Could The 'Inflation Reduction Act' Save Biden's Approval Rating? 59:41

You get a good ease of pulling. You get a good ease of pulling. But that's it. Just two. Wow. This is officially the nerdiest podcast on the internet. What? It just became that, Galen? Yeah, I know. I feel like we didn't bring it there. I guess. Good point.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. It's a packed show today. On Sunday, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act along partisan lines. It's a collection of climate change, health care and tax policy priorities that had eluded Democrats for about a year and a half.

The bill amounts to the largest legislative climate change intervention in American history. It also looks quite different from the Build Back Better bill, which was designed to dramatically alter America's social safety net. So how did Democrats get here, and will it change the pessimism of some Democratic voters about Biden's legislative record?

And speaking of views of the country under Biden, we're going to look at the results of our latest round of issue polling with Ipsos. This time, we focused on what Americans think about crime and gun violence and what they want done about it. The issue has routinely ranked in the top three of Americans' priorities. Also, last Friday, Indiana became the first state to pass an abortion ban since Roe v. Wade was overturned. The

The new law bans abortion at any stage of gestation with exceptions for rape, incest, fatal fetal anomalies, and risks to the life of the mother. We'll check in on where debates over new abortions stand around the country. And we have a somewhat wonky good or bad use of polling today. Two pollsters decided to conduct an experiment to see how live person polls compared with online and text message polls. We'll get

We'll get into that. And here with me to discuss all of it is senior writer and legal reporter Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Hello, Amelia. Hey, Galen. Also here with us is elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hello, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. And elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Galen. We've got a lot to get to today, so let's dive right in. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act has yet to pass the House or be signed into law, but it has overcome its biggest hurdle, which was passage in the Senate.

Democrats began with a lot of priorities in the Build Back Better bill. As I mentioned, it was meant to kind of redesign the American social safety net. How did they settle on ultimately putting the emphasis on climate change first and foremost, but then deficit reduction, prescription drug prices, and extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act? Nathaniel, kick us off. Well, I think that it largely came down to what the

the unquestioned king and ruler of the United States, Joe Manchin, wanted. This was a bill that was largely negotiated between him and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. And if I had to guess, you know, what's interesting is that Joe Manchin, of course, comes from a heavily coal-producing state, West Virginia. So you wouldn't think that climate change would be

high on his priority list. So I would venture a guess that that kind of stuff came from Chuck Schumer. Manchin's priority seems really to be, you know, he's talked a lot about he wants to reduce inflation. You know, it's up for debate, I think, whether this bill would actually do that despite its name. But he's also talked about, you know, kind of being more fiscally responsible, reducing the deficit and stuff like that. And the bill would also accomplish that.

Well, the thing that's interesting about Manchin and his background with coal is that this bill really contained a lot that was very good for the fossil fuel industry. And Manchin has recently been getting a lot of money from fossil fuel companies. So I

I think that's part of it. You know, people sort of think of Manchin as wanting to prioritize coal. But this bill, it's funny because like it's not what you would imagine progressives would be super excited about because it does contain a

a lot that, again, is good for fossil fuel companies. And crucially, it's sort of structured to kind of incentivize those companies to embrace renewable energy through credits rather than taxes, so kind of like carrots rather than sticks. But there's been a lot of consensus behind it, and I think that's just because there's a sense that it's been really hard to get anything done and something is better than nothing. And this was something Manchin would agree to.

Nathaniel, I think you said somewhat sarcastically that this is what the unquestioned king of the United States, Joe Manchin, wanted.

OK, does this, though, say anything about Democratic priorities or does it truly only say something about what Joe Manchin himself wants? I mean, I would say at the end of the day, it's about finding a balance between what they could get with Manchin going along, you know, and maybe Manchin got a few things. And there's like a promise to basically finish this pipeline in West Virginia that's gotten a lot of coverage as a part of the deal.

I think for Democrats, it's also things like trying to ensure that the Affordable Care Act is still somewhat more popular than not going forward. And there was concern about like a premium increase. So making sure that that was covered with subsidies as a part of the deal. So it's sort of like it's a balance. Like at the end of the day, Manchin, I think,

Something like that was in – it was something he cared about too. So he's like, I'll give some on some of these climate change priorities while getting some things specifically that I want while it ends up not being this massive package that they originally expected. I mean I think it was a tradeoff.

You know, it strikes me that as far as the Democratic coalition goes, climate change, when you look at polling, is more of a priority for, you know, college educated voters. And there's a kind of a significant divide within the party right now between Democrats

college-educated voters that seem to be leading the party's priorities and agenda, and working class voters who may be more concerned about inflation, the economy, gas, et cetera, et cetera. Now, Democrats are claiming that this bill will address both of those things.

But do Democrats at all risk catering too much to one segment of the party and sort of prioritizing their big reconciliation bill around what ultimately the sort of like elites within the party want? Well, I think...

