Brendan Nyhan

Obama tax increase misperception grows

Earlier this year, I noted a CBSNews.com post showing that 24% of Americans thought President Obama had raised taxes for most Americans and 53% believed taxes had been kept the same. The numbers, which were drawn from a CBS/New York Times poll conducted February 5-10, were even worse among Tea Party supporters -- 44% thought taxes had been increased and 46% thought taxes were the same. In reality, Obama cut taxes for 95% of working families.

The latest CBS/New York Times poll, which was conducted April 5-12, asks the same question:

So far, do you think the Obama Administration has increased taxes for most Americans, decreased taxes for most Americans, or have they kept taxes about the same for most Americans?

The findings show that misperceptions about changes to taxes under Obama have gotten worse. The percentage of respondents who think taxes have gone up under Obama has increased from 24% to 34% among the general public and from 44% to 64% among Tea Party supporters:

It's the all-too-predictable result of combining misleading rhetoric suggesting Obama has raised taxes with people's biases toward their pre-existing beliefs.

Update 4/29 1:26 PM: Per Gary Wagner's comment, I should clarify two points. First, my interpretation of the CBS/NYT question, which I think is a fair one, is that the correct response is that taxes have decreased. While some taxes have been increased, there has been a net decrease in federal taxes for most Americans under Obama. Also, some respondents may anticipate the likely increase in taxes for individuals making more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000 in 2011 as having already taken place, but this increase (a) has not happened, (b) is provided for under current law and is not the direct result of legislation endorsed by Obama (though he has declined to extend the Bush tax cuts in this income group), and (c) will not increase taxes for most Americans.

[Cross-posted at Pollster.com]

Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed:
-CJR's Greg Marx nails the New York Times for lazy "he said, she said" coverage of the financial reform debate
-David Gregory and Perry Bacon should form a blame-the-voters club for journalists who don't fact-check
-The unbearable hypocrisy of former Washington Times editor Wes Pruden accusing President Obama of "play[ing] the race card"
-Question: To what extent is Sarah Palin increasing the size of the GOP pie vs. diverting money away from races that need it? And are the additional funds she raises for the party offset by the money raised by Democrats who use her as a bogeywoman?
-Did David Brooks really think Obama would reduce partisanship? The idea was implausible from the start.
-Christopher Beam on the persistence of birtherism -- another misperception that isn't going away
-J.D. Hayworth -- when presidential birtherism isn't enough
-The New York Times reports on misperception-based health care reform scams including phony "death panel" insurance
-It's scary when pollsters don't understand basic statistical principles like the margin of error

New article on health care misinformation

I have a new article on health care misinformation in The Forum that may be of interest (link requires free registration; ungated copy here):

Why the "Death Panel" Myth Wouldn't Die: Misinformation in the Health Care Reform Debate

Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama struggled to overcome widespread and persistent myths about their proposals to reform the American health care system. Their difficulties highlight the influence of factual misinformation in national politics and the extent to which it correlates with citizens' political views. In this essay, I explain how greater elite polarization and the growth in media choice have reinforced the partisan divide in factual beliefs. To illustrate these points, I analyze debates over health care reform in 1993–1994 and 2009–2010, tracing the spread of false claims about reform proposals from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and analyzing the prevalence of misinformation in public opinion. Since false beliefs are extremely difficult to correct, I conclude by arguing that increasing the reputational costs for dishonest elites might be a more effective approach to improving democratic discourse.

The article covers several topics I've discussed here such as Betsy McCaughey, death panels, and naming and shaming in much greater depth. It also includes a new empirical analysis of survey data on misperceptions about the Clinton and Obama plans -- here's the key graph showing the perverse relationship between perceived and actual knowledge of the plans among opposition partisans (the y-axis is the predicted level of belief in the listed misperception):

Please read my article to find out more. (Note: It's part of a special issue of The Forum on health care reform that's worth checking out.)

Measuring "epistemic closure"

While I obviously support more polling on misinformation, I don't agree with Ezra Klein's suggestion that it's the best way to determine whether there is "epistemic closure" among ideological or partisan groups:

The question is how do you measure epistemic closure?

The easy answer is you test for its product: Misinformation. What you'd want to do, I guess, is continuously poll a standard set of questions based on empirical facts. "Has GDP grown since President X's inauguration?" "Have global temperatures been rising or falling in recent decades?" "Does the United States have longer life expectancy than other developed nations?" "Do a majority of Americans approve of the president's job performance?" That sort of thing. Have representatives of both parties decide the questions and then see whether respondents from one party or the other get more questions right.

