Author: Stephen M. Kinney

What drove the debt ceiling debate? Clearly the “Tea Party” had a great deal of influence on the direction this debate took. Statistics in these charts come from the NBC News /Wall Street Journal Poll, the CNN/ORC International Survey, and from a Pew Research Center/Washington Post Survey, and we feel it gives you a vivid picture of where the different political sub groups were at the end of the day on this very volatile issue.

When looking at these numbers, one can clearly understand why the debate took as much time and energy as it did. At the end of the day, the mood of the public toward ALL facets of Congress and the President over this debate was definitely not favorable.

Given the great news about Osama Bin Laden, we at Public Opinion Strategies have updated our chart that looks at the historical bump Presidents receive from Major National Security Events. The table goes back to Pearl Harbor and President Franklin Roosevelt. This chart is VERY interesting.

On average, the President’s approval rating increases 13 points and a bump lasts an average of 22 weeks. That does not include the 105 week bump that President George W. Bush received after 9/11.

The “bump” on job approval shows the total increase in approval rating from prior to the event. The duration of the increase indicates the number of weeks until the President’s job approval rating returned to the prior level (so, for instance, the 35 point bump that George W. Bush got did not last the entire 105 weeks – the spike was the high, and it took 105 weeks to return to the pre-9/11 level.

Here is the link.

(The article was co-authored by Matthew Jason.)

This is the second in a series of blog entries regarding specific voter demographics in California based on a merge of all the statewide interviews conducted by the California Office of Public Opinion Strategies going back to the beginning on 2004. This merge includes a total of over 31,000 statewide interviews.

You may have seen the numerous media reports this year about how Republican Registration is plummeting in California and how the Grand Old Party will soon no longer be a viable alternative in the state. If you read it in the paper or see it on the internet, it must be true, right? Wrong. There was a slight decrease in Republican Registration in California between the 2006 general election and the 2008 general election. According to the official Secretary of State reports of registration, there were 8,292 less Republican Voters at election time in 2008.

(This article was co-authored by Matthew Jason.)

We all know The Golden State was not friendly to the Republican Party in November of 2008 when President Obama (61%) received more than 3.2 million more votes in the state than John McCain (37%). Voter ethnicity played a large role in this colossal Democratic landslide in California. According to CNN Exit Polls, ninety-four percent (94%) of African American Voters, seventy-four percent (74%) of Hispanic/Latino Voters, and sixty-four percent (64%) of Asian Voters in California cast a vote for Barack Obama.

Further, all indications are that minority voter turnout reached unprecedented levels in California in 2008. Since the Secretary of State does not track ethnicity on the voter file or release any participation statistics by ethnicity, the ability to measure voter turnout in California along ethnic lines is not an exact science. That being said, we have studied the exit polls and carefully analyzed some other key data from the voter file in order to confirm the high minority voter turnout numbers, and they definitely appear legitimate.

Public Opinion Strategies just completed our own national poll, surveying 800 likely voters between September 6-8, 2008. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.

This piece was primarily written by my Partners Neil Newhouse and Glen Bolger in our Virginia office. I have made some additions to reflect some of my thinking and have included numbers reflective of the Pacific Region of the Country, which, by our definition, is Washington, Oregon and California.

We wanted to share our thoughts on the data and its implications for GOP candidates in the Fall.