Well, I mean, I think the health care provisions may help balance some of those concerns out. I remember as far back as the 2020 Democratic primary when there was all this discussion about single payer health care and reshaping the health care system. The things that were consistently popular were bringing down prescription drug prices and continuing the ACA in its current form. So the health care...

initiatives in this bill are likely to be quite popular. I mean, the prescription drug prices issue has just been such low hanging fruit for so long that I'm kind of surprised it's taken this long to happen. But, you know, I mean, I think like some of the way that the climate issue has also been framed is, you know, I

I think there's an argument that like maybe Democrats have a risk here and it's a gamble politically, but it's an issue that I think a lot of Democrats sort of see as like an existential crisis in a way that other issues aren't. And so maybe that's part of it too, that, you know, we're rapidly getting to a point that scientists say may be really a

point of no return on climate change. So it's kind of like, we have the power to do something right now. Maybe it's not the furthest that some people on the left would like to go, but let's just get something done. And if there is a political cost, it might be worth it in the end if it does end up having a significant impact on climate change.

Yeah, I don't really see any political, any obvious political downsides. Obviously, it could be missing something. But like this isn't something like Obamacare, where you could talk about a government takeover of people's health care. And it's not like a third rail cultural issue, like, you know, police reform or something like that. Like, I think Manchin's involvement, frankly, kept it

fairly boring in terms of it's just you know here are a bunch of credits to to do renewable energy which and renewable energy is is popular and we're now talking about you know some of the farther left proposals that have been out there um on on climate so um and especially i think you know the you know if the democrats continue to brand it as this is the inflation reduction act it'll reduce inflation um and something they can point to and and maybe even you know

the really interesting question for me is whether this increases biden's approval rating at all you could see that kind of maybe shoring up his numbers among democrats who have maybe been unhappy with um his like inaction on on issues like inflation and i don't think anything is going to take him up you know back over 50 or anything like that um at least not before the midterms but you could see it go up a point or two

I mean, do you guys have a wager here on whether or not this improves Biden's standing with the Democratic Party? We've seen Biden's approval ratings with Democrats in the sort of 70 percent range, which

which has helped contribute to the fact that Biden is now a historically unpopular president, right? Like, I don't think he expected to be particularly popular with Republicans. You know, he's done significantly worse with independents as time has worn on. But unlike Trump, he's actually also lost support with his own partisans.

Do we know specifically what the reasons were? Like, I think a lot of people have surmised that people were upset with his inaction, but it also could just be that they're upset with gas prices or they're upset with inflation or what have you. So does this change that calculus at all? It might. In fact, it might be hard to know because gas prices are also falling at the same time that this passes. But yeah.

Do you guys have a theory here about how this shapes voters' views of Biden and Democrats more broadly? It's possible that this new legislation could help Biden with his own party. Obviously, there are some priorities, especially climate change, that are big headlines that Democrats will generally like.

But I do wonder, you know, it's no sure thing. You know, I was looking back at some data on Obama's approval rating around the time the Affordable Care Act was passed. It looks like Obama's approval rating among Democrats went up by about a point, which could be noise to some extent. So it's kind of hard to say with any certainty just how much that actually like moved his numbers, basically. It's like it would be

Not much, if at all. So to me, it's like there's potential maybe. Now, Obama also wasn't as low as Biden is. So maybe there's sort of more room for Biden to grow based off of this. But I do think that the issue of inflation, the economic situation is really important here, even for Democrats who don't rate inflation as high of a problem as Republicans and independents do.

But if you look at like Biden's approval rating on the issue of inflation, it's like the worst one. If you ask about different issues, whether it's the economy or guns or the environment or what have you, inflation is usually the worst.

or about the worst. So there's also room for improvement there. And if the name of the act, and if conditions seem to be improving at the same time you have like the Inflation Reduction Act, you know, maybe there is a path to some overall improvement because of it as well. But of course, as you just said, Gail, and with gas prices going down anyway, it's like, you know, assigning what's behind it is not going to be easy.

All right. Well, we spent a good amount of time last week talking about how this fit into the Senate's sort of broader push to pass a bunch of legislation over the past several weeks. So if you want to hear more about that, of course, go back and listen. We will talk about it again in the future. Got a lot to cover. So let's move on to our good or bad use of polling.

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Today's good or bad use of polling is a little wonky, so prepare yourselves. It was submitted by a listener named Gabriel and is based on a piece by John Campbell in The Gothamist. Last week, both Siena College and Emerson College released polls of New York State. They found that incumbent Governor Kathy Hochul is leading Republican challenger Lee Zeldin by somewhere between 14 to 16 points.

But that is not what was actually interesting or notable about this poll. Sienna and Emerson have significantly different methodologies. Sienna polls people using live person phone calls to landlines and cell phones, sort of traditionally what we think of as, you know, the gold standard of polling. Emerson uses text messages, online panels, and automated phone calls. They are rated A and A- respectively, according to FiveThirtyEight's pollster ratings.

So here's what happened. The two pollsters decided to do an experiment by agreeing to ask the same questions of respondents to see if the different methods got different results.

And the polls ended up getting mostly very similar results within a few percentage points of each other. So, for example, only a two-point difference on the question of who New Yorkers plan to vote for for governor. There were some exceptions, though. So on the question of whether the country is going in the right direction or on the wrong track, the live call poll, which was Sienna's, found that only 19% of New Yorkers said right direction.