The problem is that misperceptions are not necessarily the result of a closed information loop. Someone with a relatively balanced media diet can still end up with false beliefs -- it all depends on how they interpret the news that they receive (i.e., the extent to which they are willing to accept information that is inconsistent with their preferences).

A better approach would be to measure (a) to what extent ideological elites on the left and right are failing to engage with outside sources of information and (b) to what extent their adherents are consuming political news largely or entirely from like-minded elites.

For an example of (a), see Hargittai, Gallo, and Kane on the insularity of linking patterns among liberal and conservative blogs in 2004 and 2005, a paper which includes this table comparing linkage patterns (more negative values indicate more insularity):

For an example of (b), see this new Gentzkow and Shapiro paper on ideological segregation online, which includes a table comparing the audiences of the online sources visited by liberals and conservatives:

Update 4/27 9:04 AM: See also this Baum and Groeling paper which finds that "Daily Kos on the left and Free Republic and Fox News on the right demonstrate clear and strong preferences for news stories that benefit the party most closely associated with their own ideological orientations":

Update 4/27 10:57 AM: I neglected to mention another relevant paper by Lawrence, Sides, and Farrell showing the ideological skew of readers of liberal and conservative blogs:

Henry Farrell, one of the authors of that piece, objects to part of my argument above at The Monkey Cage:

Julian Sanchez’s argument - which started this debate - seemed to me to be making a somewhat different point. While he focuses on the impact of an alternative sphere of media, his concern is with the consequences...

These consequences could plausibly manifest themselves either if conservatives (or liberals; or whoever) only consume conservative media or if they consume both conservative and non-conservative media, but tend to weight the arguments of the former much more heavily than the latter. And we simply cannot figure this out from data on media consumption patterns (or, for that matter, linkage patterns) alone...

Data on divergent patterns of media and information consumption is valuable in figuring out what people think. But people interested in this question aren’t so much worried about the actual patterns of consumption as about its putative consequences for political beliefs. So I think that first cut research to identify whether epistemic closure is a problem should focus on consequences, contra Brendan, looking at the extent to which individuals with different ideologies tend towards closure across a variety of politically salient issues. But it would be nice to see a second wave of research, extending the stuff that Brendan talks about to look at how variation in patterns of media consumption intersected with false political beliefs. And a third body of research could do some experimental work to figure out more precisely the underlying causal mechanisms...

I agree that the studies above don't quite get at the core of Sanchez's claim regarding the unwillingness of elites on the right to acknowledge outside sources of information as valid. Focusing on the putative consequences of closure, however, still strikes me as far too indirect. Instead, why not try to measure Sanchez's claim directly? For instance, one could code the sources referenced in the National Review and Weekly Standard and compare them to those referenced in The Nation and American Prospect. If Sanchez is correct, the sources cited by conservatives in a non-disparaging way are more likely to be fellow travelers in the movement than those cited by liberals.

(Note: See the papers linked above for more details on their data and the definitions of the measures in the tables.)

Charles Krauthammer: Hack psychiatrist

It infuriates me when pundits pretend to diagnose mental illness in their political opponents, but at least it's obvious in most cases that the speaker has no psychiatric expertise. That's not true, however, with the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, an actual psychiatrist.

Via P. O'Neill, the latest example comes from a Krauthammer column earlier this month bashing President Obama's treatment of US allies (emphasis added, italics in original):

Well, said David Manning, a former British ambassador to the United States, to a House of Commons committee reporting on that very relationship: "[Obama] is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there."

I'm not personally inclined to neuropsychiatric diagnoses, but Manning's guess is as good as anyone's. How can you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense? And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle or mere carelessness.

Despite his claim to not be "personally inclined to neuropsychiatric diagnoses," Krauthammer has repeatedly speculated about his opponents' mental condition and joked about their need for psychiatric medications:

-"I'm a psychiatrist. I don't usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there's a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. [Al Gore] could use a little help." (Fox News Sunday, 12/1/02)

-"The media could use some lithium. Not since I studied bipolar disease 25 years ago have I seen such dramatic mood swings as in the coverage of the first week of the war." (Washington Post, 3/28/03)

-"Now, I cannot testify to Howard Dean's sanity before this campaign, but five terms as governor by a man with no visible tics and no history of involuntary confinement is pretty good evidence of a normal mental status. When he avers, however, that 'the most interesting' theory as to why the president is 'suppressing' the Sept. 11 report is that Bush knew about Sept. 11 in advance, it's time to check on thorazine supplies." (Washington Post, 12/5/03)

-"Well, it looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again." (Fox Special Report, 5/25/04)

-"In the face of Gore's real breach of civil political discourse, which of the following is the right corrective: (a) offer a reasoned refutation of the charge that George Bush is both Stalinist and Hitlerian; (b) suggest an increase in Gore's medication; or (c) do a Cheney." (Washington Post, 7/2/04)

-Gordon Peterson: "Charles, you're a psychiatrist: is he [former FEMA head Michael Brown] delusional?"

