this until six or eight weeks into this then we'll get a sense of is it still a red hot issue or is it something that cools I think it will cool the reason the Democrats voted for it and the reason it is good for Democrats leaving aside the public policy reasons which are so important it is because it is the issue that will get Democrats encouraged and enthused about this election and Democrats need that tremendously because at this stage of the game Republicans have a tremendous edge in enthusiasm and for the Democrats to be competitive they need to be interested they need to believe in the president even more but just take us if there's any set of findings that disturbs me more than anything else it is a feeling about what's happening in Washington and the feelings about what hat is happening in Washington are as bad as any time in my public polling years indeed only one in six Americans say they have confidence and approve of the Congress 51 percent of Americans say if I were given a choice would I vote to reelect my item my representative or would I vote for someone new 51 percent say they would vote for somebody new it's not that they act on it exactly but it tells you something about their mood 46 percent of Americans say I would vote for a new independent party and finally and most disturbing of all is a question that I developed in the last survey 50 percent one out of every two Americans said if there were a lever on this ballot that allowed me to vote out every single representative including my own I pulled that lever now they can't do that but the reason I put it in is it was the best way to tell the story of how much anger how much unhappiness where everything is at and all of this has is just exacerbated everybody's been watching the the news what are you thinking about the financial reform anybody have a thought about this as you're looking at this debate anybody out here not going far enough what else strikes you in the back oh your point I think is well-taken and the problem is if you're the American public you're looking at Goldman Sachs and you're saying this is a rigged game I want it to change and then they turn around and they look in the Congress and these guys can't even agree to start a debate on this it infuriates the American public and then they look and they say oh I recognize all these people every one of these people is part of the Hall of Shame you know they've either been indicted or they're some sexual scandal or there's something one way or another and these are representatives in the United States Congress and what is fascinating and so important in terms of things is what's happened in our society Andy Warhol what's his great statement here we go high five fifteen minutes of fame and what was that all about Chuck mmm that's all you get in life everybody gets to be famous for 15 minutes remember these people ah baby Jessica fell down a well that's all she did but she'll always be known for that how about who can get the name of the fan the fan who interfered Steve Barton but okay and who will ever forget Elian Gonzalez okay that's his 15 minutes of fame and private lynch saving Jessica Lynch okay that's what it was about you did something and you became known for that and that's where things were at but where are we today 15 minutes stop and think about it it is whether it's Tiger Woods or John Edwards or Toyota or AIG or Goldman Sachs we go from the top to the bottom like that and it is a society that is judging as harshly and is tough on everybody and it is a sense of where do I get confidence in the institutions and what do I believe in and that's what we're looking at and that's what's so difficult about our society we look and we say how are we going to put it back together and what are we going to do and until we were able to have confidence not only in the system of government but the system of business and the and the system of commerce and the system of the church you can go through each and every athletes etc we lose all of that let me bring you to the final slide and that is politics 2010 if you look at this this chart on the left tells you everything you need to know 67% of the Republicans can't wait for this election to happen they are excited they are enthused and everything else and among Democrats it's 46 a difference of 21 points David's shaking his head because you know what it means and you look at this when you ask in our NBC Wall Street Journal poll tell me how you who you would prefer to have as leading the Congress in 2011 the debt the Democrats have a three-point advantage but if you only look at those people who have high interest in this election essentially the Republicans are ahead by 13 points so if you wonder how the election is going to turn out that's all you need to look at now I haven't looked at this post health care debate but it is Schenley important and I do all of this as a way of saying here's where we are here's where things are about but there's one other thing that I want you to know who is it and what did Mae West said what was her her great thing she's the one who knew about elections and she said about elections given the choice between two evils I'll take the one I haven't tried before okay and I think this may well be a Mae West election if I can turn from the for the moment from all of these charts and slides in terms of where we're at and turn now to just my profession and what I what I look at and what I do and you know I can't come here and do a lecture on Michael Knox a lecture and not talk in some reflection about the polling profession I you know I have to tell you this is my 46th year in the business of public opinion my uncle Joseph Cranston gave me an introduction to to Lew Harris and and he was the pollster for John F Kennedy founder of the Harris Poll he must have been very impressed with me because I've got to tell you he offered me a job at $2 an hour to be a coder which is the equivalent of being a copy boy on a newspaper or whatever else it is to work in his New York City headquarters and I got to tell