And Emerson, the text message online automated calls poll, found it was 28% who said right direction. So on this question, there was almost a 10-point difference between when a person's actually asking you on the phone how you feel about the direction of the country and when it's just, say, a text message or an online poll. So first question, is this kind of compare and contrast experiment a good or bad use of polling, Amelia? Yeah.

Well, I think like experiments are good generally. And both of the pollsters were transparent about what they were doing. They coordinated with each other. You know, they were both trying to do the same thing in doing these polls next to each other. So, you know, I think this is the way we gain more knowledge. So, yeah. So I think good. I tend to agree. But Nathaniel and Jeff, you also agree?

Yeah, I think this was a good use of polling. In an era when trust in institutions, including polling, is at a low point, it's really nice to see two pollsters putting out the same questions and getting basically the same responses. I think that is a really nice validation that gives you extra confidence that

that each of their results is probably accurate. And I think it also, as a bonus, reinforces the idea of a margin of error, right? You know, they asked literally the same questions, but because their samples and their methodology were different, their results are slightly different. So hopefully people can look, you know, in New York, the governor's race isn't expected to be competitive, but what if they had done this in a more competitive state like Georgia or something like that? And, you know, maybe it could have reinforced that a two-point difference, it's not big, but

You know, it could be the difference between a candidate winning and losing if, you know, a poll says the race is tied and it reinforces the idea that polls are accurate but not, like, expected to be exact. So wait, Nathaniel, do you think this would have been a good use of polling if they hadn't found quite similar results on most of the questions?

I think it would have been still like a good use of polling, a good experiment to your point, Amelia. I think it obviously would have raised more concerns if they were more divergent. I think it would have raised a question of like, oh, wait, maybe one of these pollsters

methodologies is more actively bad. But again, I think it shows kind of, you know, that also you can use live callers, you can use online and text messaging, and you can get very similar results. And there isn't necessarily one perfect way to conduct a poll. Wait, but isn't there also the possibility that both methods of polling experience the same biases? Like, it could be the case that

because these two different methods of polling mostly align, that we can be more confident in polls. But it could also be the case that both live caller polling and online text message polling face the same challenges. Like we don't actually know yet if these polls are accurate, right?

That's fair. And we never will because the election is three months away. But I do think that when you have two pollsters saying the same thing using different methods, that does like decrease the chance that they're both running into the same problem. So how, Jeff, if you have thoughts, should we explain this more significant difference when it comes to whether the country is going in the right direction or off on the wrong track?

You know, I don't know if there is like a perfectly obvious explanation. You know, maybe it's something about talking to a live interviewer. So Sienna with the live interviews found, you know, the lower percentage. Maybe there's something about talking to a live interview. People were more likely to say, eh, things are just on the wrong track. But of course, obviously we didn't see many differences or many sizable differences at least on other questions. So I'm not exactly sure why that one question would be the example, but

But it is also possible that that's a question where partisan viewpoints don't overwhelm things as much. I mean, at the end of the day, 19% to 28% are both low. They still agree with each other in the grand scheme of things, which is that very few New Yorkers in this case think things are on the right track. I have a more boring explanation, Galen.

Give me, I mean, you know, we love... Bore us. Do we love a boring explanation? Bore us. Give us the boring explanation, but do it with gusto. So you bring the energy to the boring explanation, Nathaniel. I will try, Galen. So, as everybody knows, margin of error, not everybody knows this, margins of error are a thing, and...

They are meant to say that, you know, if you have a margin of error of plus or minus three points, which I believe one of these polls did, that 95% of the time the sampling error should fall within that range. 95% is 19 out of 20 times. This poll had 24 questions. So you would logically expect that one of those questions, around one of those questions, they would have a divergence larger than the margin of error. And I think it just happened to be this question.

Yeah. I mean, I was just going to say like, I mean, my, my answer was less mathematical than Nathaniel's, but there are just always sort of, it seems like there's always like a little weirdness in every poll. Like, even though, you know, it is an effort to take a smaller group of people and extrapolate that onto a larger group. The fact is that you do have a small group of people and those people are, you know, going to have like, there will be like some quirk of the sample usually. And, um,

The way that methodology works is to try to minimize that as much as possible. And in this case, you know, we did sort of see those questions coming out in the same direction as Jeffrey was saying. So it's not like, you know, this was a huge deviation. I would love to see this, these pollsters do this a couple times. I mean, that was like my big hesitation in looking at this and saying, okay, great. Both of these methodologies are good because it,

You know, we don't know that until it's been reproduced a couple of times. And to Galen's point, you know, it doesn't take away the possibility that there are bigger factors in polling that are affecting both of them.

But if there's more repetition, then we're more inclined to just get more information and to see, you know, maybe if this was repeated a bunch of times, we would see, to Nathaniel's point, that one question or two questions, there tends to be a divergence. So I think, if anything—

you know, the weakness of this is that it's only, they've only done it once so far. And so I would be hesitant to fully draw conclusions like saying, you know, these methodologies are equally accurate because that's just a fundamental principle of experimentation. You have to do the experiment multiple times to really be confident that what you're seeing is the truth.