Krauthammer: "Well, he could use some medication." (Inside Washington, 10/2/05)

-"As we can see, some of the proponents [of immigration reform] here need an adjustment of their medication." (Fox Special Report, 5/11/06)

-"There's no way you're going to -- this is a guy [South Carolina governor Mark Sanford] who, it looks to me as a long-distance diagnosis, a guy who is committing a near intentional -- political suicide." (Inside Washington, 6/28/09)

-Mark Shields: "Charles Krauthammer, last week on this show -- no -- you said that we were watching a man [Mark Sanford] go through a public nervous breakdown...

Krauthammer: "Listen, it wasn't a hard diagnosis. (Laughter.) You don't need a license, even though I still have one." (Inside Washington, 7/5/09)

Krauthammer also defended former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's long-distance diagnosis of Terri Schaivo on the March 27, 2005 edition of Inside Washington:

MS. TOTENBERG: The cravenness - excuse me - I just think the cravenness of Bill Frist going to the floor of the Senate and saying, I have reviewed what turned out to be edited, surreptitiously recorded videotapes of this woman and I have made a diagnosis that you should all now follow. I mean, does anybody really think he would have done that when he was a doctor doctor?

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: You just commented on surreptitiously recorded tape of Tom DeLay without any hesitation. Why shouldn't a doctor use - surreptitiously used video -

MS. TOTENBERG: Because he didn't examine her.

MR. KING: But the issue is -

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: Because you go on the evidence that you have. The husband has not allowed a lot of testing in the last three years.

MR. KING: Bill Frist -

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: And we don't know a damn thing. We ought to have a functional MRI and a PET scan and that hasn't been done and in the absence of that you have no way of knowing...

What's so bizarre is that at other times Krauthammer has condemned ad hoc psychologizing. For instance, in 2007, he correctly denounced a speculative column attempting to diagnose Dick Cheney with dementia. And back in 1999, he described such long-distance diagnoses as psychiatric malpractice:

As a former psychiatrist, I know how difficult it is to try to understand the soul of even someone you have spent hundreds of hours alone with in therapy. To think that one can decipher the inner life of some distant public figure is folly.

Even the experts haven't a clue. Remember that group of psychiatrists, 1,189 strong, who in 1964 signed a statement asserting their professional judgment that Barry Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president? The very attempt to make such a diagnosis at a distance is malpractice.

Indeed. Does the American Psychiatric Association have a professional misconduct policy?

Bad CBS/NYT poll question on tax burden

If you want to see what the public believes about the size of the federal income burden, this CBS/New York Times poll question is not the way to do it:

On average, about what percentage of their household incomes would you guess most Americans pay in federal income taxes each year -- less than 10 percent, between 10 and 20 percent, between 20 and 30 percent, between 40 and 50 percent, or more than 50 percent, or don't you know enough to say?

As a reader pointed out to me, there's no way for a respondent to know how to answer this question due to the ambiguity inherent in combining "most Americans" with "[o]n average." Many respondents might think that "most Americans" can't be grouped into one of those categories, and others might be confused by how to define "most."

As it turns out, the bottom four quintiles (i.e. the bottom 80%) pay an average effective individual federal income tax rate of less than ten percent -- an answer that was given by only 5% of respondents to the poll. However, as David Leonhardt recently pointed out, federal income taxes are only part of the overall federal tax burden; the average effective federal tax rate including payroll taxes, corporate taxes, and federal excise taxes is 22%. This number, rather than the income tax burden, is probably the more relevant one to poll on since most Americans pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income tax. Let's hope CBS and the Times go back to the drawing board with this question.

Update 4/21 8:24 PM: In response to comments from David and Rob, I've updated the post to clarify some ambiguous language and to correct an error (following Leonhardt, I wrongly classified capital gains taxes as separate from, rather than part of, individual federal income taxes).

