Two new polls from the University of New Hampshire provide a glimpse into how Vermonters are thinking in the lead up to the November election.
One poll looked at economic conditions in the state, and the second surveyed the popularity of candidates in the race for governor, the U.S. Senate and U.S. House.
The surveys tabulated the views of 841 people using a random online methodology.
Andy Smith is the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Vermont Public's Bob Kinzel spoke to Smith about the poll results. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Bob Kinzel: You asked several economic questions. The first one was how people felt their household financial conditions were today compared to a year ago, and overall, with everybody responding, 17% said they were better off than a year ago. 45% said things, "Well they were about the same," and 38% said they were worse off. Now during this time period, Andy, most of Vermont's broad-based taxes — the income tax, the sales tax, the meals and rooms tax — have all exceeded projections. So these responses might seem a little out of sync. What do you think are some of the key factors influencing how people feel?
Andy Smith: Well, there are a few things that are expected. First off, income levels matter. So people who have lower levels of income are more pessimistic about how they expect their lives are going to be compared to last year. But that's that, to me, is unexpected. What's most interesting to me as a political scientist is the influence of partisanship on the perceptions of personal income. Now, Republicans and Democrats aren't going to be that much different economically, or not huge amounts differently, but we find that 70% of Republicans say they're worse off than they were a year ago, 47% of independents say they're worse off than they were a year ago, but only 20% of Democrats do. So those differences based on party ID or how you identify yourself politically, are really skewing how people perceive their own household incomes.
Bob Kinzel: I thought that was a fascinating part of the survey. Why do you think that's happening?
Andy Smith: Well, it's something that we've seen in the public opinion world, really increasing for about the last 30 years. It used to be that when people were asked questions about their personal finances and so forth, what we call overall consumer confidence, there would be some correlation with partisanship, but not as much. Now what we're seeing is that people's perceptions of how the economy is doing nationally, how the economy is doing in the state, and how the economy is even doing in their own experience in their households, is heavily, heavily dependent on partisanship, where, if you have a Democrat in the White House, Democrats think the economy is great, Republicans hate it. The day that Democrat leaves and a Republican goes in, the Republicans think the economy is great and the Democrats think it's terrible. So it the correlation today between partisanship and perceptions of the economy and other issues as well. It means we're seeing the world in either rose colored glasses or, I guess, in blue glasses, rather than clear glasses of how the economy or how other policies are impacting you.
Bob Kinzel: What are the political implications of this trend continuing that voters from different political beliefs can essentially view the same economic data, but view it in a very different way?
Andy Smith: Well, I think it really points out to the level of partisanship and where we get our information and who we trust to have the information that's accurate for us. There is definitely that case, because, yes, people perceive the world differently and your economic circumstances are something that most people would have a pretty firm grasp on. But people perceive the world, not only in how they think it is, but how they hope it to be, and how that might help or hurt their political out in their desired political party. I use this with students a lot, the analogies of comparing politics in the world to sports teams and how we perceived teams to be good or bad, not on any real rational basis, but long held perceptions, and then our ability to rationalize why we hold those perceptions.
Bob Kinzel: You also did a poll looking at some of the big political races in Vermont for the November election, the contest for governor, U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. In each race, the incumbent — and that would be Gov. Phil Scott, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Becca Balint — held commanding leads in their races, and for the most part, in each race, a large number of voters really didn't know very much about the opponents. Does this speak to the power of incumbency?
Andy Smith: Well, incumbency — in two ways, yes, because people have better recognition of the person who's the incumbent, because they've run campaigns in the past, they're in the paper a lot more, they're in the press a lot more. But also it points out that if you are a strong incumbent, you generally scare off any competition that's well known. So the people who tend to be running against well-entrenched incumbents are maybe not the, maybe hedging their bets a bit, or the best candidates might be hedging their bets for the incumbent to go away.
Bob Kinzel: The gubernatorial poll also seems to reinforce something that's occurred in Vermont for some time. Republican Phil Scott has a lot of Democratic support. What do you make of that?
Andy Smith: Well, that's something that we've seen in Vermont for quite some time, but it's also something that you've seen in other states in New England, in that there can be Republicans in heavily Democratic states that seem to do well, and they do well because they convince a good much as a half of the party, there are the opposing party, that they're OK, and then the opposing party tends to be somewhat split.
Bob Kinzel: And Andy, as you look at the results of the polls, is there something that really stands out for you?
Andy Smith: I think the one thing that does stand out is certainly Phil Scott continuing to be not only ahead in running for reelection, but still such a popular governor in a heavily Democratic state, that's just not something that you see very often for that long in a state which is as heavily Democratic as Vermont is. The thing that I think I take away from all of this is that this pulls in the national polls we have here is that this is going to be another election year in which it's not going to be fought among people on a rational basis, but on their perceptions. And that's one of the things I think is kind of most troubling in our democracy today, is that we can have people looking at the same set of facts and drawing completely different conclusions from them based on their political ideology, their partisanship and then that's going to determine how they perceive the policies that we have after the elections.
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