Interviews with the Invisible: The Pollster

Today I interview a Democrat political pollster named Jeffrey Ioimo, an all around sharp guy and former President of the Auburn Democrats. I think pollster is the ultimate misunderstood profession, so he offers up a defense of that, but first we talk Tea Party, unions, and Democrat strategy heading into 2012

1. Hi Jeff, it’s great to have you. First, I’d like to just jump right in and talk about the really big issue nobody’s talking about: Charlie Sheen. No seriously, the end of unions is a major story but nobody is covering it. Would Charlie Sheen have to show up at a union rally to get some coverage on the end of collective bargaining in Ohio (and several other bills in states as diverse as Wisconsin to Florida)? Is this yet another example of the corporate run media being scared to cover a story that might have a business conflict?

Jeffrey: Yes, I think it definitely has a good bit to do with it. Corporations love nothing more than to see unions crushed. With the weakening of private sector unions over the years, especially after the Reagan years, the last frontier is public employee unions. Seeing that the major for profit media outlets are dependent on said corporations for ad sales I believe they will be reluctant to show negative coverage on something they want so desperately. All that being said it doesn’t help that the tragedy in Japan has diverted attention and now the conflict in Libya. American’s only pay attention to so much news a day if any at all and bombs exploding capture an audience better than a fire fighter yelling at legislators. It’s all about the ratings and how long you can keep someone from changing the channel to E! to see if Charlie is “Winning” today or not.

2. You and I both know that none of the union-busting going on in Wisconsin, Ohio, etc. has anything to do with a deficit problem, but has everything to do with unions being the last real muscle/largest fundraisers the Democrats have. Of the ten largest campaign contributors nationwide, 3 of them were unions that donated to Democrats, and ALL of the other 7 were corporations that donated to Republicans. It’s not exactly a fair fight anyway, but with unions out of the way Republicans will essentially be able to outspend Democrats 100 to 1, theoretically, a million to 1 if things got bad enough. Am I alone in thinking this is pretty scary stuff?

Jeffrey: You definitely aren’t a one man wolf pack on this one. A lot of people I talk to are nervous about this. The U.S. Supreme Court opened a huge door in their United v. The Federal Election Commission. It lifted the ban on corporations being able to spend unlimited amounts of money in an uncoordinated campaign and on top of that gave them free access to run ads up to the day of the election where they used to stop 60 days before a general election and 30 days before a primary. Taking this court case into consideration of what is happening now, if corporations reduce these unions to next to nothing they can basically handpick legislators that are favorable towards them; because the fact is that more often than not, the candidate that can overpower the other with TV ads and mail media will win. Money combined with a concise message wins campaigns.

3. A lot of people think the Tea Party is a working joe movement made up of regular folks concerned about the deficit and tired of getting taxed to death. I actually think they’re sleazy corporate opportunists even more bought-and-sold than typical members of the Republican Party. When the Supreme Court made the decision that corporations have the same rights as people and are allowed to donate unlimited funds to political campaigns, corporations wanted to get more bang for their buck and helped elect these Tea Party candidates that don’t know anything, I mean nothing about actual legislation and long term governing. In exchange for their complete ignorance and cushy legislator jobs, these politicians are passing laws that could not be more favorable to corporate interests.

Jeffrey: The demographics of the Tea Party are a bit complicated. Looking at numbers on this we see that one thing is for sure they are the conservatives of the conservative part of the Republican party, they are overly male compared to the general U.S. population, and they are mainly white. From here I think it is a mixture. I think you have some less educated that don’t care to look into issues logically and fall for simplistic arguments spoon fed to them by the other element of the Tea Party; the rich white male who tends to be more educated i.e. the greedy upper class male who lives in a homogeneous gated community. These rich individuals and corporations look for candidates that are spitting out the Tea Party line but have never really had to govern and have few thoughts for themselves because this makes them more susceptible to special interest. The number one thing lobbyist offer is information and when you know very little about governing or anything in general your needs are more dependent on these lobbyist to provide information. Lobbyist gain access to these newly elected empty shells by donating to campaigns, which then ties directly back into the discussion regarding United v The Federal Election Commission.

4. One example of what I’m talking about is the new Florida Governor (who might be voted dumber than Bush by the time his first term is up) has recently slashed funds out of public education, not to balance the budget or create a budget surplus, but to give that money away in corporate tax cuts. The Governors in Michigan and Wisconsin are doing things roughly similar. They aren’t cutting government spending to balance the budget, they’re just doing a transfer of wealth from the public sector to the private sector.