[Cross-posted to Pollster.com]

Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed:
-TPM's "House Crazy Caucus" (based on rhetoric) only overlaps slightly with my Congresional Myth Caucus (based on bill sponsorship/cosponsorship)
-Quote of the day -- Barbara Boxer on "death panels": "Now why would I ever pull the plug on granny? I am granny"
-Health care misinformation takes a turn toward the absurd
-Disturbing to see a Washington Post reporter blaming voters for not fact-checking politicians -- isn't that his job?
-Must-read Bruce Bartlett column on intellectual corruption of think tanks -- see, for example, my 2002 Spinsanity article on Heritage and Cato article
-If you like data-driven blogging, you should be reading OK Cupid's blog -- who knew online dating could be so interesting?
-I'm fascinated that people think Haley Barbour is a plausible presidential candidate -- Jon Chait has the goods

Resistance to corrections in health

Christie Aschwanden has written an excellent article on how resistance to corrective information hinders progress in health and medicine for Miller-McCune. Here's a sample:

A surprising number of medical practices have never been rigorously tested to find out if they really work. Even where evidence points to the most effective treatment for a particular condition, the information is not always put into practice. “The First National Report Card on Quality of Health Care in America,” published by the Rand Corporation in 2006, found that, overall, Americans received only about half of the care recommended by national guidelines.

A $1.1 billion provision in the federal stimulus package aims to address the issue by providing funds for comparative effectiveness research to find the most effective treatments for common conditions. But these efforts are bound to face resistance when they challenge existing beliefs. As Nieman and countless other researchers have learned, new evidence often meets with dismay or even outrage when it shifts recommendations away from popular practices or debunks widely held beliefs. For evidence-based medicine to succeed, its practitioners must learn to present evidence in a way that resonates.

Or, to borrow a phrase from politics, it’s not the evidence, stupid — it’s the narrative.

The problems in health are at least as bad as they are in politics (and maybe more so). It's a very difficult issue.

(Disclosure: I'm quoted in the article, which also discusses my paper on resistance to corrections with Jason Reifler.)

Bayesian model averaging paper

Statistically-minded readers may be interested in a paper that Jacob Montgomery and I just had published in Political Analysis (normal people can stop reading here):

Bayesian Model Averaging: Theoretical Developments and Practical Applications

Jacob M. Montgomery and Brendan Nyhan

Political science researchers typically conduct an idiosyncratic search of possible model configurations and then present a single specification to readers. This approach systematically understates the uncertainty of our results, generates fragile model specifications, and leads to the estimation of bloated models with too many control variables. Bayesian model averaging (BMA) offers a systematic method for analyzing specification uncertainty and checking the robustness of one’s results to alternative model specifications, but it has not come into wide usage within the discipline. In this paper, we introduce important recent developments in BMA and show how they enable a different approach to using the technique in applied social science research. We illustrate the methodology by reanalyzing data from three recent studies using BMA software we have modified to respect statistical conventions within political science.

Replication materials (including R/Stata code) are available on my academic website.

Update 5/3 11:57 AM: An R package is now available -- see my academic website or Jacob's for details.

Obama birther myth not going away

CBSNews.com's Stephanie Condon reports that the myth of Barack Obama being born in another country is not going away. The new CBS/New York Times poll shows that only 58% of Americans, and 41% of self-identified Tea Party supporters, think he was born in the United States:

Although the Constitution requires American presidents to be natural born citizens, as many as 30 percent of Tea Partiers say they think President Obama was born in another country, according to a new CBS News/ New York Times poll. More Tea Partiers, however, at 41 percent, say he was born in the U.S.

The so-called "birther movement," questioning Mr. Obama's origins, began during his presidential campaign. It has steadily persisted through Mr. Obama's presidency, in spite of overwhelming evidence he was born in the United States -- including his 1961 birth announcement, printed in two Hawaii newspapers.

The myth persists among the larger American population, but to a lesser degree, according to the poll, conducted April 5 - 12. Thirty-two percent of Republicans think the president was born in another country.

Among Americans overall, 58 percent think Mr. Obama was born in this country, while 20 percent say he was born elsewhere. Significant percentages aren't sure or don't have an opinion.

For more, see my previous posts on the birther myth and my research with Jason Reifler on the persistence of political misperceptions.