So to put a positive spin on it, Sienna and Emerson, this was such a good use of polling that you should keep doing it again and again, and then it will just be a great use of polling. A great use of polling. A great use of polling. Have we had one of those before, Galen? I don't think so. We mostly drag polls on this podcast. We're not ready to give it to them yet. And Emerson, you could be our first great use of polling if you continue down this path.

Final question here. After the 2020 election was the first time that FiveThirtyEight said, we used to think of live caller polls as the gold standard in polling. But based on these results, we can no longer say that. Basically, online polls, text message polls, all of these sort of new ways of polling are just about as accurate as the gold standard live caller polls to landlines and cell phones.

With all the caveats that you said, Amelia, does this sort of begin to get us to a place where like, yeah, that was the right decision? Live caller polls are no longer the gold standard of polling.

Yeah, I would say that it is further evidence for that. You know, I wouldn't say what did you say, like begins to bring us to the place, because I think that we were already there. And to that point, I think we were actually kind of on the tail end of that. I think a lot of people were saying for a long time online polling has caught up methodologically to live caller polls. And we kind of finally crunched the numbers in a holistic way after 2020 and said, yes, that is what the evidence supports.

One of the biggest barriers to polling is the cost of it. And the costliest kind of polling is live caller polls. Is this maybe sort of like an optimistic piece of the polling puzzle where like we can do if we trust the methodology of online cell phone, text message style polls, automated polls, that we can do a lot more polling? I mean, I think it is good news that

Tech, you know, text message seems to be a sort of a new frontier that a lot of pollsters are starting to use because and I think especially for getting a good sample, because at the end of the day, the number one challenge is just starting out by getting a good sample, because as we've seen, it's really hard to sort of wait your way out of a bad sample. You know, you can try to you know, you're waiting to the population or, you know, what you think that like the voting population is.

in a given poll. But if your initial sample is pretty skewed from that, it can make it difficult. So I think text messages, particularly with young people who are more likely to be people of color, of course, like if you're thinking about who you're interacting with, it's maybe better for getting that initial good sample. So

I think the fact that that's certainly cheaper than having people call is probably good news. I mean, this basically provides support for sort of the concept of mixed methods. And mixed methods may be the future because different people are going to be easier to reach in different ways.

Yeah, I will say, though, I don't want us to get to Jeffrey's point. I don't want to get to a point where we're saying, oh, we can stop doing the live caller polls and just do online polls because I think that having a mixture of the methodologies is important so we can do things like this and compare. All right. Fabulous. We've all agreed this is a good use of polling? Two thumbs up. Two thumbs up. Two pollsters. Good work. Good work. Yeah. You get a good use of polling. You get a good use of polling. But that's it. Just two.

Wow, this is officially the nerdiest podcast on the internet. What? When was it just became that, Galen? Yeah, I know. I feel like we didn't bring it there.

I guess we have been perhaps the nerdiest podcast on the internet for somewhat like seven years now. And speaking of polling methodologies and being nerdy, we just got our latest round of Ipsos polling. We have a partnership. We've talked about this before on the podcast. In the run-up to the midterms, we're asking Americans about the issues that are most important to them, and they can name three.

So in this most recent round of polling, we've asked Americans what they think about crime and gun violence. And in these polls, we're not just asking, you know, what's the most important issue and leaving it at that. We want to know, you know, what do Americans know about these issues? What do they think is responsible for the issue? And what do they want done about it?

And we ask these questions to the same 2,000 people each time. So this is a panel, unlike either of the two polls that we just talked about. And in each, this is our fourth round of polling now, in each of the four rounds, crime and gun violence has ranked in the top three. So in the most recent round, it ranked in the top two. It was number two behind inflation and the economy more generally.

Jeffrey, I'm curious. We learned sort of a little bit about who cares the most about crime and gun violence and who this is a priority for. And you spearheaded this project for the site. So can you tell us a little bit about that? What gets it to number two? Is it mostly Democrats or Republicans who care about this? Is it mostly young or old people or what have you?

Yeah, so I've been working a lot with Holly Fong on this, our data editor. And, you know, basically what you get is in the latest wave of this poll, a third of respondents said that crime or gun violence was the top issue. So those are grouped together. And it is possible, and this is something we were interested in, that people might have different interpretations of that. Like maybe something about crime in particular is the thing that they care about. Or maybe it's

something more specific with gun violence. Obviously, there are many cases where those overlap, but we were sort of interested in how people interpreted that. Getting to the point of who sort of cared the most, Democrats tend to be the force that is driving the high numbers for naming that issue. In this poll, about 44% of Democrats answered that way, whereas 31% of independents and 26% of Republicans said it.

So Democrats, at the end of the day, are particularly the driving force. I mean, that is perhaps a little surprising. Well, maybe it's not surprising because combining crime and gun violence is somewhat complicated. I think there are a lot of nuances here. But in general, Republicans have messaged more on crime. So you might think that Republican voters would be more primed to be worried about crime. You know, the increase in crime, the increase particularly in murder rates since the pandemic.

At the same time, gun violence is a big priority for Democrats. So there is a little bit of like jumbling of partisan priorities in this question. What did we learn about how Democrats and Republicans think of this issue, sort of differently at least?

