Football and Politics

With the Super Bowl, politics, and a combination of the two leading the headlines in recent weeks, today’s Politics as Unusual satirical column attempts to counter the appalling and just plain weird anti-abortion ad aired during the Super Bowl by Focus on the Family. This is the ad that I believe Focus on the Family really wanted to show but couldn’t due to the fact that the equally creepy talking baby from the E-trade ads was already under contract:

Gallup, Abortion, and Shades of Gray

With the economy, health care reform, environmental regulation, and other important issues being widely discussed in policy circles, it would be easy for one to forget about wedge issues, such as abortion. However, with the news of the shooting of  Dr. George Tiller, among other recent acts of extremist right-wing violence, and the debate over a new Supreme Court nominee, abortion is back on the front pages.

In this light, I decided that I would take a deeper look into a recent poll that was conducted by Gallup that found changing attitudes toward abortion in the US. Gallup’s results showed that for the first time since they began polling the issue 14 years ago,  more Americans identify themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice”.  According to this new poll, virtually all movement in public attitudes toward the pro-life position has occurred within the past year.  After reading about these results, I had several questions, including:

1. The dramatic shift in the past year looked a bit odd to me.  Could Gallup expand upon the bottom-line reasoning from their reporting?
2. What was the party breakdown of the poll? It doesn’t mention weighting, but perhaps they did weight. (If I remembered correctly from the Presidential tracking polls in 2008, one of the big differences between Gallup and Rasmussen was that Rasmussen weighted and Gallup did not, leading to more swings in the Gallup tracker.) My concerns here were that a smaller, more extremist Republican tent, could indicate a misleading swing if they were still weighted at their 2008 levels.
3. Relating to #2, I recently read that Gallup had nearly a 50/50 split in Party ID in this poll. Was this correct?
   

Thanks to my former graduate school classmate, Cynthia English, a Gallup writer and researcher, I had the honor of having my questions answered by Lydia Saad, a Senior Editor at Gallup who worked on this poll. Ms. Saad gave very thoughtful answers to my questions and went above and beyond what I expected. Here are some of Ms. Saad’s responses:

• Kevin’s memory is correct; we do not weight our surveys by Party ID. Although some pollsters do it, weighting by Party ID is not the standard in national RDD surveys. Party ID is essentially a political attitude like every other that we measure; and while it is generally stable from one survey to the next, it does change over time and is susceptible to survey-to-survey variation due to the content of a given survey. Weighting by party ID on election polls, for example, can be problematic since it’s asked after the candidate preference ballot, and therefore largely mirrors the ballot. To weight by party ID on these surveys is to essentially weight by the ballot.

• We did obtain a near 50-50 split in leaned party ID on the 2009 May Values survey. Because this was unusual, we did two things to check the validity of the data. We re-ran the abortion questions on the G1K track two days later, and obtained nearly the same results. That survey had a 10-point advantage for the Democrats on leaned party ID. We also did a post hoc reweighting of the data by party ID, using targets giving Democrats/Dem leaners a 14-point advantage (typical of what we’ve been getting on recent stand-alone polls) and re-ran the survey results . (This was for internal analysis only; we are not publishing the reweighted figures.) The figures changed by only 1-2 points in most cases – indicating that the party distribution of the sample did not account for all or even much of the change seen in the abortion trends. However, as noted in point A, we don’t consider the party ID distribution we obtained in the survey “wrong” just because it was different from what we obtain on other surveys. Thus, we stand behind the published figures based on our standard Census-based demographic targets.

• As highlighted in the story, and expanded on in the “bottom line” analysis, the major change in abortion attitudes over the past year was seen among Republicans and independents who lean Republican. Thus, even if we were to hold party ID constant across the two surveys, attitudes would have become less friendly to abortion rights because Republicans moved to the right, while Democrats stayed the same. The question is, why did Republicans become more conservative in their views on abortion? The “pro-life” side has been eager to attribute it to the “success of their efforts” on the issue. I’m dubious about that. Without a high profile “pro-life” campaign over the past year to attribute this to (which I can’t),  I would expect to see that sort of attitudinal change happen more gradually. This was abrupt. The major change that’s happened is that Obama was elected, and since he is “pro-choice” and those views have been forefront in the news over the Notre Dame flap, I think it’s reasonable to hypothesize that this has compelled some.

• The external validation component is very important. We are not alone in showing a shift toward the “pro-life” position (or anti-abortion position, in the case of legality questions). Aside from Gallup, four other organizations have come out with abortion data in recent weeks, and all of them show a more “pro-life” stance than they did in their last measurement in 2008 (all pre-election).

