On CBS' Survey And The Repeal Question

In an update at the bottom of my last post, I mentioned that there was a point regarding current polling that was relevant to the discussion about Obamacare. As a back and forth with Greg Sargent had precipitated that post, I will use him again to set up this one.

Above all, commentators must never, ever, even entertain the possibility that the GOP repeal stance is also problematic.

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 26, 2013

(Before getting to the meat of this post, let me just mention that I do not think "repeal" is the GOP's prevalent position. Rather, "repeal and replace" is, at least as far as I can tell.)

While not completely certain, I suspect polling results like the following from the most recent CBS News survey feed perceptions like Greg's.

"Which comes closest to your view about the 2010 health care law? The law is working well and should be kept in place as is. There are some good things in the law, but some changes are needed to make it work better. OR, The law has so much wrong with it that it needs to be repealed entirely."
		Should be kept as is	Changes are needed	Needs to be repealed	Unsure/ No answer
		%	%	%	%
	11/15-18/13	7	48	43	2

Full survey results and the above table's HTML cribbed from here on PollingReport.com

A few things about this question and its results.

1) Let's say that one holds the position that healthcare as it existed prior to Obamacare needed to be reformed, that Obamacare had some good things in it (or at least had things in it trying to address valid problems), but that Obamacare was a big step in the wrong direction overall. How would one answer that question? Clearly not with the "should be kept as is" answer. But what about the other two?

If one took the "needs to be repealed" option as meaning "repeal, with no further action", then it seems likely that they would choose the "changes are needed" option, even though such a person might be completely open to the idea that the right approach is "repeal AND replace."

My point boils down to a criticism of the wording of the question. While the need to keep things quick and simple in survey scripts is a real imperative, adding a fourth option would not have complicated things much. The very next question, after all, had five answers. The survey would have given us more information, and therefore been a stronger survey, had the options been "Should be kept as is", "Should be kept with changes", "Should be repealed and replaced with other reforms", and "Should be repealed."

2) The collective national opinion matters less than the opinion in various states, and particularly in some states: the states where the coming political battles are bound to be most impactful.

To my mind, these include states where early polling shows that the 2014 Senate race is bound to be competitive, and states that can legitimately be considered as potential battlegrounds in the next Presidential election. To remove my subjectivity from that last part, let's use any state where neither Obama nor Romney took 55% of the vote. Between these two conditions, I come up with Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Almost by definition, these states will be "redder" than the rest of the country, as they are comprised of states where things were close (like the country overall) plus states where the Senator is from the party opposite to the state's general composition. Where Obama won the overall popular vote by 4 percentage points, and won states other than those listed by 8 percentage points, it was essentially a tie in these states (with Romney "winning" overall by just under 800k).

By no means am I suggesting that one "unskew" this CBS poll. I merely am making the case that it should be obvious that where the war will be fought, the numbers in the above likely would be more favorable to the Republican position than those numbers are. What we really need are polls of these states, in aggregate or (even better) individually.

Give us polls in these states, and poll questions with choices that can best capture the most likely stances of respondents, and we will have a much better view on just how problematic a repeal effort is politically.

Added: It would be quite helpful to understand what the changes those who answered that way had in mind. If the changes amount to tinkering around the edges, it would mean one thing. If the changes amounted to, in essence, gutting nearly all of the law, it would mean another. The former would probably want to exact a political toll on those pushing a repeal effort, where the latter would likely not. I suspect, however, that the additional answer to the same question would get towards this quite a bit.

A Sense of Urgency Regarding Obamacare?

To set this up, I need to reference an exchange I had with the Washington Post's Greg Sargent.

@ThePlumLineGS Not supporting the GOP repeal stance does not translate into Dems being safe from a potential wave election, no matter how...
— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) November 27, 2013

@ThePlumLineGS And I am amused at your mischaracterization of my sense of urgency, and saying that I think the now implies the future.
— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) November 27, 2013

@ThePlumLineGS I will write you a blog post later. Not that it applies beyond myself.
— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) November 27, 2013

While Greg was glad to hear that I don't have any particular "urgency to reach decision about future right now", I am certain he does not share my reasons.

Before I get to them, however, I want to point out how there did not seem to be any reticence about rushing to a decision back when Obamacare was jammed through Congress, not even allowing the minority to have a chance to read the bill, and certainly not allowing the huddled masses a chance to digest it and express their opinions to their elected Representatives regardless of party. There was an opportunity, and Democrats rushed to take advantage of it.

Hence, they now reap what they sowed.

As for me, let's start with the part about having certainty about the future. I cannot fault Greg for not knowing my stock phrases-- I doubt he read Daly Thoughts back in the peak years; they were almost a decade ago and my peak audience, while pretty decent, still had me only at the middle tier of blogs of that time. One of my frequent phrases is the ever original, "Time will tell." I think it is nearly always the case that one is best served by an understanding that tomorrow's script is subject to revision, if not to a complete re-write.

