So who is the headline writer at the New York Times who wrote this? And why do they still have a job? Come to think of it, there is an alarming cognitive dissonance as well between the lead paragraph Nagourney and Elder wrote and the poll they are summarizing...
Posted by DeLong at August 3, 2003 08:35 PM | TrackBackWhiskey Bar: Spanish Lessons: Check out the headline and lead on this New York Times story: Hispanics Back Big Government and Bush, Too. Hispanics view the Democratic Party as better able than the Republican Party to manage the economy, create jobs and improve the nation's public school system, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. But they admire President Bush and have embraced positions -- from supporting tax cuts to opposing abortion and some gay rights -- that have typically been identified with Republicans.
You have to dig pretty deep down in the story to find these paragraphs:
Mr. Bush won the support of 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; in this poll, 21 percent of Hispanics who say they are registered to vote said they would vote for his re-election.
Matthew Dowd, a pollster and senior adviser to Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, wrote a memorandum last year saying the president needed to win at least 40 percent of the support of Hispanic voters next year.
This also got buried:
Among the general electorate, President Bush's job approval rating has dropped to 54 percent, a 13-point fall, since May, reflecting growing concerns about the economy and doubts about the war in Iraq.
A look at the details shows that even on the social "issues" Nagourney and Co. think favor the GOP, the results aren't as clear cut as they would like to pretend.
Yes, 44% of Hispanics polled think abortion should be illegal -- not surprising for an intensely (and actively) Catholic constituency. That's compared to 22% of the non-Hispanic respondents. But that still means that a majority of Hispanics think abortion services should be either available (20%) or available but restricted (33%)...
Whoa, Bradford. If you bother to read the poll itself (on that "Interactive Poll" link on the same Times page) you'll see that it isn't all that encouraging. It gives our old friend the Generic Democrat only 31% of the Hispanic vote, with a whopping 48% undecided -- so if that 48% splits evenly, Bush does indeed get 45% of the Hispanic vote. As for other voting groups: voters as a whole split 32-26 for Bush, "non-Hispanics" as a whole go for him 33-26, and "non-Hispanic blacks" go for Generic Dem by a huge 50-4 margin -- but in all cases (including the blacks), over 40% of the voters weren't willing to say at this point whether they'd vote for or against Bush. Which is not really surprising at this point.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on August 4, 2003 02:19 AMMore likely the split will be in accord with those who have expressed a preference at this point...
Posted by: Brad DeLong on August 4, 2003 06:42 AMGiven the Democratic stance on Roe v. Wade, "available but restricted" is a GOP position. 77% to 20% is a pretty decent margin.
Posted by: nightengale on August 4, 2003 06:49 AM31-21 is the split in this poll. Splitting the undecideds based on that split gets us just about exactly 60-40, maybe 59-41. Bush still picks up Hispanics, and gets the margin he "needs".
Posted by: rvman on August 4, 2003 10:03 AMI don't think that anyone honestly looking at Bush's court nominees can claim that "available but restricted" is a GOP position. Unless your definition of "available" includes judges on benches chiding pregnant women that they don't want, need, or deserve an abortion.
The bottom line is that this article is comically tendentious, and perfectly illustrates the lie that is "liberal bias" in the media. A similar article, written the other way, would be waved by everyone from Ann Coulter to Brent Bozell as proof of the shoddy journalism created by liberal bias at the NYT. But instead it's absurdly conservative in its spin, and people here are defending it.
What's the line - a liberal is a person who won't take his own side in a an argument?
Posted by: JRoth on August 4, 2003 10:51 AMSo who is the headline writer at the New York Times who wrote this? And why do they still have a job?
It must be a plot by the Evil Liberal New York Times to lull the Bush people into a false sense of security.
Posted by: YT on August 4, 2003 02:00 PMJRoth-
What are you talking about? Roe pretty much forbids any restrictions on abortion. Democratic officeholders support Roe with near unanimity. The "available but restricted" stance is not a Democratic one. In order to have restrictions on abortion Roe must be overturned, which the GOP largely supports. There is disagreement in the GOP to the degree that abortion should be restricted. Nevertheless it is only a small minority of the GOP that wants a full ban. Even if it were a majority it still would not be the near unanimity that exists among the Democrats supporting Roe. This is why "available but restricted" fits better with the GOP.
Posted by: nightengale on August 4, 2003 06:22 PM"Only a small minority in the GOP want a full ban"
Maybe true, but deceptive. Most GOP politicians I know of want abortion illegal, except for rape, incest, and mother's life in danger. That is essentially the "illegal" line in the survey. "Abortion with restrictions" means something like "no abortion after the 3rd (or 6th) month (or viability, or after the nervous system or brain is active, or after the fetus "looks human" or whatever), except for medically necessary reasons, no abortions ever for sex selection, no abortions ever for minors without parental consent, no government funded abortions ever, except with medical necessity." This is well to the left of the GOP, and well to the right of the Dems. Most of us who hold that as the "standard", however, aren't going to cast our vote based on position on that issue. There are enough single issuers at the two extremes to make it difficult for the parties to converge on the center.
Posted by: rvman on August 5, 2003 07:47 AMnightengale wrote, "Roe pretty much forbids any restrictions on abortion." AFAIK, this is utterly false---abortion may be restricted in the last trimester except if the mother's health is in danger.
"There is disagreement in the GOP to the degree that abortion should be restricted."
Really? What does the GOP party platform say?
Posted by: Stephen J Fromm on August 6, 2003 10:13 AM