Regional differences in the GOP image

[Update (6/30/10): Serious questions have been raised about the validity of Research 2000's polls. The results discussed below should thus be viewed as potentially suspect until the matter is resolved.]

Josh Tucker (a political scientist at NYU) emails to ask if there are significant regional differences in the data on the state of the GOP brand that I blogged about yesterday.

Tucker, like many other bloggers, was struck by a chart created by Steve Benen highlighting differences a September Daily Kos poll found in views of the Republican Party by region:

As a point of comparison, I checked both the May 1993 Pew poll featured yesterday and a CBS/New York Times poll from late 1994 and there weren't huge regional differences in Republican favorability between the South and the rest of the country. The same applied in a 2006 CBS/NYT poll.

The Pew poll I blogged about yesterday (the Religion & Public Life Survey) isn't available online, but I checked several recent survey questions about the GOP image for which raw data is available in the Roper Center database. The 2009 survey that most closely replicates the Kos question about views of "Republicans in Congress" (a CBS poll) shows a smaller difference between the South and other regions, though it was conducted in March:

In addition, two other surveys asking closely related questions about approval of Republicans in Congress and views of the Republican Party show no obvious divergence between the South and the rest of the country:

One objection is that the CBS and USA Today/Gallup polls took place before the anti-Obama backlash had gotten underway. However, the CNN poll above was conducted July 31-August 3 and shows relatively similar views of the Republican Party by region.

There are important cultural and political differences between the South and the rest of the country, but those differences may be less dramatic than the Kos question suggests. It would be useful if other polls could break out their results by region to see if the Kos finding holds more generally.

(Cross-posted at Pollster.com)

Comments

[David]

One cause of the Republicans' unpopularity is ongoing attacks by the intelligentsia. E.g., blogger James Taranto often points out examples of attacks on conservatives included in newspaper columns about non-poliltical topics.

I saw an example myself last week, in a new play called Equivocation. It's about the Gunpowder Plot. Even though the action takes place in England 400 years ago, the dialogue includes a reference to current-day American conservatives (supposedly) being in favor of torture.

So, I offer a theory to explain the regional differences pointed out in Brendan's post: Southerners may have less respect for the intelligentsia than people from other regions of the country.

[Doug Kahn]

Or proud of being ignorant. When I was a kid in the south, a very common bumper-sticker: Hell no, we ain't fergettin'. (That is, we're still mad we don't have slavery etc.?) There's a very strong contrary streak in southern culture--if New Englanders think one thing, they think different. Even if it means being dumb on purpose.

[Jinchi]

The Daily Kos poll looks wildly out of line to me. I simply can't believe that there is such a sharp distinction across broadly defined regions. In Kos's poll, 7% of Northeasterners have a positive view of Republicans while 50% of Southerners do?

I might believe the difference between voters in Massachusetts and Alabama is that high, but Kos's Northeast includes West Virginia and his Southeast includes Virginia. There simply isn't that large a difference between voters in those two states.

We know roughly based on the last election how support for the Republican and Democratic parties varies from state to state and we didn't see such a sharp variation.

I'd be interested in seeing the breakdown on a state by state basis (rather than a regional one). My guess is that there is a severe sampling problem here.