That is not to say that I don't have confidence in how some things regarding Obamacare will play out. To use a recent example, when the "fixed by the end of November" assertion came down, I was quick to say "there is no freaking way." There was always a chance that I could be wrong, but because of my experience in software development I felt no need to temper my wording. The bigger risk was one that still may come to pass, where just some things get fixed and victory is claimed. Still, there was no way that the big issues could be fixed in that limited time with sufficient testing.

Similarly, there are some aspects of what's to come with Obamacare of which I am very confident. For large swaths of the middle class, costs will go up, not down. For nearly all young adults not on their parents' plans, costs will go up (unless they opt for the penalty). Simple math dictates both of these outcomes-- in order to expand the risk pools to cover everybody while limiting the rates for those in the highest risk pool, both are inevitable. And that's without even considering the fact that an entire new level of administrative overhead was just added to the mix. That overhead has costs as well, much to the approval of the SEIU.

How that will play out is where my confidence ends. Skilled politicians can turn lemons into lemonade. More importantly, unskilled politicians can turn fine wine into vinegar, and the Republicans frequently squander political opportunities. There may end up being enough positive instances to build support for Obamacare despite the higher costs and other adverse impacts. The GOP may decide to find the ten people in the entire country who actually believe what Democrats try to say the GOP as a whole believes regarding contraception, and nominate those for every competitive race in the land.

(Note: in actuality, my confidence does not really quite end there; I have definite opinions on how I think things will play out politically going forward assuming competent political handling by both parties. However, the drop-off in confidence from the above to these opinions is large, and this post is already getting longer than I wanted, so I will save those for another time or just keep them to myself.)

Which brings me to my lack of urgency. While I am uncertain as to what the future holds regarding the popularity (or even the political acceptability) of Obamacare, I am quite certain that, in the here and now, it is harming the Democratic party immensely. Given that I believe they are misguided in most aspects, why on earth would I have any need to rush things? Throw on top of that my natural inclination towards letting things play out a while to get a better feel for the lay of the land, and I am quite content with a deliberate approach.

The only thing that causes me pause with this is the knowledge that people are currently being hurt by the issues with Obamacare, both financially and in terms of unneeded stress. It is only natural and humane to want to help them, just as it was natural and humane to want to try and come up with ways to improve or reform the old health care system to aid and assist those who were out of luck under it. However, the experience of Obamacare should make plain to everyone that the last thing that is needed is to rush things, and that what really is needed is careful thought coupled with public deliberations and debate. Those are safeguards against implementing changes with significant flaws and little public support, and are needed to ensure the likely ramifications are generally understood by everyone. No nasty surprises are needed. Not ever, and especially not now.

Yet, there is a simple step that can be taken where the ramifications would be generally known: repeal.

As Greg likes to point out, there is not majority support for this option according to recent polling. There are two points to this I'd like to make:

1) Time will tell. The way things are playing out right now in terms of public opinion should undercut the confidence of those assuming that there will never be public support for repeal anytime in the near future.

2) Poll questions often are about mere summaries or distillations of things that are actually more complex and nuanced. Until such a time as the public comes to understand those details, and therefore account for them when asked the questions that don't spell them out, it can be a mistake to read too much into them. I find it quite plausible that a lack of support for repeal may mean a lack of support for "repeal, full stop" and not necessarily a lack of support for "reform, but using the old state of affairs as the starting point rather than Obamacare, hence repeal as a necessary step."

That last part happens to be what I recommend. See here.

Greg Sargent's opinion is that everyone needs to calm down and give things a chance to work. I think this is sound advice. Politically, the Democrats have cast their lot with Obamacare, and for the next several years that will be the case even if any portion of them turn on it now. They went all in, and now it's time to see cards, all the way to the river.

Added: As is my wont, I have made some minor edits since posting ("Ready, fire, aim!" isn't just a motto, it's a way of life). Also, there was a fairly important point regarding the current polling which I wanted to make, but (a) forgot to in my post-turkey day-after haze, and (b) decided against tacking-on after the fact since what I thought would be a three-paragraph post turned into the verbose prose above. I will make the forgotten point separately, later.

Added even later: Here's a post containing the point I had forgotten to make; namely that what is really important is public opinion in the states where upcoming political battles are going to be most contested.

The Five "R"s The GOP Should Embrace For a Successful Heathcare Politcal Strategy

If I were a GOP strategist, I would be advising they embrace these five "R"s as their talking points regarding healthcare. After all, who doesn't love some onomatopoeia?

1) REBOOT - Start with an easily understood computer reference, to allude to the massive failure that is Healthcare.gov. It also leads one to harken back to before Obamacare was passed, which is key since the Democrats are going to try to ensure that it, and not the way things were before, must be the starting point for any future negotiations. The Republicans need to move the playing field back.