Right. So, I mean, one of the things that we asked straight up was, which do you think is the bigger issue? So we actually separated the terms out to them. It's like, do you think crime is a bigger issue or do you think gun violence is a bigger issue? And overall, so we asked that question of all respondents, even those who didn't pick

or gun violence to begin with. And overall, 55% thought gun violence was a bigger issue and 34% said crime. And maybe unsurprisingly, Republicans were the one group, if you break it out by party ID, that said that crime was more important, that it was the bigger issue.

And if you actually narrow it down to just that group, that third of respondents overall who said crime or gun violence, three-fourths basically of those respondents said gun violence. So it does seem like most of the people who are picking that from the list of almost 20 issues that we gave them are thinking mostly about gun violence was sort of the takeaway from all that.

And I should say this is all complicated because gun violence is crime, but it is interesting to think about how people maybe segment them in their minds. Yeah, no, absolutely. And one of the ways we sort of went at also trying to tease that out a bit was that we did this little – we did this poll question where we gave respondents 12 words or phrases –

And first we asked them to rank them essentially by how much they associated them with first crime and then gun violence. So again, sort of try to separate them without using gun violence to sort of initially cue them.

And, you know, there were some, some interesting results with that, you know, on the whole murder, for example, popped up very highly, uh, about half for both of those, uh, versions of the question said, uh, listed it as a top three word or phrase. Um, police and terrorism were like less common overall, but about 10% named them for both, uh, as top three. Um,

words that they ranked. But then like for crime, people were more likely to think of words like burglary or robbery, whereas shooting or firearm were much more connected to gun violence. And, you know, some of this may make sense, but

But at the same time, it is interesting that even though like murder was something that people thought about a lot with both crime and gun violence, that perhaps the tool that can be used in many cases, firearms, was not connected as much to crime. So these are just some of the little ways we're trying to understand just what are people thinking about? Like what kinds of actions are they thinking about when they think about these terms? Yeah.

Yeah, I thought this was a totally fascinating survey. And there were a bunch of questions on it as well that we're trying to get at Americans' knowledge around these issues that we can talk about later. But one of the things that was my big takeaway from this was like just the extent to which

Americans don't seem to think about gun violence and crime as really being the same thing, even though like if you look at the data, I mean, I pulled up some numbers. So crime rose in 2020. I think everyone knows that by now, but it did so in a very specific way. So the murder rate rose by 30 percent. Assaults rose by 10 percent, says according to data released by the FBI.

most murders took place using a gun. And the firearm homicide rate in 2020 was the highest recorded since 1994. So, you know, I think like you look at those numbers, and it's pretty obvious that gun violence and crime are kind of two sides of the same coin in many issue in many cases. But I

I think the issue is that when you ask people about crime in particular, it's not always clear what kind of crime you're talking about. Are you talking about violent crime? Are you talking about property crime? And it's a violent crime that we've really seen rise since the pandemic started and property crime has sort of diverged from violent crime, which has been a really interesting and kind of difficult to explain trend that has happened in the data.

And so, you know, I think that's maybe where some of this complication and complexity comes in, that we don't all have an agreed upon, you know, definition of crime that pops into your head. Again, like when you're, you know, sort of like quickly responding to a poll question, people have different associations and the terms crime and gun violence differ.

both quite politically loaded. And as Galen was saying, crime is an issue where Republicans traditionally do have an advantage. I mean, I pulled up an ABC News Washington Post poll conducted in April, and 47% of Americans said they trusted Republicans more to handle the issue of crime. 35% said they trusted Democrats more. So I think this might be a thing where, you know, even if people are actually, in many cases, thinking about the same issue,

They will call it different things depending on what they're thinking about in terms of their own partisan ideology. Yeah, Amelia, that's really important context. And you mentioned some of the statistics in terms of the direction of violent crime and property crime since the pandemic began. We in this poll wanted to get to the bottom of like how aware Americans are of those trends. Jeffrey, are they? Yeah.

Yeah, so it's interesting because on the one hand, I think they did have something of a decent grasp of sort of recent conditions. For instance, basically we asked a series of true-false questions. And in some cases, we had a large number of don't-knows, but in other ones, we did have a pretty sizable number who said true or false.

Well, 60% answered correctly that the U.S. has the highest number of gun deaths per capita among all developed countries. The same percentage correctly identified that active shooter incidents have increased over the last 20 years. A majority said that violent crimes such as murder and rape increased in 2020, which is the last year we had full data. So like in that way, they're feeling what Amelia was just talking about.

But at the same time, you can see some recency bias creep in because about half said that the violent crime rate was worse in 2020 than in 1991, but it has not worsened to the point that it was at back in the very early 90s. And a plurality also said that the crime rate on things like burglary or car theft hadn't been declining, but it has been declining. So I think there's something to remember here where

And media is like a part of this story basically is that we focus a lot on crime and stories. You pop in the local news. There's like – there was a murder, da-da-da, or there was a burglary or something. Like things get covered.

pretty closely. And maybe that makes it more difficult for people to sort of realize how things have changed. I think there are going to be cases where, you know, drugs or certain things about drugs, maybe in like the late 80s versus 20 years later, like people who who were alive during both of those times might recognize that like

There's not like a crack epidemic anymore or something. But in a lot of cases, I think they are prone to just assume that crime is worse than it was. And so that – and maybe that has something to do with how the issue is covered.