you I'm one savvy guy because I accepted that offer and I have to admit it was the only offer I had but I learned every single element of the polling business I did everything all the way through there was no element I did the interviewing I did work on the computer I did work on the sampling I did work on election night coverage I did every element and I've gotta tell you that I'm forever indebted to Lew Harris not only for teaching me the business being a mentor and also at age 29 saying to me go out and start your own public opinion polling firm he obviously had figured that I had to earn more than $2 an hour eventually so that's where it is I also have to say I'm indebted to my most indebted to my wife and she indeed relates very much to my polling firm because she has a single distinction of being the first person I ever terminated at my firm she came in she volunteered one day to help me out before we were married and she agreed to type unfortunately she was too slow as a typist and I told her I was done with her as a typist but as a as a wife and as somebody who has allowed me to do this profession I am so thankful but this isn't going to be a trip down memory lane instead I really want to talk about where we are today and the challenges and I talked to a lot of my colleagues at heart research and I said to what do you think the challenges are and where we are and I'm not going to go through all of them but let me start by saying look in our profession many of the firm's that I deal with I work with and who are competitors are among the best professionals and in the academic community there are sensational people and I'm honored to be associated with it but when I started 50 years ago let me just tell you that every interview was done door to door and it didn't make any difference whether you were in Abilene Texas or in Zanesville Ohio there was a cottage industry across this country where you did interviewing and it made all the difference in the world and I mentioned that because it took longer to do a poll today we do polls instantaneously and you say well isn't that better we can get we can get opinion absolutely so quickly problem is you no longer give people time to reflect on an issue or problem and instead we immediately pull somebody on something and say we've just found out where public opinion is not necessarily we found out what somebody's instant reaction is and that's not necessarily a good public opinion and and I think as much as anything we need to reflect on a few of the elements that are coming and the things that are happening first and foremost is the whole area of sampling and finding respondents all of you look at a poll and you say the margin of error is plus or minus three percent or whatever it may be given in a given poll but that assumes one important fact and that is there's a sampling universe and there's a sampling frame and from that sampling frame you can do a sample which allows every person an equal chance with every other person to be interviewed and and that's what we call random probability sampling the problem is we now have elements that are changing all of that internet surveys they may have been a respondent and an Internet survey here quite a few of you is it as accurate as a telephone poll what do you think what depends on the demographics and back back behind you yep more accurate okay how many agree more accurate internet pulley thank you in the back thank you over there each of you have bought a painting for you're putting up your hands no let me let me just say the problem is we don't have a sampling frame and that's the disadvantage and without a sampling frame you can't have a margin of error because essentially in most cases what we have is self selection and the challenge here is that there there is no way to be able to have a sampling frame by the internet at least at this stage and what companies have done in some cases the best they have gone out and created a database by phoning people and saying will you participate in doing so they reach people who don't have computers good news then they send them a computer so that you can be part of my internet database so now you can't criticize them that we've left out a whole portion of the population that doesn't have internet which is obviously a problem with a lot of the polls the difficulty is they're no longer the same person after three or four months they're now internet users so we went out to get them to fill a void but they don't feel a void we so that's one element and that's you talk about the reflectiveness yeah it may be much more reflective in terms of the question but we don't have the same frame second thing is you look at telephone poles we have a harder and harder time getting respondents what's a bigger problem with telephone poles today that's one but cell phones and here's the question how many of you here have only a cell phone and not a landline okay take a look around okay now here we go how many of your children have a cell phone and no landline that's the point there is a huge population and we're working on getting cell phones and it's an important element but all of this comes to the important part of framing and challenging and we're going to have to find blended technologies but a lot of the polling that we're doing right now is in terms of sampling not as rigorous and not as good as it used to be I'm not saying all of it but an awful lot of what you read second problem in polling is what I call nomenclature and let me explain and that is we have just one term to describe the collecting of public opinion and it's called a poll okay and we can't differentiate between quote good polls and bad polls they're just polls now when one of you has your fabulous darling five-year-old daughter or granddaughter and they scribble on a piece of paper we don't label it as art we label it as scribbles but if this same five-year-old was to walk around the block and get the opinions of ten people we would say she just finished doing a poll and even worse the local media would be likely