[Cross-posted to Pollster.com]

Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed:
-News that Jake Tapper won't be reporting fact-checks on air makes This Week/Politifact arrangement far less important than it might have been
-Rachel Maddow again hacks it up with claim that GOP is "already pledging to filibuster" Obama's Supreme Court nominee
-Republicans who didn't believe in Iraq WMD or 9-11 ties supported the war more than Democrats who did
-NYT's David Leonhardt debunks the misleading claim that 47% of households owe no taxes
-New context on the state of the 2010 generic ballot from Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin
-News photo of the year
-Slate's Tim Noah on continued misperceptions about the uninsured's access to health care (see also my research on correcting misperceptions with Jason Reifler)

Update 4/14 11:43 PM: Jonathan Bernstein objects to my Maddow tweet above:

On the narrow point, I suppose that Nyhan is correct: the GOP hasn't "pledged" to filibuster. In the real world, however, Senate Republicans are filibustering Barack Obama's choice for the Supremes. Obama knows, as he makes his selection, that he's going to need 60 votes in the Senate. Does Nyhan really think that it's even remotely likely that a nominee could be confirmed, say, 53-47? I don't. It's a 60 vote Senate, and any pretense by Republicans to the contrary is just posturing. In other words, any nominee unpopular enough that she won't draw 60 votes will trigger Republican "threats" to force a cloture vote. Given that, I think it's much better to use clear language and talk about the need for 60 votes, which requires calling, a filibuster a filibuster.

It would be false to claim that all 41 Senate Republicans are committed to opposing any nominee Obama sends up. Clearly, that's not the case. It's not even absolutely certain that there are no potential votes for yes on cloture, no on the nominee. But realistically, Obama has to worry about getting 60 votes, not getting 50 votes plus Biden and hoping that there's no filibuster. And in my view, reporting and commenting on the nomination should make that clear.

I don't disagree with any of what Bernstein writes, but it's not a direct rebuttal of my point. Maddow is misrepresenting Republican statements to suggest they are pledging a filibuster; this is false. Whether Republicans will filibuster in the end is a different issue. Also, note that Bernstein himself isn't saying Republicans will filibuster. He's saying they would if they had enough votes to block the nominee -- a conditional claim that is far different than the phony filibuster pledge that Maddow has manufactured.

Fleming latest to smear Obama on national security

Via Steve Benen, Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) has joined the chorus of figures on the right who have smeared Barack Obama's loyalty to this country. In a short article for The Daily Caller, Fleming alleges that Obama is "undermining this country’s national defense on purpose" -- a grave charge to issue against the President of the United States (emphasis added, italics in original):

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I work daily to ensure our men and women have the resources they need to protect this country, and I continue to be dismayed by the national security policies coming out of this White House. Simply put, President Obama is disadvantaging the United States one step at a time and undermining this country’s national defense on purpose. Whether he is catering to the anti-war leftists or truly doing what he thinks is best for our security, the president is leading this nation down a very dangerous path.

As I've shown, conservatives have repeatedly suggested that Obama is disloyal to this country since the earliest days of his 2008 presidential campaign -- a smear campaign that builds on post-9/11 accusations that dissent against President Bush aided terrorists. In addition to radio and TV pundits, the list of offenders includes current and former Republican members of Congress like Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and now Fleming. The updated timeline of attacks on Obama's loyalty is here.

Electoral politics is a zero-sum game

In yet another 1994/2010 comparison piece, the New York Times suggests, as I once did, that the Republican Party's image problems might limit its gains in November:

Moreover, the Republican Party has a different image than it did in 1994. At that time, Republicans had been out of control of Congress for long enough that they were able to present themselves as the party of change. They were viewed unfavorably by just 39 percent of Americans. By contrast, 57 percent said in February that they had an unfavorable view of Republicans in a New York Times/CBS News poll.

While it's true that Republicans are viewed more negatively than they were in 1994, that's not the relevant comparison in 2010. Electoral politics is a zero-sum game. What matters is the strength of the Republican image relative to Democrats. And as I showed a couple of weeks ago, the gap between the parties' images is now comparable to 1994:

As such, there's no reason to think that the GOP's negative image will protect Democrats, especially given the likelihood that the Republican brand will continue to gain luster (as it did between June and November 1994).

