Every now and then you come across a public opinion poll that confirms suspicions, surprises in some way, or simply reinforces faith in democracy by suggesting that the public eventually sees the light.
With respect to the latter, the Pew Research Center tells us that support for legalizing marijuana has now crossed the crucial 50 percent threshold for the first time, with 52 percent in favor and 45 percent against. Support is especially strong among millennials (those born since 1980), with two-thirds favorable. Of perhaps equal interest, the perception that smoking pot is somehow “immoral” is also in steep decline, with only 32 percent now taking that position (compared with 50 percent in a Pew poll just seven years ago).
There is, of course, nothing immoral (or moral, either) about pot. Or about drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, for that matter. And of the three substances, marijuana is by far the least harmful. So why was it ever illegal in the first place?
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll indicates that, contrary to widespread hopes, Barack Obama’s presidency appears to have made race relations significantly worse. Only 52 percent of whites and 38 percent of blacks now have a positive view of such relations, compared with 79 percent of whites and 63 percent of blacks at the time Obama was inaugurated in January, 2009.
Many Americans saw Obama’s election as an historic opportunity to move the nation forward on race, but when a black president and his supporters blame criticism of him and his policies on white racism, relations between black and white can’t help but suffer.
A survey by The Hill notes that when asked to pick which budgetary approach they prefer-the Republican (cutting spending rather than raising taxes) or the Democratic (raising taxes instead of cutting spending)-twice as many voters (55 percent-28 percent) pick the Republican. But only as long as they aren’t told which position is the Democratic and which the Republican-once they are, they switch and favor the Democratic side by five points.
Conclusion: Republican positions are a lot more popular than Republicans, to the point where people will support them only if they don’t know they are Republican positions.
Another Wall Street Journal/ NBC News poll further confirms the Republican “branding” problem-the GOP now has an edge over Democrats on handling of the economy (by 4 percent), foreign policy (7 percent), combating terrorism (10 percent), reducing the deficit (13 percent) and maintaining the nation’s defenses (by a whopping 33 percent). The traditional Democrat edge on health care is also down to an historic low of 8 percent.
Nonetheless, respondents with a negative view of the Republican Party outnumbered those with a positive view 44 percent-28 percent,while the Democrats got more positives than negatives (40 percent-38 percent). Perhaps worse still, less than half of the self-identified conservatives in the poll viewed the GOP favorably.
Republicans thus suffer a double-whammy: They get terrible press from a liberal media because they are too conservative, and then are disowned by conservatives because they aren’t conservative enough.
A survey for The Hollywood Reporter magazine reveals that conservatives and liberals have dramatically different movie-going habits, as in conservatives go to the movies less and are more likely than liberals to avoid the films of actors and actresses whose political views they disagree with (by a margin of 52 percent-36 percent).
We all know that Hollywood is dominated by liberals, and that the vast majority of what shows up on our movie screens reflects such biases. Liberals are comfortable with this. Conservatives aren’t, and decide to stay home.
A Gallup poll also confirms what most of us already suspect about where liberals and conservatives get their news about politics, including that Fox News has become a Republican refuge amidst a sea of hostile liberal media outlets-79 percent of Fox viewers are self-identified conservatives and 94 percent either identify as or lean toward Republican. As Gallup notes, core Fox viewers are much more likely “to be white, Protestant, attend church weekly, and to earn $75,000 or more per year.” Only 2 percent of them approve of President Obama’s performance (compared with 57 percent of CNN viewers).
What Gallup calls “the balkanization of news” thus continues-liberals and conservatives increasingly live in separate media universes, with conservatives almost entirely reliant upon Fox as a form of samizdat operating beneath the leftist orthodoxy spewed by CNN and the rest.
Finally, a bevy of polls confirm the continuing unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act(Obamacare), with the Real Clear Politics poll composite indicating 52 percent-39 percent against implementation (the highest level of opposition yet recorded). A recent Fox survey also notes that 54 percent of respondents would like to go back to the health-care system that existed before 2009.
The amusing part of all of this is, of course, the effort of liberal pundits and Obama sycophants to blame Republicans for problems with a law that Democrats rammed through Congress on a straight party vote. The public didn’t want it then, and it wants it even less now, but somehow the problem is supposed to lie less with the law than with the law’s critics.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 09/23/2013