Answers That Blow in the Wind

...Box 549, Arlington, VA 2z2x6-o549...

...The Journal personified the swing voter as "a 3o-something, middle-income, male computer technician in Joliet, Illinois...

...He needs a campaign manager who understands the body politic, and uses polls only as a tool...

...The same day Hillary Clinton said she "intended" to run for the Senate, she also spoke about education and raised the otherwise arcane issue of class size...

...When a guy runs he believes that if he just talks to people, follows his gut instinct, everything will be fine, but it's a disaster...

...The lowest, and presumably least important, level of boxes identified some of the campaign issues: among them taxes, the Equal Rights Amendment, and abortion...

...Republicans will do that, too...

...42 February 20 o o _9 The American Spectator Hart for the Wall Street Journal and NBC found that swing voters this year were slightly more likely to be male, slightly younger, and with slightly less education than most members of the general public...

...Newt Gingrich and the firebrand days are over...

...And polls, especially big national polls, Nofziger says, have their limitations...

...They also were more likely to be Midwesterners...

...I remember the polls coming to us in e r ])e~ore...

...He was also the only one to predict Steve Forbes's victory in the Arizona primary...

...What is he, or, possibly, she...

...These are Republican issues...

...1966," says a skeptical Lyn Nofziger, the old California operative who helped ~r moods c a n put Reagan in the White House, and then became his political director...

...On the other hand, he thought the Democrats in general were better on the breadand-butter issues...

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...Implicit in the polls was the suggestion that the as yet undecided 1996 election,was irrelevant, and that the only thing to do was to look ahead...

...It appears unlikely she thought of this herself, and we may assume it arose from a poll...

...Money is only fourth...

...This could mean Republicans will capture the White House and lose the House, ]Dolls but who knows7 The only certainty is that pollsters will continue to study po]~,acs as n~ the computer technician...

...These days ~ they can tell you how many one-eyed Baptists live in certain sections of town...

...Unless the Reform Party entices Colin Powell, say, or the Democrats nominate Bugs Bunny and the Republicans go with Yosemite Sam, some 80 percent of the vote is already decided...

...The pollsters' answers will be c]~ange overnlg~ presented in thick books, with bar graphs and pie charts and perhaps s a y a])ou,:l...

...o doubt that's cor] ',.N~ [ rect, although the ",,,N~ major parties are ",1 wedded to national polls, and are certain they have their - " uses...

...Zogby says that when he polled last April he found that the biggest issues on people's minds were, in order, violence, foreign affairs, and immorality...

...Phone: 7o3-z43-3733, ext...

...The news organizations that sponsored the polls would deny it, but they were trivializing the electoral process...

...Moreover, Zogby does not poll for any of the Democratic or Republican candidates, and so he may be considered unbiased...

...Any bad news the RNC keeps to itself...

...Weren't they both measuring a single trait best described as "compassion...

...It will be incumbent on the Republicans to say their salaries are too low, and that some of them must subsist on food stamps...

...Therefore Reagan was to be met at campaign stops by the very old, members of minorities, and anyone else perceived as disadvantaged...

...What moves him, and what turns him off, But ]~ecause vol and how can a candidate reach him...

...Ifa poll wereto find, say, that Democrats beat Republicans by lO percent in a generic congressional matchup, the committee would not want it to get around...

...Peter Hafts polls for Mondale apparently showed the same thing...

...Meanwhile pollsters at the state level already had asked questions about thirty-two senatorial and gubernatorial races in 2002...

...The boxes at the levels in between had a variety of labels: among them fairness, leadership, and arms control...

...It had thirty-five boxes connected by dozens of arrows and arranged on five levels...

...Gallup, CNN, and USA Today asked people in a 1995 poll what they would like Colin Powell to do in zooo if he did not run in 1996...

...Therefore the RNC every month conducts a national "benchmark" poll of 800 to 1,ooo voters...

...At the same time, the Republican polls indicated that Reagan was thought of as more approachable than Mondale...

...The same general principle, Israelite says, will also be applied to defense...

...Indeed the voters may not know what lurks there themselves...

...He also ran his successful 1998 election campaign...

...But history speaks, and they have a way out...

...Even with computer technology and sophisticated software they cannot discover all that lurks in the minds of the voters...

...Consequently enlightened Republicans now talk of empowering parents and giving more control to local school boards...

...When Zogby talks, you must listen...

