Last month the People for the American Way fielded a poll (Marttila Communications Group, pollsters) of 1,600 Mainiacs on the Filibuster. The data was released yesterday. In what follows the MoE is +/- 2.5%, except where there is a split sample, which I'm showing as (a)(b), and the MoE is +/- 3.5%. The cryptic "PrsvFil" means "of the sample group who answered `yes' to question 1(a)". Sorry about the formatting, and I'm not going to reset it in tables and cells, you'll just have to read carefully.
1(a). Should the Senate Preserve Filibuster?
All Ind Mod
Preserve 57% 59% 66%
Eliminate 34% 32% 26%
1(b).More/Less Likely To Vote For Senator if She Protected Filibuster
More likely 53%
Less likely 21%
2. Closest To Your View?
Pres. Should Be Able To Appoint SCOTUS Justice Who Shares His Values, Even When The Other Party Disagrees, OR Founding Fathers Wanted The Judicial Branch To Be Independent, Not Dominated By One Party
All Ind Mod PrsveFil
Free of partisianship 73% 75% 78% 83%
Share Pres's values 23% 20% 19% 15%
3. Pres. Should Be Able To Appoint SCOTUS Justice Who Shares His Values, Even When The Other Party Disagrees, OR Because Justice Is A Lifetime Term, Both Parties Should Determine Appointees
All Ind Mod PrsveFil
Free of partisianship 66% 73% 77% 77%
Share Pres's values 27% 19% 20% 21%
4. Filibuster Has Protected The Minority Party For 200 Yrs And It Would Be A Mistake To Change It Now, OR Dems Have Been Using The Filibuster In An Unprecidented Manner And It Must Be Eliminated
Keep filibuster 61%
Eliminate 30%
5. Bush Has Monited Extremem Right Wing Judges. Dems Need The Filibuster To Prevent Agst The Appontment Of Extreme Nominees, OR Dems Have Been Using The Filibuster In An Unprecidented Manner And It Must Be Eliminated
Keep filibuster 53%
Eliminate 36%
6. GOPers Want The SCOTUS In Order To Control All 3 Branches. Filibuster Must Be Preserved To Prevent That, OR Dems Have Been Using The Filibuster In An Unprecidented Manner And It Must Be Eliminated
Keep filibuster 52%
Eliminate 37%
7. America Works Best When No One Party Has Absolute Power
Convincing 75%
Not convincing 21%
I've no idea why anyone who thought that the filibuster should be preserved could agree with "the President should be able to appoint SCOTUS Justice who shares his values", regardless of how the question ends. That's 15% and 21%, for Judicial Indpedence and Lifetime Appointments, respectively.
What is shown by this data is that Judicial Indpedence polls 2 x MoE above Lifetime Appointments as a value to be preserved when Republicans are in the sample, or when the sample is restricted to those who answered "yes" to question 1(a). Further, either of these poll 4.5 x MoE above the generic preservation question 1(a). Also, protection of the minority polls 3 x MoE above deamonology, the "extreamist judges" or the "all three branches" theories.
Unfortunately, the poll designer abstracted away from the specific defects of the Bush re-nominees, so we don't know what the numbers are for questions of the form:
8. Bush has nominated a man who has never set foot in a federal court or participated in a trial to the second highest court in the federal judiciary, should the Senate review the nomination, or just approve it?
9. Bush has nominated a man who has practiced law without a license to the second highest court in the federal judiciary, should the Senate review the nomination, or just approve it?
10. Bush has nominated a woman who thinks that civil rights do not exist, except on Indian Reservations, Military Bases, and the Capital District of Washington, D.C., to the second highest court in the federal judiciary, should the Senate review the nomination, or just approve it?
What we do know is that specific defects in a nominee, a history of bank robbing say, or being dead, obtain higher negatives than ideological features, so for half or more of the Bush re-nominees, one-in-four in favor is the best response a poll question on the specific nominee should return, but possibly as poorly as one-in-five.
What should Susan Collins do with this kind of data? I guess she can hope that 4 out of 5 Mainiacs have wicked bad short-term memory and won't recall a thing in three years, despite a Senate slooooooow down and the SCOTUS being memorably packed with Frist-approved hacks. If she is going to run on Frist's coat tails in the next cycle, she'll go with the Mainiacs-R-Morons model. If she is going to run on her own in the next cycle, she'll go the way Maine goes, and dump the re-nominees like yesterday's leftover shellfish.
Posted by EBW at April 14, 2005 02:13 PM | TrackBack