• “PRO-LIFE” V “PRO-CHOICE”
  Gallup Values survey shows a 7 point increase in “pro-life” and an 8 point decline in “pro-choice” (May 08 vs. May 09) SWING=15 POINTS.    Gallup G1K survey shows a 6 point increase in “pro-life” and a 7 point decline in “pro-choice” (May 08 vs. May 09) SWING=13 POINTS.    Fox News shows an 8 point increase in “pro-life” and 6 point decline in “pro-choice” (September 08 vs. May 09) SWING = 14 POINTS.    CNN shows a 1 point increase in “pro-life” and a 4 point decline in “pro-choice” (Aug 08 vs. April 09) SWING=5 POINTS.

• LEGAL/ILLEGAL
  Gallup Values survey shows a 3 point increase in “legal in only a few/illegal in all” and a 4 point decrease in “legal in all/most” SWING=7 POINTS.    Gallup G1K survey shows a 5 point increase in “legal in only a few/illegal in all” and a 6 point decrease in “legal in all/most” SWING=11 POINTS.    Quinnipiac shows a 3 point increase in “always/usually illegal” and a 5 point decline in “always/usually legal.” (July 08 vs. April 09) SWING=8 POINTS.    Pew shows a 3 point increase in “always/usually illegal” and an 8 point decline in “always/usually legal” (Aug 09 vs. Apr 09) SWING=11 POINTS.

Given these responses, I think it is fair to say that Gallup and others are on to something. There does seem to be a change, albeit possibly temporary, in attitudes toward abortion. Given this change, several questions come to mind:

1. Is reporting about abortion with only two binary options the most appropriate way of showing public opinion? What are some other options to polling about abortion?
2. Will this change be permanent or just a temporary blip in public opinion due to reasons that Gallup points out?

As far as reporting such polling results as binary options (”pro-choice” v. “pro-life” or always/sometimes legal vs. always/sometimes illegal), Gallup also thankfully breaks down its legal/illegal question into four categories. Granted, opinion on abortion is probably more nuanced than four categories, but it is encouraging that Gallup offers these details:

• Legal under any circumstance (change from 2008 to 2009):  -6 points
• Legal under most circumstances: +2 points
• Illegal under most circumstances: – 3 points
• Illegal under all circumstances: +6 points

While it is possible and in fact likely that many Republicans who once had a nuanced position on abortion now identify themselves in the extreme given the polarization of the GOP tent and the fear of an “abortion-loving president” from the talk radio set, the movement away from the “legal under any circumstances” category is still a bit  perplexing by the “Republican Party being more extreme” movement theory.  Are there really many Republicans who just one year ago thought abortion should be legal under any circumstance who now are 1.) Still Republicans AND 2.) No longer hold this position?  It’s possible, but definitely not as likely or as easily explainable as the movement toward the “illegal under any circumstances” camp.  Perhaps this cross-tabulation is just random noise, which wouldn’t be surprising since the margin of error is going to be much higher among these subgroups.

What are some other approaches for asking about abortion?

While I commend Gallup for asking about this question in more than a strictly binary fashion, it’s important to point out that there are other possible ways of asking about abortion that could possibly lead to very different baseline conclusions.  Paul Rosenberg does a nice job of summarizing the findings of the General Population Survey (GPS), which gives survey respondents three different abortion scenarios and asks them to indicate whether they think abortion should be illegal in:

1. None of these cases
2. One of these cases
3. Two of these cases
4. All of these cases

Since many people may have a hard time defining exactly what “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are (Gallup admits that it doesn’t necessarily endorse these terms, and hence uses them in quotes), this approach is nice because it conceptualizes the issue in three nuanced situations, ranging in acceptability.  By using this approach, the GPS finds that only 9% of respondents believe that abortion should be illegal in all three given cases.  This is not to say that this bottom-line result is more accurate than other polls, as it is  asking about slightly different things. (It’s also important to note that these numbers are not meant to in any way dispute Gallup’s trend, but rather to show that a different interpretation of baseline values could be made by using a slightly different methodology.)

What does this mean?

The book Myth of a Polarized America further explores some these issues and argues that most of the “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” debate is in fact media driven and that most Americans actually lie somewhere in the middle, holding a nuanced opinion about abortion and other social issues.  In this light, is it possible that media reports that only repeat binary results of such wedge-issue polls encourage the narrative of a divided, polarized America?

Although recent right-wing extremism may be afoot, it is important to remember that most of those that are pro-life are anything but extremists.  Despite what they may tell pollsters, one can legitimately argue that most Americans hold nuanced views that deserve nuanced reporting that respects the complexities that are inherent in such social issues. Given the apparent sudden change in attitudes, it will be interesting to look at this issue again in five or six months or in a year to see whether this is a short-term blip in response to the first brand-new Democratic President in 16 years or a sudden, sustainable change in public opinion.  The best period to which to compare this recent movement would be 1993, when President Clinton first took office. Unfortunately, 1993 was two years before Gallup began polling this issue.

Bottom Line

I applaud Gallup and others for looking in-depth at these issues and hope that the mainstream media can begin to report such public attitudes and beliefs with the nuance and respectful tone that they deserve.  Like most things in life, abortion does not involve mutually exclusive sets of ideas and values for most individuals.