...If there had been a box marked "regular guy" he would have owned it...

...In California, it may be the biggest issue of all...

...As Nofziger said about Ronald Reagan, "He had strong feelings himself, he inspired trust and confidence in others, and he overrode all those polls...

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...They also are learning, Israelite insists, how to take the Social Security and education issues away from the Democrats and make them their own...

...Second is school safety...

...he even beat the exit polls...

...Mso, he operates out of Utica, New York where, he says, his vision is not clouded by Washington's commentators and pundits...

...But in the context of practical politics, the question is, so what...

...A poll conducted by Republican Robert Teeter and Democrat Peter JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...

...According to the polls, the public interpreted that to mean they wanted "to abolish education...

...If a majority of respondents said they thought of Reagan when they thought about leadership, Reagan owned the leadership box...

...We use them to leam," says David Israelite, the political director of the Republican National Committee, "and increasingly we use them as tools for PR purposes...

...An issue was there, and she ran with it...

...At the same time, George W. Bush was using two pollsters of his own...

...Is the promise of more money no longer the preferable political solution for solving school problems...

...When Wil-thlin and Hart compared notes after the election they found that, statistically, their findings had been almost identical...

...Then he would brief Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Dennis Hastert...

...Health care and Social Security were still important, but concerns over education had given way to concerns over foreign policy and the economy...

...And on education, the Democrats always say they want to spend more money, but the polls find the public has different priorities...

...The highest, and presumably most important, level had a single box: making the world a better place for future generations...

...Bush, McCain, Forbes--they're all talking about that...

...Thus the Republicans should no longer say they want to "abolish" the Department of Education...

...Whether it's purchasing their products or simply extending your good will, your positive response rewards these organizations for advertising in one of America's finest magazines, The American Spectator...

...The biggest issue then was health care,followed by Social Security, and education...

...Nobody thought it was an issue, but Reagan did, and he pushed it, and he almost won the Republican nomination...

...In September that changed...

...Third is morality, not learning about right and wrong...

...Polls are now a commonplace of political life," says Karlyn Bowman, the resident polling expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington...

...This means that when the candidates say they will speak to all Americans equally, it really won't be true...

...The pictures _9 ~ve proved he was a regular guy, too...

...Wirthlin's interviewers determined which boxes Reagan "owned" and which ones Walter Mondale "owned" by asking people candidate-comparison questions: Which of the two candidates comes to mind when you think of leadership, say, or fairness, or cares about people...

...Apparently the prosperous economy has brought him no joy...

...In fact, he says, they are doing it already...

...A1 Gore was up to seven...

...And second, the personal savings account...

...The Hierarchical Values Map was meant to guide the Reagan strategists, although they disagreed on its uses...

...But the Democrats also poll...

...Presumably they are as assiduous as Republicans, and so they will arrive at similar findings...

...Nonetheless polls are here to stay, and their uses are increasing...

...The national polls now--we all know that education or Social Security is always up there as an issue--but there are the issues that don't turn up...

...If candidates mention military hardware, they will do so only parenthetically...

...We have a tendency to get caught up in the now," says John Zogby...

...Fred Steeper, the lead pollster--he also polls for Bush--would give the bad news first to Jim Nicholson, the RNC chairman...

...Nofziger says the polls have their uses, but that politics is too serious to be left only to candidates and pollsters...

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...A month before the 1996 election, CBS and the New York Times jointly polled, and ABC News and the Washington Post jointly polled, to determine if Jack Kemp and A1 Gore would be popular candidates in the 200o election...

...Deplore that if you must, but remember this is a poll-driven election...

...In 1994, he was the only pollster to predict that George Pataki would win the New York governor's race...

...But it is indisputable that polling has grown more sophisticated, as well as more extensive and, arguably, more mischievous...

...44 Fe b r uar y 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator polls, the public thinks the United States has a missile defense, but Republicans will point out that it doesn't...

...Columbine accounted for the first, Kosovo for the second, and Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, of course, for the third...

...thirty years, used a guy who /~.-" ~'W" ' / spoke to people in supermar~r " ~ ' ; kets--rich, poor, black, white, e"-,, ~ ~" yellow--and he said he was evegr "It "" f / bit as accurate as the guys who 7" did all the fancy polling...

...In the 197o's, the swing voter was supposedly a middle-aged housewife...

...Republicans once talked about bombers and carriers, but now they will talk about the men and women in uniform...