to cited as the latest poll and so my problem here is we've got so many difficulties and we only use one word and it's called a poll and the problem is we don't police the field the way we should and given all of that the public becomes more and more skeptical in today's zion.t with the proliferation of polls unfortunately we have more and more 5 year olds that are scribbling and we call it art and what is needs to be done as much as anything is to find a better way to police this and a better way to be able to describe it the third thing that I want to talk to you about is advocacy polling and to me that's the most dangerous and that is the most sinister element within our society if I were given a nickel for every advocacy survey that I have had cited to me or quoted I could buy my wife that P ended hair that she's looking for in New York I got to tell you that advocacy surveys may employ good survey sampling and indeed excellent interviewing but the wording of the questions the analysis of the material can be so flawed that it ends up giving a set of responses that we think and what's happened in our society it doesn't make any difference if it's the left or the right the environmental mentalists the pro-life the pro-choice they're all doing advocacy surveys aimed at showing that their case and their cause is the right one and my rule of thumb always is if you see a poll where 80% or more say that is my point of view or that that is the finding about the American public I can tell you either it is an advocacy survey or it is so evident that we shouldn't even have to ask a question about it but within this this area I've got to tell you that it is a huge problem finally one final little personal piece and that is there is a new thing in the in the business especially if you read the blogs and everything else it's called the averaging of polls how many you've seen this yeah exactly you know they put in the averaging well as a professional who I think does extremely careful and methodological work it is a little bit like saying we're going to take the average of all the food in North Berkeley so we're going to put Chez Panisse in with Burger King and tell you what the average food is the answer is or good wine and bad wine putting a lousy pole in with a good pole doesn't make it doesn't make it an average bettor all it says is you've added a bad thing and what we need to do within this within this business is to figure out how one we educate the journalistic community and the media community because they don't know anything about polling and it becomes terribly important number two we need to be able to police our industry better and number three we need to be straight with the American public about what we do well and what we don't because at this stage of the game it is a field where we have not taken and done the best so I take all of this and I say to you as I look at it our profession has tremendous challenges but given the challenges that we have I have to tell you that I think public opinion in a Democratic Society becomes exceptionally important and exceptionally valuable because when it's properly done it provides a set of insights that I think we badly need without that it becomes Michael Moore against Ann Coulter it becomes a sense of the intemperate blogs or it becomes the right versus the left on talk radio and the soapbox forums of the interest groups in Washington it's public opinion that is the blend of all of these voices that get reflected it is to help us not only who's ahead or who's behind in a trial heat but why we're behind a specific public policy and what changes and and compromises we're willing to make as a society and I would tell you that as I look at my career it is public opinion polls on two of the most seminal issues of art of my professional life the war in Vietnam and Watergate where the public was actually ahead of the politicians and provided through public opinion a way to say we're going to make a change and enough is enough and I would say it is true also with the war in Iraq so for all of the downsides for all of the challenges and everything else what I would tell you is public opinion as as both an art and a science there's work to be done but on the other side at the end of the day it is the best and most helpful way to add to a democratic society thank you very much so we're gonna do some questions now I want to thank veteran pollster peter hart so who was the first president you knew who was the first president you met that i met i would have to tell you the first president that i met was richard nixon yeah I never met John Kemeny I know he had that shifty look um let's start with some questions about the nature of the electorate you've talked some about them and try to understand a little bit better what's animating the electorate right now you have your Hall of Shame and you talk about both sexual and political scandals together can you really put those two together or do they have the same animists for people or one just sort of a personal thing and the other is really a deeper political set of concerns that people have about Congress and our elected officials excellent question and what I would tell you is to be perfectly honest that the public looks at all of this and it creates their sense of where are the values and where are the standards but without a doubt what drives people nuts more than anything else is the sense of a lack of public morality and when I say the lack of public morality it is the sense that either using the system for their own advantage or a sense of no longer serving the public those are the things that that absolutely drive the public crazy and it becomes exceptionally important in terms of how they look at the system and you know there are years when I see confidence built and there those are the years usually where there's a sense of comedy and a sense of unity and getting along actually one period of time was after the 9/11 you could see the confidence in institution and the feelings were much better I want to ask several