Jeffrey: I think we all have to acknowledge that most of the fifty states’ budgets are struggling and many states have to get innovative in how they produce balanced budgets, but I think that there are several things people are overlooking. Republicans get into Congress and all they want to do is cut spending and reduce the size of the Federal government. This just ends up shoving many of the problems down to the state level and the dispersion of cost at this level is much smaller. This puts a huge strain on state budgets, especially poorer states that need many of the programs the most but have the least capability to fund them. States have also been approaching the issue of economic development by throwing huge tax breaks at corporations that the jobs they produce can’t offset. As you have said on here, this is not as much a spending problem as it is a revenue problem. In public budgeting, I was taught there are a couple ways to go at a problem like this ignore it, cut spending, or generate more revenue. We are cutting spending with Republicans and we are cutting revenue. I know Republicans aren’t good with the “fuzzy numbers” but that doesn’t work. They can try to balance budgets and cut deficits that way all they want, but what will end up happening is the middle class, poor, and future generations will fund the transfer of wealth to the rich.

5. The Tea Party ran on this impossible platform of “Cut taxes, lower the deficit” which I thought was impossible, but now I’m realizing the way they hope to do that is to cut government down to zero, privatize everything, and give the surplus away in tax cuts. This is extreme fiscal conservatism that actually isn’t that popular with most people who vote Republican (the majority social conservatives).

Jeffrey: Starve the beast!! Eventually from a never ending push to do more with less government will become so inefficient that everyone will want it privatized, because the private sector will be able to provide better services at that point. The main problem is that the extreme fiscal conservatives found in Libertarians and Tea Partiers are at odds with moderate and even conservative Republicans, because many people are mistaken in thinking the average Republican wants limited government. The moderate to conservative fiscally minded Republican wants limited government only when it comes to helping the poor and middle class, he is all about corporate welfare and programs to help big business. The social conservative is all for big government when it is promoting and regulating morality. You have to look no further than Senator Lugar (OK) to see how this is all playing out. He is considered one of the more conservative Republican Senator’s but he supports government when it suits his agenda and these Tea Partiers who don’t deal in reality are targeting him in a primary.

6. I hate to even ask this question but I feel it has to be asked: Corporations are pumping money into Republican campaigns at alarming rates, unions are getting muzzled or broken up, income inequality is the highest it’s been in a hundred years, NPR/PBS/Planned Parenthood face an uncertain fate, etc. Is the Democrat Party just going through a rough patch, or could this be the beginning of the end?

Jeffrey: It is a little less than two and a half years ago that people were asking if it was the end of the Republican Party. People were predicting Democrats would be in power for several elections to come. It is undoubtedly tough to be a Democrat right now, but I think our future as a party depends on how we respond and rebuild right now. I think Republicans have overlooked their mandate. They were elected based off of one thing the economy and more specifically the unemployment rate. Republicans are now proposing budgets that will increase the unemployment rate on the federal level and across the states. These teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and others are not going to forget losing benefits, rights, and their jobs. Republicans are going to have to point on Election Day to tangibles. They have to be able to point to what they have done and say we did this for you; and if all they can say is we killed NPR, we took on Planned Parenthood, we crushed unions, and we made it more difficult for your children to vote or go to college they will have problems. People are scared they have no jobs, they are losing their homes, they see turmoil abroad, and they are uncertain that their children will have the same opportunities that they did. Republicans have to address these sorts of things and so far they have not. They have done things that will only appease those that are already voting Republican.

7. Of course, the real problem in all this is that people don’t really care that much about money/math/funding issues over “sexy” issues like Planned Parenthood, illegal immigration, and all things gay. I might try a hundred times to get liberals and (social) conservatives alike to think about the money, but their eyes mostly glaze over until the words “abortion” “Mexicans” “Islam” or “gay marriage” come up so they can take a stance one way or the other on it. I know people are programmed to go after the issues that sizzle, but dealing with the basic accounting is always at the root of everything in 2011 politics.

Jeffrey: Of course, those kinds of issues are emotional and are easy to excite the base with so everyone has an opinion. Numbers are dry and boring on face value. You talk budget and personally I have nightmares of poring through line item after line item for public budgeting and doing net debt ratio analysis and all of that fun stuff, but the fact is budgets tell the story of government. One of the first things you learn in a public budgeting class is that the government is operating with limited resources. We can tell the true priorities of our elected officials by looking at the budget, and it is here that decisions can have the biggest impact. If Pell grants are only given 80% of the funding that it received the year before someone is losing their Pell Grant. It isn’t exciting on the surface but when you get into the budget that is where the real debate on governing is to be had.

8. Speaking of defunding, it looks like Planned Parenthood (an organization that costs 300 million annually, so LESS than the amount of people who actually live in the US) might lose federal funding, anyone’s stance on abortion aside, this organization mostly does birth control, cancer screenings, and low income healthcare. Wouldn’t defunding it make the debt go up instead of down?