For a better analysis of the state of play for November, see Mark Blumenthal's National Journal column on the generic ballot and Charles Franklin's accompanying blog post on Pollster.com (where I cross-post). Franklin's key graph comparing generic ballot trends over time looks very ominous for Democrats:

[Cross-posted to Pollster.com]

Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed:
-Jon Chait on the conservative misinformation feedback loop and cracks therein
-Which "very high-ranking Republican member of Congress" told TNR circa 2000 that Bill Clinton stole the 1996 election?
-GW's John Sides summarizes why significant spending cuts are politically impossible in one simple graph
-Good news for naming and shaming: PolitiFact to fact-check ABC's "This Week"
-Gallup finds "Democratic Party Image Drops to Record Low" -- see my post from last week for more
-UWM's Dave Armstrong uses Heritage Foundation data to debunk their claims of declining US economic freedom
-Bob Somerby on the liberal hackery of Rachel Maddow

Tom Coburn counters health care misinformation

It's great to see a Republican standing up to misinformation about health care reform:

Sen. Tom Coburn, a staunch conservative from Oklahoma, is doing what seems almost unthinkable in this polarized political climate: Defending his Democratic colleagues from critics at Fox News.

At a town hall meeting, Coburn suggested that a woman who said "they can put us in prison" for not obtaining health insurance under the health care reform bill is misinformed.

"The intention is not to put anybody in jail," he said. "That makes for good TV news on Fox but that isn't the intention."

My research with Jason Reifler shows that corrections by media sources frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the most susceptible ideological group and sometimes make them worse. In this case, I'm hoping that Coburn's reputation as a conservative will make his correction more credible to other conservatives.

Update 4/8 11:25 AM: Along similar lines, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has an article in RedState that could be effective in alleviating conservative misgivings about filling out Census forms.

Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed:
-Rush Limbaugh claims Obama has created an authoritarian regime
-Very bad generic ballot news for Democrats
-GW's John Sides on how media overstated importance of dramatic campaign events during Obama campaign here and here (see also this post on hype of debates)
-Slate's Tim Noah debunks some new myths about the health care reform bill
-Media Matters counts Washington Post stories mentioning the "death panel" myth without debunking it
Charles Franklin on the similar approval trajectories of Obama and Reagan
-Ezra Klein has a great piece on the conflict between the partisanship of contemporary politics and the outdated rules of the Senate
-Don't trust the Harris poll on conservatives (see also here
-Even by Michelle Bachmann's standards, the claim that economy was 100% private before Sept. 2008 and is now 51% public (which she repeated on Face the Nation) is completely nuts

When anonymous sourcing attacks

Props to David Carr for this mocking attribution of a silly blind quote from a representative of Sarah Palin about her new TV show:

“It’s not the kind of thing that’s going to excite you guys on the East Coast, but everyone else is dying to hear stories like these,” said one of her representatives who was not authorized to speak on the record but was authorized to slam the East Coast.

The disappearing Democratic brand advantage

Back in October, I noted that the GOP's brand (as measured by its favorable/unfavorable ratings) was in much worse shape than any opposition party at that stage in the previous four midterm election cycles. That stigma, I suggested, might limit Republican gains in the November midterm elections relative to a 1994-style scenario.

Things have changed, however. In a column for Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg flags a new NBC/WSJ poll (PDF) suggesting that the Democratic brand has lost most of its advantage relative to the GOP.

Unfortunately for Democrats, their own brand has fallen like a rock.

In April, almost a year ago, the Hart/McInturff poll found 45 percent of Americans with a positive view of the Democratic Party and 34 percent with a negative view. In the most recent Hart/McInturff survey, the Democratic Party’s positives have sunk to 37 percent and its negatives have risen to 43 percent. Yes, those numbers are slightly better than the GOP’s (31 percent positive/43 percent negative), but not enough to help Democrats in the fall.

Here's how the net positive numbers (% positive-% negative) for Democrats and Republicans have changed over the course of Obama's presidency:

Perceptions of the GOP have only improved a bit, but the negative press and opposition party criticism faced by Democrats have apparently taken their toll. Since my original post in October, the difference in net positive numbers between the parties has closed from 27 points to 6 -- a decline that coincides with the most intense stage of the health care reform debate.

As a result of this change, the difference between the major party brands no longer appears to be unusual for this stage in the midterm election cycle (polls in the chart were the closest available):

I interpret this shift as reflecting the underlying fundamentals of the election cycle, which favors the GOP (a Republican takeover of the House is a realistic possibility). The question now is whether the Republicans will continue to gain ground. In 1994, the GOP opened up a major lead in perceptions of the party relative to Democrats between June and October:

I still don't expect a 1994-style landslide in November, but it seems clear that the Democratic valence advantage that might have helped prevent such an outcome has evaporated.

Update 4/1 2:56 PM: This graphic from USA Today is especially ominous for Democrats' chances:

[Cross-posted to Pollster.com]