questions on this topic but let's talk a little bit about fundamentalist Christians who have been an important part of the Republican coalition and now the Tea Party activists who seem to be an increasingly important part of the Republican coalition are they the same people are they different people and what is the differences or sameness tell us about where we're going well obviously the fundamentalist Christians and the who we often label as the religious right have been a huge part of the Republican Party and indeed I think have the vetting standard on presidential elections I think it is very difficult for a Republican to win the presidential nomination without at least some willingness of the Religious Right to approve while there are some members of the religious right that are in the Tea Party movement Tea Party movement is very different the Tea Party movement is much broader and and I would tell you it isn't really a party it is a collection of people who are happy with the system essentially are trying to send a message as much as anything but I would tell you that the potentiality of looking at this year for the Republican Party all of their hopes and all of their great expectations may be undone by the tea party movement because what they may have happened to them much more importantly is that some of their likely winners will lose to a tea party candidate or challenger will get upset and the Democrat will be able to hold the seat so the Tea Party movement I have not studied as as deeply as others but I see it as different from the religious right it also tends to be what I would say is a whole series some unhappiness is a lot about the government and where the government does well tell us a little more about that why are people so angry I mean maybe the obvious question is the economy's not in great shape but why is it so strong and especially why is it directed at Congress and what do they really want Congress to do what kind of changes are they looking for other than throw the bums out well I think a lot of it what they would tell you is they don't want the Congress to do anything I mean in other words if we had no government that would be the best government for them but the orthodoxy which has now become the really the most important thing to understand and evaluate Republicans can do a hundred different things and they some of them may get in trouble with one constituency or another the one thing they cannot do is advocate higher taxes and that has really become the single most important orthodoxy for the Republicans and at this stage of the game a lot of this movement is really just aimed at taxes and the economic effect I do not want to have to pay for this how about immigration what role does that play right now and the Republican and the Democratic parties and is that an issue that Obama should move forward on and try to make changes in public policies in that area immigration I have always felt was the hot button of hot buttons in in in American politics and the reason is it cuts across so many different lines and the problem here is that when you look at the immigration patterns in America there are so many communities where there's been dislocations and so consequently if you're in the Upper Midwest there is a whole influx of a new population or as I like to note that I believe it is in Columbus Ohio where the Somalian population went from something like thirty people to 30,000 in 14 years and and so what the Republicans have done and Governor Brewer is the best example they've overreacted and in overreacting simply put the Republicans may make some gains in 2010 but what they have done is essentially ruin their chances for a lifetime or for a generation and let me explain what I'm talking about you've seen it in California on the basis of what governor Wilson did back in 1994 which was a short political gain for him but a long loss for the party and that is to constituency the Hispanic vote and the african-american vote in 2008 President Barack Obama won that vote overwhelmingly and in part it was an affinity on the part of Hispanics for Barack Obama it was also unhappiness with the economy and the Republicans etc but as immigration becomes a hot-button issue essentially you are taking the fastest-growing block in America and guaranteeing for a generation they are not going to vote for the Republican Party let me explain what that means if you take the african-american vote and the Hispanic vote you are now talking about in the next 5-10 years that that's going to be 23 to 25 percent of the American electorate if the Republicans get down to getting only one out of five of those voters they have to get 60% of all of the Caucasian or all of the other votes that means a landslide for them with a group of people who you know are educated uneducated they're blue collar they're white collar they're liberals they're conservatives whatever we was say so immigration isn't going to be a hot in 2010 I think possibility but I think what the Republican Party may be doing and John McCain is the best example of this a moderate voice a smart voice on the immigration because he faces a quote Tea Party challenge he has now moved way over on this issue and so to every to every Latino in in Arizona I'm sure he is now in an enactment okay long answer right no but I think it's an important topic I think okay so Americans are deeply cynical about government are they also as cynical about other institutions such as business education and so forth and what does that portend well I mean that's what I was obviously trying to talk about with with the fifteen minutes of shame and that is the fact that you look at every institution in American life with the exception of firefighters and EMS people and other military and essentially are our opinion compared to a decade ago has dropped on every single institution it doesn't make any difference if it's the church if it's the media if it's accountants if it's lawyers if it is the business community small business continues to stay very high because it's