...Political polls can offer no more than snapshots in time, and long-term strategies are dubious...

...How much of this is science and how much is art is unclear...

...By the fall of last year, she points out, national pollsters already had asked more than 1,ooo questions about the presidential candidates...

...The devolution message is the same, but obviously it sounds less threatening...

...Bond was supposed to be in trouble, but he reversed the gender gap, and also got 4 ~ percent of the black vote...

...He feels he has been left out of things, and he is skeptical about politicians...

...There will be a different ball field...

...On Social Security" he says, "first, we're talking about the 'lock box,' walling offthe surplus...

...Israelite was Missouri Senator Christopher Bond's chief of staff...

...Candidates confuse their desire to win with gut instinct," he says...

...First is accountability and standards-teachers, social promotions...

...The presidential candidates may even think this themselves, although the rules say they must never admit it...

...A veteran of that campaign remembers an argument about whether the faimess box and the cares about people box were redundant...

...The early signs were that he was leaning more toward Bush than Gore, although if he knew more about him he might prefer John McCain...

...The Republicans are learning to show their kinder, gentler side...

...Dissemination would take place only under what Israelite calls a "rigid process...

...In 1976," Nofziger recalls, "the Panama Canal never turned up in the polls...

...In zooo, however, it may be a youngish male...

...So back to a critical question in a presidential election year: Who is the undecided, or swing, voter...

...But a national poll won't be worth a damn discovering that...

...It may not The American Spectator _9 February 2000 43 J matter in Ohio, but it does in Texas and New Mexico...

...There's so much media--the press, MTV, the Web, movies, television--and people will respond to what leads the news...

...A Los Angeles Times poll asked more or less the same question...

...The argument was never resolved, although three months before the election everyone agreed that since Mondale still owned the fairness and caring boxes something had to be done...

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...He capitalized on the education issue in particular, and Steeper was his pollster...

...x x x \ \ ~ ' - ~ - ~ Bob Wilson, a Republican f.]ae.a'n9 ~ ~ ' ~ " ~ congressman for twenty or -"~2&~'3...

...Next in priority would be the Senate leadership and its staff, followed by the House leadership and its staff, and finally all the remaining Republican senators and congressmen...

...Virtually every aspect of the modern campaign is polltested," Bowman says, "and private polling has become a prominent feature of governing for those inside the White House and those outside who seek to influence them...

...The two major parties will more or less divide it, and very little that either one does between now and next November will change the hearts and minds of its own, or the other's, bedrock constituencies...

...Unsurprisingly, though, the findings in the poll, or at least the findings that are released to the press and the public, contain only good news for Republicans: "A1 Gore and Bill Bradley show enormous weaknesses," for example, or "Americans share Republican views on tax relief...

...So ifZogby is right--and his record suggests that he is-what involves the electorate one day may not necessarily involve it the next...

...Meanwhile Steeper's principal finding now may be that Republicans must be more fastidious when they speak...

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...If you want to make a point--let's say on a cable talk show--you back it up with a poll...

...In 1996, he was the only pollster to call the presidential race to the exact percentage point...

...w:]aat do f.]aey "They were in a little manila folder, three sheets with carbon copies, and ~]s vv~oX'x]~'e they told you who was ahead...

...But how they speak, and exactly to whom they speak cannot be left to chance, and in this most poll-driven of all presidential campaigns the "undecided" and the swing voters will be identified and analyzed by the candidates' pollsters...

...t ~ e i acetate overlays...

...The American Spectator _9 February 20 o o 45...

...It's a very popular concept...

...He seems to have a chip on his shoulder...

...The pietures would prove he was fair, and that he cared about people...

...The counterpart of Reagan being photographed with the disadvantaged was Mondale whipping offhis jacket and rolling up his sleeves, or holding a press conference while he sat on a bale of hay...

...The "undecided" and swing voters will determine the election, and so the candidates will speak mostly to them...

...In 1984, Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan's principal po!}ster, devised a "Hierarchical Values Map...

...By December, however, that had changed, too...

...Simplicity or minimalism will not be considered a and rile ]~" virtue...

...Polling, however, does not seem to provide useful information on foreign policy, and so it will not be promoted as a campaign issue...

...But you could do a poll in the spring and define the issues, and then do another poll two months later, and find that people were responding differently...

...Illegal immigration is one...

...According to the You can make a difference for The American Spectator by patronizing its advertisers...