Jeffrey: This is the problem Republicans have, they think making cuts is the answer to everything. Cutting Planned Parenthood is a ridiculous idea. It is such a small part of the budget it is absurd to put forth the notion that this is to cut the deficit. If the Republicans were truly serious about cutting the deficit they would address more serious issues like Social Security, Defense spending, and other big item expenditures. Secretary Gates had put forth $100 billion worth of potential cuts, but Republicans are reluctant to discuss those. By attacking the likes of Planned Parenthood they are hurting the poor the most. They are going to make it more likely that people won’t be screened for cancers until they show up to the emergency room and costs then are increased, or better yet we will see the increased sexually transmitted diseases. We cut funding to an organization that provides essential educational services and health services to the poor, and this will just cause the costs to be paid in some other way be it in the emergency room or higher numbers of STDs.

9. Another example of Republicans not really caring about the deficit is trying to defund NPR/PBS, an organization that doesn’t really cost anything. In terms of a federal budget, the amount they use annually is probably less than the equivalent of a person eating at Appleby’s on a week night. They wanted to defund it anyway but just because some executive called the Tea Party racist, an organization that’s been around forever has to go away? What’s next, defunding NASA because a scientist says space is big?

Jeffrey: NPR has long been on the chopping block for Republicans. The problem is they don’t participate in Yellow Journalism and instead report in an unbiased way the facts from both sides. The problem is that if it is not what the Republican’s want to hear it is wrong, and more often than not Republicans hate facts because it makes them look bad. NPR like Planned Parenthood is a negligent portion of the budget. They are just doing this to take out political vendettas against organizations that they don’t like even though these organizations supply an ever important service to citizens. There is no other source of easily accessible and reliable news.

10. The entire budget problem to me really seems like a tax problem because the appropriate amount of taxes haven’t been taken out on rich individuals and corporations (like notorious tax cheat General Electric). Not having that money is going to make your budget too low, so of course you’re going to go over it. It’s a revenue problem that has been spun into an over spending problem.

Jeffrey: Republicans yell and yell about overspending because it is the easy thing to do and politically it is easier to rally people behind the idea that the big bad government that is supplying you and your neighbors with all of these services is spending too much. I think there are some things that can be cut and we can make things run more efficiently, but lack of revenue is the major issue and Republicans don’t want to talk about it. We extend major tax breaks for the richest in the country and now Republican’s want to make the middle class and poor pay for it. What needed to happen was the Bush tax cuts needed to lapse. Moving the tax bracket for the richest American’s will mean only a $7,500 tax increase from what they are paying now. This means that someone making $250,000 a year is only bringing home $152,500 a year. It is going to be tough and I guess they will have to really hold back, maybe there kid will have to take Spring Break in Destin instead of Mexico this year.

11. Kind of explain what you do. I originally had a negative idea of what a pollster is, and now I understand the need for it better.

Jeffrey: As a pollster we fill a critical role in campaigns. Without a pollster a candidate is going out speaking blindly, putting up ads, and putting out mailers on basically a gut instinct. We run polls that don’t tell a candidate what to think but the best way to word their message for it to resonate with the most voters. More specifically, we are concerned with voters that are undecided at the time of the poll or show a tendency to shift towards the candidate after messaging. We provide our candidates with the messages that resonate most with these “movers.” This is important because instead of, for instance, a candidate without polling could be talking about education, but polling shows the candidate should be talking about jobs and the economy. We even go further by saying that not only what subjects to talk about but how to talk about them to certain groups. Basically, polling allows campaigns to target there limited resources for the most effect. As for my specific role in the company, I do many things and help out with anything that is needed, but I am primarily a numbers man. I run the numbers for every poll that we do, creating documents for the clients and our associates, and I help with any additional information they need. I get to see every poll that goes through here, which is pretty cool and gives me exposure to a wide variety of campaigns from New Jersey Borough races to President Obama.

12. People always say politicians are too scripted and never speak what they really mean, but every time they do (Obama particularly feels like he can’t go off script without getting eaten alive) they’re absolutely hammered. Do you think people get the politicians they deserve?

Jeffrey: I personally would like to see politicians go a little less unscripted, but the fact is when politicians go unscripted they get off message. A concise message is important to iterating ideas and plans when there is no concise message people get lost and then are asking what you are about or what you are trying to do. I think people are definitely getting what they ask for. We force politicians to stay on script and when they aren’t we get lost or upset at them.

13. Do you think Democrats are more scrutinized by a corporate run media that doesn’t really like them as much? It seems to me that there is an enormous double standard of judging inarticulate Republicans like George Bush and Sarah Palin less harshly for saying untrue or ridiculous things. If Bush butchered the English language, nobody really seemed to care, but if Kerry said “I was for the War before I voted against it” or something that really isn’t that big a deal, the flip flopper lable just won’t come off.

