[Peace-discuss] If Congress Voted Its Districts, There's a Veto-Proof Majority for Withdrawal from Iraq

[Robert Naiman]

original with links/references:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/if-congress-voted-on-publ_b_47877.html

If Congress Voted Its Districts, There's a Veto-Proof Majority for
Withdrawal from Iraq

If members of Congress voted on a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq
based on whether more people in their districts favored or opposed
such a timetable, it would pass the House by a margin of at least
418-17, and the Senate by a margin of 98-2. If only those members
voted yes who represent districts where at least 50% of the public
supports such a timetable, it would still pass with a margin of at
least 329-106 in the House and 78-22 in the Senate, a three-fourths
majority in both chambers.

In either case this would be far more than the margin needed to
override a presidential veto.

This conclusion is based on estimating opinion on withdrawal in 435
House districts and the 50 states by matching national poll data on a
timetable for withdrawal, where the party affiliation of respondents
is known (the Pew poll in March) with data on the partisan breakdown
of individual districts (the 2004 Bush/Kerry result.) In other words,
it assumes that Republicans in different parts of the country are
equally likely to support a timetable for withdrawal, and the same for
Democrats.

While this is surely not true, it is certainly true "on average" (by
definition) and the results of this analysis are so lopsided that
regional variation could not possibly affect the overall result that
Congress would have a veto-proof majority for a timetable for
withdrawal if members voted their districts. The calculations are
given in a spreadsheet here.

Moreover, the simple technique used here surely overestimates the
number of Republicans and therefore underestimates the support for a
timetable for withdrawal. By using the 2004 Bush/Kerry result as a
proxy for the partisan breakdown of the district, it assumes that
everyone who voted for Bush was a Republican, which we know was not
true; we also know that Bush voters were more likely to be "Democrats"
than Kerry voters were to be "Republican." The Bush/Kerry result was
51% Bush, 48% Kerry (and 1% Nader.) Thus, the technique here assumes
that 51% of Americans are Republicans. CNN's exit polling
characterized people as 37% Republican (of whom 6% voted for Kerry)
and 37% Democratic (of whom 11% voted for Bush) with the rest
Independents, who split slightly for Kerry. Pew (counting Republican
leaners as Republicans and Democratic leaners as Democrats) gives the
partisan breakdown in 2004 as 47% Democratic, 41% Republican.

In addition, the country has trended Democratic since 2004. Pew now
finds 50% Democrats and 35% Republicans. So the technique clearly
overcounts Republicans and therefore undercounts withdrawal
supporters. (Since we are tallying with the Pew poll, what is relevant
here is not who is truly a "Republican" but who would have been
counted by Pew as a Republican.)

Moreover, a CBS/New York Times poll taken in April found even greater
support for a timetable for withdrawal (64%) than Pew found in March
(59%.)

The results are driven by the following. According to the Pew poll,
77% of Democrats, 34% of Republicans, and 61% of Independents
supported a timetable for withdrawal. If we assume that a district is
made up of Democrats and Republicans (i.e. ignoring Independents, who
favor withdrawal) the break-even point for a plurality for withdrawal
is roughly 70%/30% Republican - any district less Republican than that
will have a plurality for withdrawal. Only 4% of the House districts
in the country are that Republican. Many states have no such district.
If we use the higher, 50% for withdrawal standard, the break-even
point is roughly 62%/38% Republican, and just under a quarter of the
districts are Republican enough. Still there are large states, like
Illinois, Michigan, and New York, that have no such House district.

>From this analysis we can conclude that the majority of Republican
Members of the House and Senate are simply not representing their
districts on the question of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Opinion surveys which attempt to gauge Republican support for a
withdrawal timetable tend to rely on self-identification. That is, the
respondent is asked some variation of, "would you describe yourself as
a Republican." The group of people who answer yes to this question are
a smaller and "more Republican" group of people than people who are
actually likely to vote Republican in elections. (For example, the
pollster could ask, "how did you vote for president in 2004?") But
presumably, it's the larger group of "Republicans" who Republican
members of Congress should be concerned about, because few of them
could get elected to Congress based on the votes of the smaller group
alone. Thus, pollsters, by relying only on self-identification, are
under-reporting "Republican" support for a timetable for withdrawal.

It may well be the case that with Election 2008 more than a year away,
many Republican members of Congress are more concerned with the
smaller group of self-identified Republicans, who they are more likely
to hear from on a regular basis, and who would form the constituency
for a right-wing primary challenge, than the larger group of
Republican voters whose support they will need on general election
day. But as general election 2008 looms closer, this will change, and
news media should also turn their attention to this larger group.