Subject: RE: more analysis on special interest and corruption questions
From: "Andrew Baumann" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Cc: "ic2008" <[email-masked]>, "Stan Greenberg" <[email-masked]>, "Tara McGuinness" <[email-masked]>, "Begala, Paul" <[email-masked]>, "Susan McCue" <[email-masked]>, "John Podesta" <[email-masked]>, "Andrew Baumann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 14:53:00 -0500

Tom, 

Following up on my previous email here are some thoughts on the
effectiveness of the Huckabee and Giuliani ethics attacks.  There isn't
really a comparable Romney attack to look at.

Giuliani:

The attack on Giuliani's ethics is centered around his association with
Kerik and the cover up of his use of city funds to pay for his affair in
the Hamptons.  This was the strongest rated attack on Giuliani overall.

This was, indeed, the top performing attack among those who cited
special interests as a top reason for the nation being on the wrong
track (43 percent very serious / 75 percent total serious).  Among all
other wrong track voters the ethics attack was second to the close to
Bush attack.

It also performed the strongest among Republican (21 percent very
serious doubts, 51 percent total serious doubts) and was really the only
attack that had a significant impact on Republicans.  This attack is
also relatively strong among white evangelicals (27/60) and is tops
among those who initially support Giuliani - it appears that an
ethics-based attack can work in hurting Giuliani with his base
(something we also see with Huckabee).

The ethics attack also scores the best of our attacks among those who
shift against Giuliani on being honest and trustworthy, willing to say
anything and unethical.  Our regression modeling did show that the
ethics attack helped drive the shift on the unethical attribute but it
did not register as a driver for any of the other attributes.  However,
the negative fact on the cover up of Giuliani's affair, which was an
element of the ethics attack, did register on the honest and trustworthy
attribute.

Some other groups among with the ethics attack performed well:

*	Moderates (32/69)
*	Hispanics (41/73)
*	Younger women (34/65)

Huckabee:

The attack on Huckabee's ethics is centered on his admonishment by the
state ethics board and his pardoning of a convicted rapist.  This was
the strongest rated attack on Huckabee overall.

This did not rate the highest among those who cited special interests as
the reason our country in on the wrong track.  The extremism attack
rated significantly better (51/77 for extremism and 34/72 for ethics). 

The ethics and judgment attack was the best attack among independents
(43/75) and Republicans (21/65).  It was particularly strong among
independent women (46/80).  It was also clearly the top attack among
those that shifted away from Huckabee on the vote (46/80) and on the
honest and trustworthy (48/83) and change (50/81) attributes.  However,
our regression modeling showed that the ethics attack only helped drive
the shift on the honest and trustworthy attribute and, even then, its
significance was second to the extremism attack.  In fact, as we noted
in our memo, the regression modeling showed that the extremism attack
was the most effective attack in shifting attributes across the board.
It appears that the extremism attack not only serves as a good proxy for
being to close to Bush, but also in undermining confidence in Huckabee's
character and independence.  

Other notes on the ethics attack:

*	It clearly performed better among the less educated and worst
among those with a post graduate degree
*	It was off-the-charts among Hispanics (63/90).  This mirrors our
findings on the Giuliani ethics hit, suggesting that Hispanics and
generally open to ethics and character-based attacks.

Andrew

________________________________

From: Andrew Baumann 
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 1:38 PM
To: [email-masked]'
Cc: ic2008; Stan Greenberg; Tara McGuinness; Begala, Paul; Susan McCue;
John Podesta
Subject: RE: more analysis on special interest and corruption questions

Tom,

Here's some analysis on those who rate "Washington Dominated by special
interests" as a top reason for the country being on the wrong track.
I'll touch on some of the specific doubts in a following email.

325 respondents, or 14% of all those surveyed, rated this as one of the
top two reasons the country is on the wrong track.  Keep in mind that
only those who said the country was on the wrong track were asked this
follow up question, so the 20% who said right track were not asked this
question.  Looking only at those saying wrong track, "special interests"
was named as one of the top 2 concerns by 20% of these voters, making it
the 2nd most frequent response.

Keep in mind that every "wrong track" subgroup is tilted towards the
Democrats, as we are excluding the hard-core Republicans who say we are
on the right track.  With that in mind, those citing special interests
is the least Democratic of the various "wrong track" groups, and is
heavier in independents.  The partisan breakdown of this group is 42%
Democrat, 37% independent, 21% Republican.  (This compares to 36/29/34
overall and 47/31/21 among all wrong track voters).

This group is also slightly more male than the overall population (52%
male), slightly older (55% over 50) and slightly more educated (52%
college grads).

Unsurprisingly, this group is initially very open to Obama, much more so
than to Hillary.  His leads on all three Republicans is larger, in some
cases by large amounts.  It is important to remember that for each
match-up we only have a sample size of about 55 cases for this subgroup,
so there is a large margin of error (about +/- 13%) for these numbers.

Initial match-ups:

                        Giuliani             Romney            Huckabee

Clinton              55/28 (+27)        55/39 (+16)        44/34 (+10)

Obama              70/20 (+50)        56/31 (+25)        63/29 (+34)

The change among this group is heavily dependent on match-up with few
clear trends emerging.  One thing that does emerge, however, is that our
attacks on Romney seem to be most effective with this group.  Both
Clinton and Obama gain ground against Romney.  On the other hand, they
both lose ground against Giuliani, with Clinton losing significant
ground.  Against Huckabee, Clinton gains a huge 23 points, while Obama
loses 8 points against Huckabee.