anonymous if I can put it that way it's a generic and yet everybody else the opinion is dropped and what it means in terms of society is both challenging and difficult because as a whole I think that you look at this and what it means is that the ability to to get us behind our institutions and to believe in where we're headed that's why I thought the Obama presidency and still believe is so exceptionally important because until we sort of regain our footing and our sense of confidence and our sense of self as much as anything else I think that that the trend downward that we started in 2000 through the Bush administration it's very hard to change that downward projection and one of the questions that we've been asking now for 20 years with NBC in The Wall Street Journal and other polls have done so too is do you think that your children's generation is going to be as well-off as you are and the answer is a majority of Americans do not and so there is that sense and I'll give you one other number we asked 15 years ago the question looking 20 years ahead which country do you think will be the strongest and I think we said economically the strongest and the United States was at 57% and 2% was China and I think Japan was like 8 or 10% in our most recent poll that we did 39 percent of Americans said China 37 percent said America so the sense of who we are we're going to be huge change and at the same time we have more and more polarization between the parties it seems can you explain why we have that polarization has it increased over time and to the degree it has increased why and how does that add to the political mix great crab by the way thank you for all the questions I don't know my answer sir as good as the questions but the questions are superlative if that's exceptionally important and fundamental question and of course we've got greater polarization there are two things that are happening and the most important thing that is happening is what we've done to congressional district lines as the political process has taken over and when I say has taken over we now with our computers and all of the fine statistical models that we can do have been able to figure out if we take this block in Berkeley and add it to these three blocks in Alameda and to these two blocks in San Leandro we've got a district and that district is going to be democratic and the Republicans cannot get at it well the point here is what happens is we end up with 300 plus seats that are going to either be Democratic seats or republican sees the importance of that is that if you are a representative you only have one concern and that is the primary so if you're a Democrat the only concern you have is somebody can beat you on the left if you're a Republican your only concern is that somebody can beat you on the right then you add to it Rush Limbaugh Rachel Maddow Keith Olbermann whoever you want to put on either side and those are the people who become the arbiters of party and who you are and the blogs on the left the move on and whatever else it is and the danger is that we don't have any way of getting consensus we have another problem which is nobody lives in Washington anymore they all fly in first for their session then they live with their religious right friends or their liberal lefties or whatever else it is and there's no sense that you know the other party or you know the other family so we demonize each other all of this leads us to a terrible place to be in terms of making democracy work and how we're going to get to the next phase I'm not positive but I honestly believe that unless there's something that unites us again and puts us back together we're going to continue to fragment just as the media is fragmented yet okay so we have polarization between the political parties but still we've also had an increase in the number of independents so there's something like twenty to thirty percent of the electorate are what's animating them are they a potential base for an independent third party and what would that look like well it's a it's a difficult question to answer and I'm not sure that the independents are going we've been doing our polling now for twenty years and we have what's called and I apologize a seven-point scale which goes strong Democrats a staunch Democrat strong Democrat mainly Democratic Democratic independent I guess completely independent etc it's seven-point scale and we have found the completely independence to be at about 20 percent consistently and we haven't seen a lot of change now obviously if you add in Democratic independence and Republican in independents that may have grown slightly but but the independents remain the swing vote they are not unique they tend to vote or tend to go as the electorate as a whole if anything they've become more conservative and more Republican over the last year that's why I think that the president is having a little bit harder time will we get a third party coming down the middle I don't think so it would be nice but you'd have to have somebody that has both a huge following a colon Powell maybe a Michael Bloomberg type of person in order to rise up and have that coalition so what should Obama do to appeal to independence and what should the Republican Party do to appeal to independence do either of them have clear-cut issues and perspectives they can put forth that will really appeal to that group it would be nice to say that there are a neat little group that you could do something on I don't see it I don't think that that's there but what I would tell you is for the president I think it means coming back to the middle on more issues and financial reform may be one of those issues that's very much there I'm not sure if immigration gets you there but and for the Republicans they have a strategy their strategies easy just say no and the theory is if they say no on each and everything they win they become the you know the beneficiaries of I'm unhappy with Washington I have a question here that says Roosevelt did you know him came back in 1934 and actually increased