Saturday, April 02, 2005

It's Terrorism, Stupid!--Part II

Following up on my earlier post about the importance of the terrorism issue to the 2004 election, the NES also includes a question on which party they trust to do a better job on the issue of terrorism. Among voters, 45 percent thought that the Republicans would do a better job, 27 percent thought the Democrats would, and 27 percent thought there was no difference between the parties on this issue. That's an 18 point advantage for the Republicans (45-27=18). In contrast, on the issue of which party would do a better job on the economy, 39 percent said the Democrats, 28 percent said the Republicans, and 33 percent said there was no difference. That's only an 11 point advantage for the Democrats.

The Republican advantage on this issue also cut into the Democratic party. Among Democrats, they had only a 51 point advantage among their own partisans. In contrast, the Republicans had a 61 point advantage among their own partisans on the issue of the economy.

Party Better on TerrorismAll VotersRepublicansIndependentsDemocrats
Republicans Better4585397
No Difference27133536
Democrats Better2722658
Republican Advantage188313-51
Party Better on EconomyAll VotersRepublicansIndependentsDemocrats
Republicans Better2864152
No Difference33334521
Democrats Better3934078
Republican Advantage-1161-25-76

The advantage that this issue gave to the Republicans becomes clearer when you run a statistical model with both of these questions, along with variables party identification, ideology, sex, race, education, income, and age. Controlling for all of these factors, the probablity of a vote for Bush was 74 percent among those who thought the Republicans better on terrorism, but only 21 percent of those who gave the advantage to the Democrats. That's a 53 point jump in the Bush vote depending up which party they thought better on terrorism. On the economy, however, there was only a 29 point jump. The table also shows that if the Democrats had managed to convince voters that there was no difference between the parties on the isse of terrorism, Kerrry would have won the election 53-47.

% Probability of Vote For BushTerrorismEconomy
Republicans Better7468
No Difference4754
Democrats Better2139
Difference5329

2 comments:

joefo said...

"The table also shows that if the Democrats had managed to convince voters that there was no difference between the parties on the isse of terrorism, Kerrry would have won the election 53-47."

Fortunately, the American people understood the connection between forcing change in the Middle East status quo and a long-term lessening in the threat posed by that region. How are the Democrats going to convince the American people they will be equally effective in fighting terrorists when the few who take an effective stand, like Sen Lieberman, for example, are pushed to the margins of the party?

Anonymous said...

If you want to force a change in the status quo of the Mideast Iraq isn't the place. It ought to be brought to Syria and to Iran where the inhabitants are more homogenous. Iraq was never a threat. In fact it is more of one now because Muslim extremists are prevalent, while Saddam wouldn't let them compete with him. It's extremists that threaten the Us and they heretofore were not an issue in Iraq. Yes, now they are, but they are more dangerous in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.