Aside from a match-up against Giuliani, Obama does seem to lose
more/gain less among this group 

Final match-ups:

                        Giuliani             Romney            Huckabee

Clinton              45/32 (+13)        53/28 (+25)        59/26 (+33)

Obama              66/18 (+48)        56/27 (+29)        55/28 (+27)

Net Vote Difference:

                        Giuliani             Romney            Huckabee
Average

Clinton              -14                    +8                    +23
+8.5

Obama              -2                     +14                   -8
+1.3

Average             -8                     +11                   +7.5

On most Giuliani attributes we see movements similar to the overall
numbers, which was high.  There is larger movement on the "unethical"
attribute, which shows a +38 point net shift, 10 points more than among
the overall population.  Of the three candidates, it's clear that we saw
the worst shifts among these voters for Giuliani.  It should be noted
that Rudy started off in a very bad position with the voters so his
numbers had less room to decrease; still, it appears we would have work
to do with these voters on Giuliani.  (Since 1/3 of the sample, heard
each Republican's attribute, the sample size for each of these is about
110, which leads to a margin of error of about +/- 9 %)

On the Romney attributes we see a very large shit of +54 on "too close
to Bush," 26 points higher than among the overall population.  We do not
see similarly large shifts on "honest and trustworthy" or other
attributes, however.  Still, the large shift in this key attribute,
along with the consistent shifts in the vote on Romney show that our
attacks are having an effect with these voters.

On the Huckabee attributes we see very large shifts, even larger than
the shifts among the overall population.  On being "too close to Bush"
we see a +53 point shift, 13 points higher than among the overall
population.  We also see a -45 point shift on "honest and trustworthy,"
8 points higher than among the overall population.  Again, our attacks
on Huckabee seem to be effective among these voters.

The attacks on Hillary score similarly among this group as they do among
the overall population, which is a bit of a concern since this is a more
democratic group and we'd expect the attacks to have less force.  Taxes
is still the top hit with 41% saying it creates very serious doubts and
a total of 58% saying it creates serious doubts.  The attacks on Obama
are weaker among this group.  Again, taxes is still the most damaging,
but it scores just 23% very serious / 52% total serious (compared to
37/66 among the overall population).  The difference in the power of the
attacks is reflected in the relative shifts against Giuliani and Romney
- in both cases Obama fares better (though against Romney this is well
within the margin of error).  The large relative shift against Obama in
the match-up against Huckabee is curious.

The attacks on Giuliani are stronger than they are among the general
public, with the attack on his ethics (unsurprisingly) topping the list.
At 43% very serious/75% total serious this attack is strong among this
group.

The attacks on Romney are also very strong on this group with his
support for Bush on Iraq leading the way.  This attack generates 48%
very serious / 73% total serious among this group (vs 35/57) overall and
its strength is reflected in the very large shift on Romney being "too
close to Bush."  It would appear that with Romney, at least, tying him
to Bush may also scar him with a taint of being corrupt and/or unethical
and really damage him in the minds of these voters.

Surprisingly, the top attack on Huckabee among this group is not the
ethics and judgment attack centering on his parole of a convicted rapist
(though it does score well), but is his right-wing extremism.  30% named
his abortion extremist in our list of negative facts and the right-wing
extremist attack scored-off-the charts with this group - 51% very
serious, 77% total serious.  He continue to see evidence that the
extremist attacks serves as an effective proxy in tying Huckabee to Bush
and, it would also seem, tarnishing his image on ethics and corruption.

 

 

________________________________

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Tom
Matzzie
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 6:24 PM
To: Andrew Baumann
Cc: ic2008; Stan Greenberg; Tara McGuinness; Begala, Paul; Susan McCue;
John Podesta
Subject: Re: more analysis on special interest and corruption questions

Yes and who is rating special interests as a top issue and do they move?
if you look at our supporters how does that wrong track-special interest
question come out.

basically cut a banner looking at who rates the "washington dominated by
special interests" wrong track answer as high. cut another looking at
who is responding to the other strongest corruption attack (huckabee
doubts battery?) 

On Jan 7, 2008 6:20 PM, Andrew Baumann <[email-masked]> wrote:

Tom,

I'm not exactly clear what you are asking for.  Are you talking about
who is moving on the honest and trustworthy and/or unethical attributes
for each candidates?

Are you talking about who shifts due to our special interests attacks?

________________________________

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Tom
Matzzie
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 6:18 PM
To: ic2008; Stan Greenberg
Cc: Tara McGuinness; Begala, Paul; Susan McCue; John Podesta
Subject: more analysis on special interest and corruption questions

GQR Team, 

Can we get some more analysis on the special interest and corruption
questions? Who is moving on them? Dem-Indy-GOP differences. Age, gender
differences. Regressions etc... How does this compare to other
questions? 

There is the WRONG TRACK question at the beginning of the poll and then
some of the questions in the doubts batteries.

Thanks,

-Tom