Yeah.

basically every year since i think the mid-2000s a majority of americans have said yes crime is up over the previous year and until the last couple of years um that was not true because we've been um in the long term on this kind of long decline in in crime and especially violent crime um since the the kind of 80s and 90s

The last topic we tried to cover in this most recent survey about crime and gun violence is what Americans ultimately think we should do about it. And again, there were sort of differences in terms of what Americans think we should do about both crime and gun violence, even if they are a kind of package issue in many ways. So what do Americans think we should do?

Well, you know, one of the things that I sort of found with the data that was interesting is that you can sort of see the political complexity of crime versus gun violence, even if they obviously overlap oftentimes.

In terms of sort of which political party is positioned to maybe benefit or has more support, depending on the question asked. So if you asked – we asked about like five different potential proposals for certain gun restrictions having to do with limiting the purchase of guns, and each one of them got at least 68 percent support.

support. And a majority of Republicans, even a slim majority, favored every single one of them, even though they were things like requiring safety training before purchasing a gun, mandatory mental health evaluations before gun sales, raising the gun age from 18 to 21. These are all things that people supported, even a slight majority of Republicans. And so you could see Democrats having an opportunity there because on a broader question, we also asked,

Should gun laws be more strict, less strict, or about the same as they are now? And 61% said more strict. And so independents were at about 60% on that question. So for Democrats who overwhelmingly thought they should be more strict, you can see the potential here to sort of build a coalition that wants more gun restrictions. But on the flip side of that, when thinking about the crime issue and the term crime, when we asked

What would do a better job of reducing crime, increasing police funding or shifting some police funding over to other types of social services? You had 57 percent say increasing police budgets would do more to reduce crime than shifting funds to other social services. Only 38 percent said that. And you had independents like Republicans overwhelmingly thought increasing crime.

police budgets, but you had a majority of independents also say that versus a majority of Democrats saying shift money to other social services. So for me, it sort of shows the political complexity of this and sort of the why both parties obviously stress what they stress. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting. When I saw the results of this poll, it made me think of what House Democrats were just very recently trying to pass, which was an assault weapons ban, but also in the same package, an increase in police funding. Ultimately, the increase in police funding for...

failed because progressives were not on board with it and they passed the assault weapons ban, you know, on its own. I don't think it's expected to make it through the Senate, but nonetheless, you know, it seems like Democratic leadership is looking at this kind of polling and is aware of those trends, but the left flank of the party is not on board.

No, I mean, I think that's exactly right. Because again, if you had a majority of Democrats saying shift funding, and I think you hear rhetoric from some Democrats trying to push back on sort of the defund the police message that Republicans have tried to hang around their necks, saying, we just want police to be funded. We also want social services to be funded. We

We think that there are certain things that maybe social services can do more to help, that maybe police can focus more on other aspects of law enforcement and protecting people. So you hear that. I mean, so to your point, you see that Democrats are very worried about being viewed as sort of anti-police because polling like this suggests that people –

have favorable views toward the police. In fact, in the poll, we asked, do people have favorable views of the police? And it was like a very strong majority said they had a favorable view of the police. So even 60% of Democrats said they had a favorable view of police. So you can see why they were trying to sort of

Do both. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that Republicans have done really successfully is made this into an either or where you do have Democrats who are saying, no, like, you know, we can continue to support the police, but we also want more money to go to funding for social services. And, you know, Republicans have have made it, you know, through their messaging of defund the police have made it into an issue where it's more broadly perceived, I think, as like taking money away from the police and diverting it

toward other aspects of the social safety net. So, I mean, I would be interested to see a question that asks something like, you know, do you think it's better to give more money to the police and the social safety net? Do you think it's better to just give money to the police, to just give money to other aspects of the social safety net?

I suspect that people would probably be more in favor of giving money to the police generally. I'm not sure how far down this idea of crime reduction being helped by funding through programs that are not directly related to crime in the way that people think about them, even though there is a lot of research to suggest that funding other aspects of the social safety net would help reduce crime. But honestly,

I don't know. I'd be interested to see a poll question looking at it that way. But I think when it's sort of painted as a choice, like clearly Americans are more in favor of the police funding. Hmm.

Right. And I mean, to be totally fair on the messaging point, defund the police did start as a message of the activist left, not as a message amongst Republicans. Right. But I think for Democrats who are trying to take it back and who are now trying to say, oh no, we can have both, I think Republicans have very—

successfully imprinted the sort of like, no, this is taking money away from police on the public's mind. And I don't see Democrats undoing that, even if progressives were somehow magically on board.

All right. Well, we are going to continue doing this kind of polling in the run-up to the midterms, asking about more issues that are on Americans' minds. This is some really fascinating stuff, so I'm glad we're doing this. Jeffrey will talk about the next round when it comes in, and folks can go over to the FiveThirtyEight website to sort of see the full rundown of this latest polling, I think on Wednesday. Is that right, Jeff? Yeah, I think that's what it's scheduled to come out. Awesome.