his margin if Obama gets activated what's the odds of his success I didn't know Franklin that well it was just slightly but I will tell you one thing that Eleanor Roosevelt came to our house in Berkeley I don't remember but I know that my mother hosted her for some event that she came to the University of California and I don't remember that much either person I can remember that came to our house in Berkeley was was Robert Frost and my sister who was a slightly older than I was and much more brilliant immediately batted her eyes and had Robert Frost and he was writing her special poems or whatever else it is all I could remember is he was wearing these gallant camps shoes and I just couldn't get over that but leaving back to Roosevelt the odds of the Democrats gaining seats in in 2010 with the exception of a major national emergency disaster I don't see the galvanizing effect that allows that to happen I don't see anything like the Kennedy in Cuban Missile Crisis or whatever and outside of that Democrats are going to lose it's a question of whether they'll lose twenty to twenty seats in the House 30 seats in the house or more than 40 seats turning over the house this question I think gets that some of the concerns Americans have had about the health care bill this person writes my biggest concern with the health care bill is the process by which it was passed and the apparent disregard for public opinion so I guess one question is is that right did it really disregard public opinion and then how can I have respect or confidence in a process that passes a 2,000 page documents into law without them being read and debated responsibly I guess Mike gloss on that would be you have you don't know how Congress works that's pretty much par for the course but anyway excellent an excellent question and then excellent point made by the questioner and that is you look at this and and the real problem with the health care bill wasn't the health care bill it happened on the stimulus bill and what Nancy Pelosi said as a speaker and she's been amazingly effective is it's our party and we have the majority and when they rammed through the stimulus bill that set up the terms of the debate for the health care bill and so for the Democrats in terms of the health care bill I they they said what's it going to take for us to get it through and I think that that on the Senate side they tried to be more responsible it's Senator Wyden from Oregon had a very promising bill that he was working on and I think with Senator Bennet from Utah and and then also senator Baucus was trying to work with senator from Iowa a sorry job in the name Grassley thank you Charles Grassley and and each of those were more consensus and bipartisan they felt fell apart but I don't think the house found a way to be able to make it work and one has to wonder if the Republicans would have loud it to work but but the process broke down but the process in the end the Democrats got the bill through in the next few months as we get ready for the 2010 elections what things should I be looking for in polling what questions can be most diagnostic about the likelihood that the Democrats will do well and the Republicans will do badly or vice-versa is it presidential approval or is it some other question that's most important right direction wrong direction what should I look at okay thank you for the question and there are there are two or three other things by the way it is so nice of the drum corps to be out there and willing to we have to pay for that extra exactly I am Michael Knox said can I drum up some business for you anyway know what what I was going to say is we know that presidential approval gives us an insight into how people will vote in the end of the day and when the president's approval rating is below 50% as it is now just slightly below the incumbent party loses somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 seats so that's an element that's important I think the best numbers to be able to look at our enthusiasm I think if you continue to see a 20-point gap or whatever else it is forget it everything else does not make any difference because it's a question of who goes to the polls and if one side is interested in the other side isn't and that's what happened in 1994 it is what happened in in 2006 and to a lesser extent we're really 2006 so if you look at that you have a very good indicator and and finally the one thing we know is that if you look at right direction and wrong track the president's job rating can never has never run more than about 15 points ahead of of right direction and so if it's down at 33 percent as it is now it's unlikely the president will be over 50% so yes all of these things sort of tied together let's talk a little bit about polling since you ended with that tell us a little bit about how I can get an accurate picture of the American public from the kind of poll you do how many people do you interview how can you be sure that that in fact reflects what Americans think you simply put that when we do our NBC Wall Street Journal poll we do a cross-section of a thousand Americans which essentially is comprised of both people with cell phones and people with landlines and what we try and do and what we look for is do we get a demographic cross-section obviously we get a geographic cross-section and we try and look at all elements you look at our polls you look at it at the other major polls if it falls within the general range we probably have a pretty good sense of where things are at I always love to tell the story of George Gallup senior one of the the truly great pollsters who was asked after a lecture by an elderly lady who said I have never been interviewed in my whole life George Gallup senior serve raised himself up and he said madam your chances of being interviewed are no better than your chances of being struck by lightning and the lady said but I have been struck by lightning and my point here is that you know at this stage game it's almost just the opposite the ability to get people to give you