Charts and Graphs

Conservatives and an increasing conservative nation

2012-02-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

CHARTS

Why America Keeps Getting More Conservative

RICHARD FLORIDA
8:00 AM Et

Even with the president’s approval rating showing signs of life and the Republicans busily bashing themselves over the head — “one is a practicing polygamist and he’s not even the Mormon,” retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recently quipped about her party’s two frontrunners — America continues to track right, according to polling data released by the Gallup Organization last week.

Americans at this political moment are significantly more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal: conservatives outnumber liberals by nearly two to one. Forty percent identify as conservative, 36 percent as moderate, and 21 percent liberal.

The map above charts the ideological divide across America’s states. There are four states where conservatives make up more than half the population: Mississippi, Utah, Wyoming, and Alabama. Conservatives make up more than 40 percent in 20 more states. Liberals now outnumber conservatives in just one state, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.

Last March, I took an in-depth look at the factors that might be associated with America’s increasingly conservative ideological cast; I update that analysis here with Gallup’s year-end data. The ongoing economic crisis only appears to have deepened conservatism's hold. America is becoming a more conservative nation, at least at the state level.

My MPI colleague Charlotta Mellander ran a series of correlations on a range of political, economic, demographic and other factors. The associations we found, I hasten to add, are just that — associations; correlation does not show causation. Nonetheless, they reflect the deep cleavages of income, education, and class that divide America.

As before, conservative states are considerably more religious than liberal-leaning states. The correlation between conservative political affiliation and religion (the share of state population for which religion is an important part of daily life) has grown stronger, increasing from .63 to .70.

The correlation between religion and the increase in conservatism over the past year is also considerable. As American states become more religious, they also become more conservative.

Conservative states are also less educated than liberal ones. The correlation between conservative affiliation and the percent of adults who are college graduates) is also substantially higher than before (-.76 vs. -.53), as is the correlation between human capital and the increase in conservatism (-.79).

States with more conservatives are less diverse. Conservative political affiliation is highly negatively correlated with the percent of the population that are immigrants (–.56), or gay and lesbian ( -.60). There is no correlation to race or ethnicity, however, whether measured as percent white, percent black, or percent Hispanic.

Class continues to play a substantial role. Conservative political affiliation is strongly positively correlated with the percentage of a state's workforce in blue-collar occupations (.73), and highly negatively correlated with the proportion of the workforce engaged in knowledge-based professional and creative work (-.61). Both are also associated with the tilt toward conservatism in the past year.

States with more conservatives are considerably less affluent than those with more liberals. Conservative political affiliation is highly negatively correlated with state income levels (-.73) and even more so with average hourly earnings (- .77). This is in line with the findings of Andrew Gelman's Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State, which finds that while rich voters favor Republicans, rich states favor Democrats.

That said, conservatives across America appear to be split along class and income lines when it comes to the issue of whether government should provide help for the poor. According to asurvey conducted by the Pew Research Center, more than half (57 percent) of lower-income Republicans (those with family incomes of less than $30,000) said that government does not do enough for the poor, while less than one in five (18 percent) said it does too much. Richer Republicans (those with incomes of $75,000 or more), perhaps not surprisingly, overwhelmingly think government does too much.

The ongoing economic crisis only appears to have deepened America's conservative drift - a trend which is most pronounced in its least well off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states.

Job training and adult education is down.

2012-02-12T13:41:00.001-08:00

Want to Promote Job Training and Adult Education? Then Fund Them Adequately

February 10, 2012 at 4:32 pm

House Republicans say that the proposals they are pushing in negotiations over continuing emergency federal unemployment insurance (UI) will “promot[e] more job search and education and training needed to help the unemployed get back to work sooner.” In reality, those changes would be fundamentally unfair to jobless workers and do little if anything to put them back to work.

The House GOP proposal to continue emergency federal UI benefits would require UI recipients to have a high school diploma or GED or be enrolled in classes to get one. Not only would such a policy deny benefits to workerswho have worked for years or even decades — and effectively paid UI taxes during that period (economists agree that employers generally pass on the tax in the form of lower wages) — and then were laid off, but it would do little or nothing to improve their job opportunities. Every state had waiting lists in local adult education programs in 2009-2010, according to the most recent survey — in part because of federal and state budget cuts (see below) — so jobless workers would be hard-pressed to comply with a requirement for a high school diploma or GED in a timely manner, leaving them without UI benefits indefinitely.

House Republicans would also allowstates to use UI funds for purposes other than paying UI benefits. This would undermine the fundamental purpose of the UI system since its creation in the 1930s: providing temporary financial support for individuals with work histories who have lost a job through no fault of their own.

While states could use the diverted UI funds to expand job training, they also could use them to replace state or local funding for job training and then shift the withdrawn funds to other uses, including tax cuts. The net result could be a reduction in UI benefits with little or no offsetting increase in employment services.