All right, you got a sneak preview here. Let's take a look at where the debate over state-level abortion bans stands.

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Last week, as we discussed on the podcast, Kansas rejected a constitutional amendment that would have made it easier to restrict abortion in the state. As was expected since the Dobbs decision, these types of debates have been playing out across the country, mostly in states where Republicans have control of the legislature.

Kansas has gotten the most attention, but how are other states moving forward? Are Republicans pursuing full abortion bans? Are they succeeding? Well, on Friday, Indiana became the first state to successfully pass an abortion ban since the Dobbs decision. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, the state legislature failed to pass such a ban. So let's look at how these debates are playing out. First of all, Amelia, let's start with Indiana.

What happened? What came together in Indiana to the point where they passed a sort of full abortion ban with no gestational limits whatsoever and just exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother, fetal abnormalities?

So those are very limited exceptions. I mean, people keep listing off those exceptions as if they're full, you know, like a full exception if you're raped or an incest victim or you have a fetal abnormality. But actually, they're fairly restrictive. The rape and incest victims can get abortions up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, which is not very far into a pregnancy, especially for rape victims who often don't find out their

pregnant until later in pregnancy, may have denial around their pregnancy. So the gestational cutoff there is really significant. And there's also a cutoff for fetal abnormalities of 20 weeks, which is significant as well because some fetal

fatal fetal abnormalities are detected before 20 weeks, but the testing for those abnormalities tends to happen in the second trimester of pregnancy. And so, you know, you, you do have terminations that are happening for those kinds of abnormalities, um, around 20 weeks or after this was one of the things that was debated quite extensively in the Indiana legislature, um,

This is a state that's really anti-abortion. Its legislature is very anti-abortion. It's a state that has passed a lot of different abortion restrictions over the years. I was fully expecting to see the legislature come back into session and pass some kind of abortion ban. But the difference is, you know, whereas I think before...

the Dobbs decision, there wouldn't have been a lot of fighting among Indiana Republicans about which exceptions to include, how far the ban should go. It probably would have been a fairly extensive ban and there wouldn't have been a lot of arguing. There were significant rifts among Indiana Republicans where you had one faction that was saying,

We can ban abortion. We should ban it to the fullest extent possible. We should only have exceptions for abortions to save the life of the pregnant person. And then there were Republicans in the state legislature who were saying a variety of things from...

We should have more extensive exceptions. You know, it should be easier for rape and incest victims to get abortions to actually Republicans who were advocating for abortion to remain legal in the first trimester of pregnancy. And of course, the law did ultimately pass and it's quite a restrictive law. But, you know, not without legal

a lot of infighting among Republicans, which is really significant because again, this is Indiana. Like this is not a purple state. This is not a purple legislature. Um, and so clearly, you know, this is something that Republicans are having to wrestle with now. Um, they have the power to do what they want, but, um,

Full abortion bans are really, really unpopular. So it's kind of like, do you do the thing that people have been working toward for decades within your party, within your movement, which is to fully ban abortion, knowing that it could really cost you politically?

Yeah. The other state that's actively been working on this issue is West Virginia. And West Virginia actually adjourned its legislative session without reaching an agreement, without passing a new abortion ban. And that was because, to Amelia's point, Republicans in the legislature couldn't agree on the exact kind of contours of what it should be. There were some who were really hardline on it, who –

you know wanted almost no exceptions and they wanted felony charges for doctors who performed abortions and then there were other more moderate republicans who wanted to build in rape and incest exceptions and also not have those criminal penalties and i think you know correct me if i'm amelia i think we could

do expect West Virginia to eventually pass an abortion ban. But the fact that you see, you know, abortion now is becoming a wedge issue almost among Republicans, you know, it kind of reminds me too of, you know, once Republicans came into power after the Affordable Care Act had been passed and they suddenly couldn't agree on kind of how to

replace it. And as a result, the Affordable Care Act continued to become law. Like governing is a lot harder than being kind of on the outside, lobbing bombs. And I think you're seeing that. Yeah. And I mean, to be clear, the Indiana law did include criminal penalties. It's when the law goes into effect, it will be a level five felony to perform an illegal abortion, which I think is one to six years in prison and a fine of up to ten thousand dollars. So

That's significant jail time. That's a significant fine. But it did divide West Virginia legislators. What has the reaction been in Indiana to this new law, sort of, you know, the first of its kind post-Dobbs?

I mean, there was a lot of protesting around the state capitol, you know, like national politicians, Kamala Harris came to Indiana during the session to speak about the ban. And, you know, there were some very impassioned speeches that kind of made for little viral moments about the impact of

the ban and in particular what it would mean for young people who became pregnant through rape or incest, but just also young people in general. So yeah, I mean, you know, Indiana is a conservative state, but

What we see in Indiana when we look at the public opinion data is that, like most places in the U.S., when you ask people about whether abortion should be sort of generally legal or generally illegal, there's a 2019 poll where it's...