2) REPEAL - The case needs to be made that in order to fix healthcare, Obamacare must be repealed since it moved things in the wrong direction.

3) RESTART with bipartisan negotiations, unlike when Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote, due to their concerns being completely unaddressed; concerns that proved to be completely well founded.

4) REFORM healthcare the way it should have been done in the first place, with careful consideration, full deliberations, bipartisan compromise, and the will of the people having a chance to be felt by their elected representatives. This will be quite unlike the mad rush with Obamacare, where the Democrats abused the privileges of the majority to ascertain passage.

5) And finally, REPUBLICANS need your votes to make this happen. The GOP must make the case that they, and not the Democrats, be entrusted to ensure the process is started, followed correctly, and completed.

A Quick (And Probably Pedantic) Lesson On Correctly Interpreting Poll Numbers

On Twitter, @sqwerin noticed the following regarding Republican approvale of Obama in the recent Quinnipiac poll of Ohio:

THREE PERCENT? o_O

— Nakedly Political (@sqwerin) November 27, 2013

This seems to be a good time to make a few points about polls in general regarding the margin of error, at least one of which I don't think is commonly understood. But to get to a way to make that point more intuitively obvious, I have to start with a few other things. Please note that to some extent, this is pedantic since it involves considering certain reported results as being more precise than the reported margin of error. There really is no "harm" in thinking of things as being less precise (although, one of these points speaks to where there is less precision, so that part is a bit more important; that one is more commonly understood though).

But pedant is my middle name, so let's hop to it.

First, when a poll has breakouts among different subgroupings, the margin of error for those results is bigger than the margin of error for the entire survey. Using the poll linked above as an example, the overall sample has, according to Quinnipiac, a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points. That is based on 1,361 registered voters in a state with ~9 million.

The number of Republicans, from which they measured the 3% approval referenced above, in the sample is obviously a fraction of the 1,361. This increases the margin of error. The universe of Republican registered voters is similarly much smaller than 9 million, and while that works to decrease the margin of error, it does so much less than the former does. To show this, let's assume that there are 450 Republicans in the sample but consider them pulled from a pool of 9 million. One can use this margin of error calculator, so as to not need to do the actual math, and see the margin of error is closer to +/- 5% than 2.7%. Change the universe to 3 million, and it does not move.

I believe that is fairly commonly understood.

Second, look at the results posted in the survey details. Everything is reported to the nearest whole integer. Reporting a margin of error to the first decimal point while using whole integers in the results does not make a lot of sense. The precision that would allow the margin of error to be 2.7% gets lost in the rounding to the nearest integer, and therefore it should be reported as +/- 3%.

I think that is not as commonly understood as the first point, but more commonly than the next one.

The margin of error in a survey is in reference to 50%, and the further away from that the results are, the tighter the margin of error is. Consider my assumption above, which resulted in a margin of error of +/- 5% for the Republican subgrouping. It should be obvious that there is no way for the 3% measured to really be 5 percentage points lower, since it is bounded at the bottom by 0%. What may not be as obvious, though, is that the plus side is also not as high as 5%. In fact, the further away from 50% the measured number is, the tighter the margin of error becomes. The reported number is more precise than the calculated margin of error. When the number is this close to zero, the margin of error is very small, even within a sample as small as the subsample of Republicans.

The last point does not really help much in interpreting the approval rating among Republicans, in that most people would get the implications of the reported number: there is little downside for Obama among Republicans in Ohio. But it has more relevance for the 34% in the full sample who approve of Obama's performance. I haven't done the math to figure out how much more precise the measurement becomes at 34%, but suspect that it would move the 2.7% reported margin of error to below 2.5%, which as mentioned above with the rounding effect above would more accurately be considered +/-2%.

When a survey has a sample size as large as Quinnipiac used here, none of this matters much. However, all three of these points can have their utility when looking at particular polls, especially ones where the sample is small.

On open letter to Penn State

Penn State has an adminstrator who thinks that someone linking to a Penn State page needs his approval.

To whom it may concern at Penn State: kiss my ass.

My Unorthodox Views on Pot Laws (And Licensing In General)

I wonder how many people are like me, and support general legalization and not the medicinal one (note: I don't hate sick people).
— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) November 21, 2013

Since the above just screams to be misunderstood, let me explain a bit further.

My main objection to medicinal marijuana laws is that it is a bad idea to craft laws in a manner that leads to a general abuse of the law, which these laws do. In California, you can find plenty of businesses where you can basically walk in, answer a few (leading questions) to get a medicinal marijuana card from a "doctor", and go back downstairs to purchase the goods.

