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Income level way down the list of presidential predictors
Supporters cheer US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at a campaign rally in Miami on September 19, 2012.
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It's only Thursday, but if you had to pick a soundtrack for this week a thousand voices screaming "47 percent" would be a pretty good one.
Of the many questions raised by Governor Romney's inelegant remarks one of the most immediate is, will they matter come November? Frank Newport, editor-in-chief at Gallup and a veteran pollster of six elections says, "gaffes come and gaffes go."
"I don't think these kinds of things generally stick," he concludes. "I think the convention for Obama had an inpact ... but these gaffes, these news events that kind of erupt quickly and fade away, it's unclear if they have any effect on who people vote for."
So what does have an effect? Newport says that race and ethnicity is far and away the dominant factor, followed by religion, spousal choice and, way down the list--
"Income level," he says. "We split it out using some detailed examples. But among that lower income group, 34 percent are voting for Romney ... So income is there, but it's not a huge predictor."
Dear Marketplace and Kai,
I completely agree with Randy.
I am disturbed by your use of the term "gaffe" in Thursday's segment with Frank Newport.
A gaffe is "an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder".
President's Obama's statement that "You didn't build that" was a gaffe. Mitt Romney's lengthy cynical and offensive discussion was not. One simply cannot "gaffe" for 45 minutes straight. These remarks may have been a blunder, but they were not unintended.
To discuss Mitt Romney's remarks in the recently released video as being a gaffe on the order of "You didn't build that" is to seriously mischaracterize them, and a disservice to your listeners.
Regards,
Brad
Brad,
Thanks for commenting. It made me think more carefully about my comment. I agree with you that Romney's remarks were not unintentional, thus not a gaffe.
I still think that Obama’s remarks, by your characterization, weren’t a gaffe either because they were intentional. The nature of what he was saying, his intention, was misrepresented. Below is the relevant paragraph taken from Politifact’s website. My reading of the paragraph is that no one does it on their own. My understanding of the kerfuffle was that objectors said that he was saying that an entrepreneur, for example, did not start his/her own business on their own. (There really isn’t true “boot-strapping” as we like to think about it in American mythology.) Obama isn’t saying you did not create that business. He is saying no one does it alone. Please correct me if I am misreading this.
Randy
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
Kai,
In your story you use as an example of a political gaffe in this election cycle Obama's "you didn't build that." That was not a gaffe. It was a sentence taken out of context. There is no shortage of gaffes to choose from on both sides. Please don't reinforce this tactic that further encourages politicians to talk in meaningless platitudes to avoid being taken out of context.
Randy