twenty minutes or more of time to get their points of view and people say to me I'm on the Do Not Call list no that doesn't apply to public opinions because we're not selling anything so the difficulty here is really making sure that you get a cross-section and that you're there it's very difficult to do and harder and harder as you know George Gallup wrote a book I think was in the 1930s called the pulse of democracy where he made a case much like the one you made towards the end of your talk about how the great thing about public opinion polling was that it would give us an independent measure of what people were thinking and was sort of the unalloyed truth about what regular citizens had in their minds so that that could have an independent impact on the political process and you made a case for that being important for Vietnam for example tell us a little more about where you think we stand with respect to that process Ken Pauline still do that does it do that and where have you seen it do that well I my contention would be yes it still does that it is more difficult at this stage because I think public opinion tends to be more polarized at this stage and makes it a little bit more difficult but I do think it provides a consensus of opinion and it gives us a sense of nuance in some case of where the public is willing to bend and where they're willing to to buckle and the fact that we do NBC in The Wall Street Journal and my good can Patriots do CBS in the New York Times and ABC and The Washington Post and then the Pew poll among the major polling organization I think that they're exceptionally well read and well heated on Capitol Hill and I think in many cases it provides an impetus for them to be able to say here are the things that we need to understand and here's what we need to do I know that that both that both bill Mac & Turf my Republican counterpart and and I are called on by leaders in our party to say what what do you mean by this or could you get us these results etc and I would tell you one of the reasons we're going to happen to reform has to do in part with public opinion and public opinion is that which gives us an immediate sense of what is happening and where people are looking and I think at this stage you look at the institution's I don't think the Republicans want to end up saying I voted against financial reform all the debate that's going on right now is leverage but in the end of the day I don't think they want to be on the know side of that and that's in part with public opinion okay so if polls can be powerful does that mean that sometimes they decide elections that a particular poll because it says somebody's ahead may hurt the person who's behind and lead to the person who's ahead getting a sort of a bandwagon kind of yeah the interesting thing and I haven't looked at this in the last couple of election but I looked at it over the history of polling for for probably eight or ten elections and that is actually I think there's an underdog effect and that is if you take a look at most of the last polls what usually happens is that the person who is behind actually ends up with a higher percentage of the undecided vote it doesn't always happen but the idea that there's a bandwagon effect and people are out there quote just voting for the winner based on the poll there is nothing that indicates that now the the other side is new polls have an effect on an election they have a tremendous effect on elections I have no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama would not have been the nominee without public opinion in part because public opinion is a fuel in all of this it says to the journalists oh my god I'm missing the story I better go out here and cover Obama it is something that fundraisers say oh oh I better get my money in Obama is moving something that's happening so I know that polling has an effect but the idea that somebody's sitting at home on a Saturday night and says I see Obama's a head count and count on me I don't see any effect of that well that leads into our final question thanks goodness thank you you guys have been fabulous thank you very very much for your okay but one more one more which is this as you know an American dilemma has been the issue of race in America we've now got an African American president how much do you think the questions you ask about Barack Obama are affected by racism or racial biases and things like that and how much does that ultimately matter for the Obama presidency ooh tough tough tough question and thanks for saving the place yeah exactly my first and only lecture here no race is is one of the most challenging areas to handle in public opinion polling because of all the layers that we go through of social correctness and the answers etc however having said that there is not and I look to Andy Kohut who is my colleague at Pew there is not enough evidence that we can see that quote there is some sort of racial advantage bias being given to the president I will say this that I believe that every American and I shouldn't say every American almost all Americans took a special pride when when prayer when Barack Obama won the presidency I don't know if it was a cleansing a sense of hope a sense of whatever it was but I believe there was an era of good feeling I would tell you the fact that the public feels very comfortable in criticizing him and making a differential on a whole series of different measurements says to me not that we're past racial bias but at least in terms of judging Barack Obama the public feels comfortable in criticizing them in any number of areas and also giving them credit in other areas so from that point of view it's always going to be a challenge for the profession but at the same time I would have to say that by and large the public has has given some amazing insights of this well thank you very much veteran pollster peter Hart

Channel: UC Berkeley Events

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Length: 85min 14sec (5114 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2010