It's not so much the end users in that business that get to me, but the whole business model. It sets a precedence where there are doctors set up to basically make a sham of the profession and the licensing process. That is not good, and eventually will lead to abuses within the realm of issuance and enforcement.

To me, the better approach is to end that charade. Naturally, this would also take care of those who need it for medicinal purposes, essentially making it over-the-counter.

Updated after posting:

This article is about Obamacare, but it also tells a lesson about the downside to licensing fees. http://t.co/HKHMT5P7Ui

— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) November 21, 2013

This feels related. In the article, it details how one woman is practically being forced onto Medicaid against her wishes. One part of her story is how she was trying to build a career as a realtor, but could not afford to renew her license.

"How has it come to this?" she asked in one of our several talks over the past few weeks about what was happening. When she was a working mother and I was young, she easily carried health insurance for our whole family. "How have I fallen this far?"

In 2011, she had to give up her real-estate license; as a newer agent, she did not stand to earn enough in the tough market to justify the fees to renew.

The licensing process is generally presented (and often starts) as a way of protecting customers from charlatans and incompetents. However, the ever-present pressures to increase inflows to public coffers, along with lobbying from established businesses wanting to limit their competition, often leads to situations like the above, which present barriers to people trying to raise themselves up from being poor, concurrently depriving the public from the competition that leads to lower prices and better service.

And don't get me started on the way traffic and parking laws are abused to create revenue streams.

In general, I believe that the only way to raise revenue for governments should be via taxes. While I understand the impulse to get those who want to engage in a certain practice or activity that is controlled by licensing to fund, at least partially, the cost of government administering the licensing program, the adverse consequences are too much.

The Point (Of My Twitter Feed)

For a long time I’ve considered doing a “What’s the point?” post. After all, as Steve Martin said, one probably should have a point.

Just like most people on Twitter, I like getting new followers. However, I think the way to really expand one’s follower base is to pick an approach and learn to do that very well.

You know what I think I do really well? The thing that I am the best at?

Simply being myself. I am good at being me.

The problem with that is that while I like increasing my followers, it really is not what my feed is about. Hopefully this does not come across as too narcissistic, but I am on Twitter to enjoy myself, and as such I tweet about whatever floats my boat.

Does that lead to my timeline being somewhat disjointed? Yes.

Does that mean that my timeline is not for everyone? Absolutely.

Does this limit my potential number of followers? Most likely.

Does that mean that you will end up unfollowing me as quickly as you followed (assuming that you did follow me)? That’s for you to decide.

I say things that are on my mind, and have conversations with people who are interested in those things. And I read what others say, and join in on conversations with them. That's what I enjoy on Twitter. Follower counts are nice, but I'm just here to enjoy myself, not get a new high score.

In general, here is what you are likely to find me tweeting about frequently on any given day:

• Political horseraces and polling. At one time, I had a moderately successful blog within this genre. My undergraduate degree was in Mathematics and Computer Science, and I enjoy number crunching. Some of my followers knew me from my site, and some of them are fairly well known within that avenue of punditry (and there is a non-zero percentage of them who will actually admit to that!) Had I made different choices, perhaps that’s what I would be doing now. No regrets, though, as I love the direction I went instead.
• Movies. This happens to be the direction I went. I work within that industry, not as part of the “talent”, but on the analytics side of things. I enjoy talking about movies, I enjoy reading about them, I enjoy trying to figure out how to sell them to people, and occasionally I enjoy actually watching them.
• Within this, since I really like my job, do not expect me to be 100% objective and definitely do not expect to hear me busting on my company's movies.
• Also within this, keep in mind that this is my own personal feed and your typical disclaimers about not speaking for 20^th Century Fox apply.
• Politics. The funny thing is—I hate politics. I am a big time cynic when it comes to the whole affair. Unfortunately for a person with that perspective, I cannot escape the realization that they are incredibly important. Every aspect of our lives is influenced by political dynamics. As such, various topics within politics (beyond polling and poll analysis) generally draw my interest, and if something draws my interest, I probably will end up offering an opinion.
• On this, if you really really really hate conservatives, then odds are you will really really really hate me. Sorry about that.
• I cannot figure out if I am a conservative-leaning libertarian or a libertarian-leaning conservative. I am also not sure it matters which is more accurate.
• General wisecracking. It is in my blood to be a wise-guy. I am more than aware of the fact that my “miss” ratio may be higher than the really funny people in the world and on Twitter. Sorry about that. I think I have my moments, though. Your mileage may vary.

On any given day, or even for many days on end, I may be doing a lot of any one or two of these and not a lot of the other.

Anyhow, hello. I guess the point is that I mainly do this for my own enjoyment and to just have some fun. Please keep in mind that I don’t take this all too seriously. If you enjoy my feed, then great! If not, then also great? Either way, at least now you know what to expect.

One last thing. The Yadi Molina thing? It came from this.

All the best,

Gerry