Sarah Palin Gives $1 million to Planned Parenthood?

What started as a viral email has amounted to $1 million dollars. Many pro-choice women, trying to be ironic, decided to encourage other pro-choice women to donate money to Planned Parenthood annonymously in the name of Sarah Palin. Palin, you see, is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest and thought that it was a good idea to charge rape victims for their rape kits.

What’s next? Barack Obama giving to the John Birch Society?

Wedge Colored Glasses

Let’s say that, sometime in the near future, the great dream of the pro-life movement comes true, and Roe v Wade is overturned in the Supreme Court. As a refresher, the biggest and most obvious repercussion of this would not be the outlawing of abortion as such, but it would simply set the legal precedent that the federal government cannot dictate to states what their practices and laws should be on abortion. So, Southern and Midwestern states, like Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi, Texas, etc., would most likely thoroughly restrict abortions and would not pay for them with taxpayers money, nor would they attempt to force religious hospitals or religious institutions to include abortions under their medical coverage. Let’s say even further (and I acknowledge that this last one is a stretch) that the Democrats take the Supreme Court decision relatively well and basically give up trying to make abortion a federally-mandated and protected right to all women. They drop the issue from their platform, as the Republicans probably would, too and focus instead on the coastal, liberal states, like California, New York, Massachusetts, etc., where abortion rights would probably still be upheld at the state level.

OK, now, with this scenario in mind, how many religiously conservative people out there would consider voting Democrat some of the time? Notice that I didn’t include the gay marriage debate here, as I believe that that is being sorted out at the state level, which doesn’t seem to be bothering people as much as the abortion issue does at the federal level. I also didn’t include the stem cell research controversy, seeing as more and more scientists are coming out and stating that they have found other ways to extract viable stem cells without having to “terminate” embryos. With all of these things in mind, I really wonder what kind of a platform the Republican Party would have left. Lower taxes? Less government? More aggressive foreign policy? NRA? I don’t know how it seems to you, but none of those positions carries nearly the moral weight that abortion does. I almost can’t help but wonder what this country’s politics would have been like over the past 40 years or so without the constant skirmishing brought on by Roe v Wade. Maybe the Democrats would have held more power over those years, and then the issues of alternative energy and the Iraq War would never have come up. I almost feel like the abortion issue is the trump card for the Republican Party. Whenever the Democrats come up with other, viable ideas for policy, the Republicans remind morally observant voters in a timely manner that a vote for the Democrats is a vote for abortion. Hell, I’m pretty sure that President Bush rode that fear tactic all the way to the White House in 2000 and 2004.

I’m not bringing up this conjecture to mock religious conservatives for voting their consciences about abortion. That’s not my place at all. But I am angry at the Republican Party for turning so many unrelated issues, like the environment and health care, into debates about abortion. It’s like an abortion “tag” has been permanently attached to the Democrats, so that even saving the environment from degradation has been tainted by the their take on abortion. I even sometimes wonder if I should be angry at the Democrats, as if their insistence on universal, federally-funded abortion rights has been driving a wedge into this country and crystallizing opposition against them. I almost want to ask the Dems: Why not give a little rhetorical ground on the whole abortion debate, thereby taking the wind right out of the sail of your opponents and allowing for a more even-keeled political debate to take place in this country? What’s so terrible about letting the states decide this issue?

Bristol’s Choice? Absolutely

Sometimes, political commentators amuse me.  In the last week or so since Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin announced that her seventeen year-old daughter Bristol Palin was pregnant, there’s been a lot of talk concerning the statement that it was “Bristol’s Choice”. This is in reference to Sarah Palin’s belief that abortion should be illegal for any situation.  Commentators on the left referred her to a hypcrite.

So let me get this straight – because she respects a law that she doesn’t agree with , she’s a hypcrite? She is simply showing an ability to respect a law, even though she disagrees with it.  And make no mistake about it, in the state of Alaska a teenager does not need parental consent for an abortion.  The decision on whether or not to keep the baby was Bristol Palin’s, and Bristol Palin’s alone.

Honestly, instead of running down Palin for hypocrisy, we should be praising her for this particular decision. Allowing her daughter to make her own decision indicates that she is someone who, if for some reason was to become President, would govern by the rule of law and not by her personal beliefs that may be contrary to the law.  The first sign of a good leader is someone who’s willing to enforce the law, even if they do not agree with that law.

And let’s be realistic here – our political system is inherrently slow and plodding.  The founders wanted political change to be slow. Hence, they set up a bicameral legislative system with an exutive who possesses veto powers and a court which can declare laws unconstitutional.  Change is slow to come by, so it’s always refreshing to see someone who will respect a law they disagree with. In my opinion, chances of actually changing such a law are, in all honesty, pretty slim.