So 29% of Indiana residents think abortion should be legal in most cases. 19% think it should be legal in all cases. 28% think it should be illegal in most cases. And only 17% think it should be illegal in all cases. So that's a pretty narrow split when it comes to the generally do you think abortion should be legal, generally do you think abortion should be illegal question. But it's an overwhelming majority question.

who want it to be legal in at least some cases. And I think that's where, you know, a lot of the outrage is coming from the fact that Indiana is, you know, imposing an abortion ban and people want abortion access to remain fairly broad. Some people want that, but other people, I think, you know, and we saw Republican legislators in this camp, you know, saying like to make it basically impossible to get an abortion is not what Americans want and goes too far. And, and,

Even in a state like Indiana, I mean, I think the public opinion data supports that most people are not on board with that approach. Okay, so that's what's going on in Indiana and West Virginia, where in addition to Kansas, the debate has been most live so far post-Dobbs. Where else are we seeing state legislative level debates over abortion bans?

So the DOPS decision came out at a point in the state legislative calendar when most state legislatures are out of session. Many state legislatures in the U.S. are part time and they, you know, some don't even meet every year and they tend to run in the first half of the year. So most state legislatures are gone for this year's session. Indiana and West Virginia actually were called back in special sessions last

So it's interesting because state legislatures can come back into session even when they're not supposed to be in session, which is what we saw with Indiana. I think it's interesting that we haven't seen that with some states like Nebraska. I've been kind of waiting to see if they're going to come back into session because the governor said at one point that he was going to do that if Roe versus Wade were returned, and it hasn't happened yet. But I would expect to see more movement on this in the states after the midterms. I saw some discussion that

Ohio might deal with this issue. They have a six-week ban, but not a full ban. They might deal with it after the midterms.

And I think we'll see more legislative or more legislatures taking up the issue in January, both because it is a pain for legislatures to come back into session. But also, I kind of think legislators want to see how the midterms go before they come down hard on this issue. And I think, you know, the debate in Indiana shows that like this actually isn't an issue that is easy to deal with in a 10 day legislative session or something like that. Like they may need more time.

time. Yeah. And also a lot of legislatures, even in Republican states, may not have the numbers. So for example, Georgia currently has a six-week abortion ban, but they didn't have the votes for a full ban. And maybe after this redistricting cycle, after this midterm, if it's a good one for Republicans, they will. Similar in North Carolina, we're

Republicans are really gunning there for veto-proof majorities because the governor there is a Democrat. But they have openly said that if we have these veto-proof majorities next year, we will move on an abortion ban or abortion restrictions of some sort. Yeah, so it almost seems like thinking about the 2022 election cycle and abortion, there's plenty to cover, as we know. But it's also sort of thinking ahead to the next election cycle.

And the potential impact that these different state moves could have on discussions leading into 2024. That just seems like I mean, I sort of always thought that Dobbs might have more impact on 2024 than 2022. We'll see if that's the case. But this sort of feeds into that to some extent, too, because now it's in the state's hands.

Yeah. Well, and also a lot of these laws are still kind of being fought out in the courts. There are a lot of state level challenges that are still moving and claims that various abortion bans violate aspects of the state constitution. There's been a really interesting series of challenges to Florida's 15 week ban where different religious groups and clergy members have argued that

the law actually violates their, their right to privacy under the Florida constitution, but also it's a religious Liberty violation because their religions, um, say in some circumstances you need to have access to abortion. So obviously we don't know how those will turn out, but it's just kind of an interesting argument to be making, um, at sort of Jewish and mainline Protestant, um, denominations that are mostly making that argument. Um,

But also the Justice Department filed a challenge to Idaho's ban, which is supposed to take effect later this month.

Justice Department is suing over it because it has a particularly narrow exemption for the life of the pregnant person. A lot of laws will have language that says, you know, abortions can be performed in cases where the pregnant person's life is at risk or where there's the risk of a substantial impairment. There's sort of boilerplate language that you see in a lot of

this legislation that leaves the door open to not literally the pregnant person is about to die in five minutes, but giving the physician a little bit more discretion. This Idaho law does not have that. And so the Justice Department is arguing that it actually violates a federal law that would require medically indicated abortions to be performed in an emergency. So

That's an interesting sort of line of legal argument. We'll see how that plays out. But to Jeff's point, you know, I think there is evidence we can see from the Kansas vote that, you know, some voters are already energized and exercised over this issue, but we're not really going to see.

see the dust fully settle on this issue for a while. And we won't know what abortion access will really look like in the country until next year when state legislatures come back and start responding fully to the Dobbs decision. And also as these court battles get played out, you know, for example, Montana is a state that, you know, you would expect to have pretty serious abortion restrictions, but it's been protected.

Under the state constitution, now there's a challenge that's moving through the state courts. Maybe that'll change. There are arguments on the other side in other states like Florida arguing that abortion is covered under the state constitution and it can't be banned. So there's really a lot of moving pieces here right now.

All right. Well, as you can hear, this is all pretty complex. And as you've all said, the dust has yet to settle, but it's a topic that we will come back to plenty, I'm sure, in the future. Let's leave it there for now. Thank you, Jeff, Nathaniel, and Amelia.

Thanks, Galen. Thank you, Galen. Thanks, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Sophia Leibovitz is in the control room. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director and Emily Vanesky is our intern. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.