If policymakers really want to improve outcomes for less-educated, lower-skilled workers, they need to invest more in job training and adult education programs to make them more available and effective. Unfortunately, they’ve done the opposite. House Republicans have backed the large cuts that Congress has made in federal funding for job training and adult education in recent years and have pushed for even bigger cuts.

As the chart shows, federal funding for both job training and adult education is well below levels set before the recession began — and the cuts in job training would have been muchdeeper under the House-passed version of the 2012 budget.

Further cuts are likely as Congress seeks to comply with the Budget Control Act’s annualcaps on discretionary spending. Moreover, state budget cuts have exacerbated this problem.

Helping unemployed workers improve their skills is important — especially while jobs remain extremely hard to find (there are four job-seekers for every available job). But job training, adult education, and other such services should complement basic unemployment compensation, not replace it.

Election concerns: global warming is important to only 25% of the population and is, effectively, a dead issue. Can you say "Bye, bye cap and trade?"

2012-02-09T23:54:00.000-08:00

Energy and Environment

No issue divides partisans more than the importance of environmental protection – 58% of Democrats say it is a top priority, compared with just 27% of Republicans. Of the 22 items tested, environmental protection is one of the lowest GOP priorities, along with such issues as improving transportation infrastructure and campaign finance reform. Dealing with the nation’s energy problems, by contrast, is of equal importance to both Republicans (55% top priority) and Democrats (57%), though other recent surveys suggest that partisans have very different solutions in mind.

Since it was first tested on the annual policy priorities list in 2007, the share of Americans who view dealing with global warming as a top priority has slipped from 38% to 25%. Democrats (38%) are far more likely than Republicans (11%) to rate this as a top priority. But the decline has occurred across party lines: In 2007, 48% of Democrats rated dealing with global warming as a top priority, as did 23% of Republicans.

Election concerns: Immaigaration

2012-02-09T23:23:00.000-08:00

Declining Focus on Immigration

The share of Americansranking illegal immigration as a top priority has fallen to 39% from 46% a yearago and 55% in 2007. This decline has occurred across party lines, with anotable drop among Republicans. In 2007, illegal immigration was thesecond-highest priority after terrorism for Republicans, with 69% rating it asa top priority. Today, 48% of Republicans rate it as a top priority, placing itbehind 11 other priorities.

8.3% unemployment (?) versus 63.7% participation rate

2012-02-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

OSTED ON FEBRUARY 3, 2012 BY JOHN HINDERAKER

WAS TODAY’S JOBS NEWS GOOD?

The administration trumpets the fact that nonfarm payrolls increased by 243,000 in January, dropping the unemployment rate to 8.3%, only .5% higher than when Barack Obama took office. This is what counts as good news in the beleaguered West Wing!

But how good was today’s news, really? What is mainly going on is that fewer Americans have any intention of working; therefore, they cannot be unemployed. That is the Orwellian logic that underlies “good news” in the Age of Obama. The key fact is that labor force participation has reached a 30-year low of only 63.7%. More and more Americans are giving up on gainful work and resigning themselves to lives of dependence on government. Barack Obama thinks that is a good thing. Do you?

Here is another very basic fact: notwithstanding the employment gains in January, there are fewer Americans working today than there were when George W. Bush took office in January 2001, and more than one million fewer Americans are working than when Barack Obama was inaugurated! What an appalling record! If Obama had campaigned in 2008 on the promise that, if he were elected, a million more Americans would be unable to find work, would you have voted for him? Would anyone have voted for him?

The Obama administration has been a disaster, and the reason is no mystery. Obama and his advisers do not understand how wealth and jobs are created. They have little or no experience in the private sector, they do not understand economics, and they think that parasitism is a viable strategy. So is it any wonder that when their policies are implemented, a million or more Americans are unemployed?

Source: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/was-todays-jobs-news-good.php

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2012-02-04T02:31:00.001-08:00

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8.3% unemployment in context.

2012-02-04T02:30:00.001-08:00

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN: Jobless Rate Falls to Lowest in Three Years...

The jobless rate fell from 8.5% to 8.3% on the wings of 243,000 jobs created. So goes the story.

Click on image to enlarge

So, why are so many not all that excited? For starters, 36.7% of those old enough and able to work are not . . . . . . . . . working. As of this past January, we are looking at the highest percentage of non-working working class citizens in history. You may not believe this number, but 1.7 million folks left the workforce in the same month we are touting the 8.3 unemployment percentage, January, according to the Department of Labor (cf DoL pdf, p8).