Jeffrey: Corporate media definitely holds Democrats to a different standard in what they chose to report on and how they report on it. The idea of the liberal media is an absolute joke. Republican’s say half truths and inaccuracies everyday and for the most part go unchecked. That being said I think part of the problem is that Democrats need to get more aggressive and take on the Republicans and the media on these issues. We also need to become better on having more concise messaging that all Democrats are saying on every station. This is much more difficult though when our party is much more diverse and isn’t a homogeneous group that forces everyone to think the same thing.

14. Bush is really the prototype for a politician that represents what people criticize (a guy with a narrow, scripted message and a few sound bites that won’t stray from those sound bites), but yet he was much more successful with that approach than someone who tries to have a nuanced, fresh conversation. People complain about politicians but yet they keep electing the same type over and over again.

Jeffrey: The sound bite I am afraid is here to stay for quite a while. There are several reasons for this. The average person doesn’t have the time to pay attention to long fully detailed discussions. Sound bites for this reason tend to be more emotional and as we discussed earlier, emotion tends to rile up the bases and those paying little attention much more easily. This is a big problem Democrats have. We try to have detailed discussions on the issues and the fact is people don’t tend to have the time to listen to it and get lost in the arguments when they do. It is much too easy for them to identify with the emotions rather than an intellectual conversation. Until we can inspire people to care about the facts and until we can create life styles where people have time to devote to learn and listen to more detailed ideas we are stuck with the sound bites.

15. I hate to keep hitting on this point over and over, but to me there is a fundamental disconnect between people’s general disdain for political interest groups, PACs, PR firms, political consultant firms, pollsters, just the whole process that makes things less than genuine or off the cuff, and yet…if I were to run a campaign with basically no money or any of these things, I would be dead from the jump. Every last thing I said would be misintrepreted, twisted, offensive to somebody, too “muddled,” and by the end of the campaign I would look like a broke Charlie Sheen, or worse, Ralph Nader. It seems like if a winning candidate is ever “outside the system” they are still funded by big money like the Tea Party, and are only “outside” in the general realm of knowledge and experience, but not truly independently financed.

Jeffrey: This is a sad fact. The days of showing up to political rallies and giving a stump speech at a county fair, and being able to win elections on that are long gone. Pollsters help you craft an articulate, concise, and meaningful message, media firms help you turn that message into something that will reach a large number of people, and the money pays for all of this. If you aren’t doing these things more likely than not your opponent is and they are going to be reaching more people and with a message they want to hear. Money ties this all together. Winning candidates have to have big donors somewhere and these people are politically connected in some way or another.

16. Of course this entire time, I’ve been painting the Democrats as the anti-corporate party which I actually don’t believe at all. They are beholden to big money as well–they’ll probably be more so in the future to stay competitive–but I do think there’s a difference in at least trying to keep corporations off the steering wheel and away from busting up middle class organizations like unions and lower class entitlements. If the difference is just where the Democrats are versus defunding food stamps to give it away in corporate tax cuts for corporations that don’t need it, I guess I’ll always be a Democrat. To me it’s a difference between a short term dollar versus long term stability.

Jeffrey: All politicians are tied to big money in some way or another. Without money they won’t be in office so they are going to take money from whoever is willing to give it to them. The corporations and special interest are going to give the money to the horse that they think is going to win the race in order to have the ability to influence that individual. The only time the person who is going to lose will receive money from the corporations or interest groups is if the corps or interest groups feel the other candidate is impossible to work with. I think the big difference is not how they get there but what they do when they get there. Democrats help the middle class and the poor knowing that is what makes America strong, if the middle class is doing well and the number of poor is shrinking then the rich will do better as well. This goes to the idea of why I am a Democrat. In the Anniston Star there was a quote a while back from a gentleman who said, “they say pick yourself up by your own boot straps, but it is kind of hard when you have no boots. Democrats want to provide the boots, Republicans want to take your socks so the rich can have an extra pair of loafers.

17. And finally, is there a candidate you think can give Obama problems in 2012? Who do you most hope runs, most hope doesn’t run, and your best prediction for what will happen? For me, I think it’s a sorry cast of character with the possible exception/threat of Mitch Daniels, but sorry Republican candidates have won before.

Jeffrey: Looking at the Republican slate right now it is really tough to see someone that can truly give Obama a run for his money. I think the Republicans are having a very hard time managing the fisher between the moderates and the tea baggers. This will mean a very grueling primary season for them in which any candidate that makes it out will have severe damage. With the economy still being the number one issue I originally thought Mitt Romney, but he has some serious credentialing to do within his own party and has several other flaws. I think Mitch Daniels looks good right now, but I also think a Tim Pawlenty has a shot. The likes of Palin, Huckabee, Bachman, and Trump have no real shot in my mind because they cannot appeal to moderates. The key group of people in my opinion that need to be courted are those that turned out in 2008 for Obama but then voted Republican in 2010, those that voted for Obama in 2008 but did not vote in 2010, and of course the youth vote, which went 60% for Obama in 2008.