The 2nd chart, my home grown adaptation of the original, actually has "Reagan" misplaced. As you well know, Reagan came into power following the Carter years and a recession with higher negatives in many categories than the current recessionary period. The Reagan Recovery saw the fastest increase in the workforce in history. By contrast, the Obama Recovery (that is what he is calling this thing, right ??) includes the sharpest decline in the size of the workforce [also] in history.

In the second year of the Obama Recovery (2010), much like the Reagan Recovery, there was an increase in the size of the workforce. . . . about the time Biden announced that the recession was over and introduced us to his "Summer of Recovery." But, unlike Reagan's recovery, Obama's policies failed within months (if not weeks) and the remainder of the "recovery years" has been a disaster with the work force at its lowest percentage of the total number of folks able to work (63.7) in 30 years [see chart immediately below with Department of Labor stats, on this matter].

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	President
2002	66.5	66.8	66.6	66.7	66.7	66.6	66.5	66.6	66.7	66.6	66.4	66.3	Bush.. 43
2003	66.4	66.4	66.3	66.4	66.4	66.5	66.2	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.1	65.9
2004	66.1	66.0	66.0	65.9	66.0	66.1	66.1	66.0	65.8	65.9	66.0	65.9
2005	65.8	65.9	65.9	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.1	66.0	66.0
2006	66.0	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.2	66.3	66.4
2007	66.4	66.3	66.2	65.9	66.0	66.0	66.0	65.8	66.0	65.8	66.0	66.0
2008	66.2	66.0	66.1	65.9	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.1	65.9	66.0	65.8	65.8
2009	65.7	65.8	65.6	65.6	65.7	65.7	65.5	65.4	65.1	65.0	65.0	64.6	Obama..
2010	64.8	64.9	64.9	65.1	64.9	64.6	64.6	64.7	64.6	64.4	64.5	64.3	Obama..
2011	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.1	64.0	64.1	64.1	64.1	64.0	64.0	Obama..
2012	63.7												Obama..

Unemployment went down because [in part] 1.7 million people left the work force, to fend for themselves. Some went on welfare of some sort; the younger adult crowd moved back in with their parents; others went to work "under the table," not reporting their wages in return for not having to report their income. Still, others went to work for themselves, again, making money "under the table." More than 5 million Americans have opted out of the public workforce since Obama took office, preferring one of the several options listed above. There are 89 million able bodied adults no longer figured in the "unemployment" numbers (see ZeroHedge for more discussion).

Remember Obama coming up with the bright idea of forcing everyone who paid out $600 or more for anything, food, gas, lawn care, property clean-up, helping a family move . . . whatever, to fill out and report these transactions on a 1099 form? It was part of ObamaCare and was to go into effect this month (Jan 2012). Of course, the logistics of such an asinine provision made the law impossible to enforce, a laughable bit of idiocy coming from the fertile mind of Obama.

As an example of just how nonsensical this proposition would have been, I have a friend who drives truck cross country. With this law, he would have had to keep all receipts for diesel and record them separately, per each gas station at which he purchased fuel, just in case he bought $600 of fuel over the course of the year from any one of those stations.

What Obama was trying to accomplish was this: he knew the workforce was "shrinking," that these folks didn't just disappear; they were making a living some way. So he tried to tax the "underground economy" (more power to those folks, btw) via the 1099 idea, a task that proved to be impossible.

Point of post: to give context to all this "good" news we heard, today (Friday, Jan 3rd)). When 1.7 million people leave the workforce in a single month, a lower unemployment rate (8.3% in this case) is hardly the good news we had hoped it might have been. . . . . . . . . . . And I haven't discussed the 2.3 million people who lost jobs in January, but, because of the process known as "seasonal adjustments," we are being told that 243,000 jobs were created. While "seasonally adjusted" might be an important process, still, 2.3 million working in December have been laid off in January.

Related story: see this short CNBC video news story : SANTELLI: Here's What's Wrong With Data...

Its official, Romney and Obama are treated poorly by the media.

2012-02-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

PROJECT FOR EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM

It is curious to this blog editor that Obama comes in second on this list. Does this represent disenchantment on the part of the MSM? - blog editor

Campaign 2012 and the Media

The Storyline Heading into South Carolina

January 18, 2012

After winning the first two nominating contests, Mitt Romney is getting more negative news coverage heading into Saturday's South Carolina primary than he has at any time so far in the GOP race.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul, the Libertarian described in many press accounts as having little chance of winning the nomination, is enjoying the most positive coverage of any candidate.

Rick Santorum received virtually no boost from nearly winning in Iowa on January 3. His coverage was actually much better the two weeks before the caucuses.

These are some of the findings of a first edition of what will be an ongoing analysis of election news by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism called Campaign 2012 in the Media. The new work will track the volume and tone of press coverage for each candidate, the volume and tone of the conversation in Twitter and analyze data from other sources such as Google's new election tool.

Read the full report and see these special features on our Campaign 2012 in the Media page: