Editor’s Note: This is an updated and reposted revision of a previous post.

Everyone saw how the Republicans gained a large victory in the 2010 US Midterm Elections, flipping control of the House of Representatives away from Speaker Pelosi and to Speaker Boehner, holding the House under Republican party control. As a result, Boehner and other members of the Republican leadership took turns declaring that they had a mandate from the people to enact specific legislation, whether the Democrats wanted it or not. The Republicans were willing to pull a lot of stops to get the Democrat-controlled Senate to do what they want, because the voters demanded it.

One of the central positions the Republicans have in defining their a mandate is their “Pledge to America”, a document that outlined what Republicans would stand for if they won control over the government in 2010. Among minor issues, the Pledge outlines several key positions:

• Repealing and replacing the 2010 Health Care Act
• An opposition to all tax increases
• Support for further tax cuts
• Cut more than $120 billion from the budget

The Basis for a Mandate

What is a mandate, anyway? A mandate is basically when a group of voters decide they want their politicians to take certain stances, such as “make abortion illegal” and/or “increase gun control”, and then seek out candidates that support those positions and vote them into office. These candidates are voted in specifically because the voters want something done, and therefore these candidates have a mandate to do it.

It is also possible that instead of “I’m voting for you because you’ll do X”, voters will instead take the approach “I’m voting for you because you won’t do Y”; or, even more pessimistically, the “I’m voting for you because I’m more angry at the other guy”, which has little to do with the issues at all.

It’s important to tell the difference between “party promises to do X and gets elected” and “voters want X, figure out that this party will do X, and then elects them”. It’s entirely possible that voters could elect the party because of different issues than the party talks about, or for reasons entirely unrelated to issues.

So when we look at the Republicans and the Pledge, we can’t automatically assume the voters want what is stated in the Pledge. We must look at what the voters actually want, and see if they support the issue stances outlined in the Pledge. Then we would have to see if the support is clear and widespread enough to be considered a mandate.

In order to do this, we simply look at the polling data. When we look at the data, we see that the public is simply angry about the state of the country and do not have a unified stance on issues, nor a specific requirement for what their elected candidates should do. Voters seem to be angry at the Health Care law but have no desire to repeal it; and voters seem willing to raise taxes to balance the budget while Republicans are not. The voters simply are giving the Republicans a mandate to be angry, but oppose all ways the GOP intends to deal with the problems facing the US.

To see more, we’ll look at the poll numbers in depth.

Mandate on Health Care?

Health Care was perhaps the most controversial and polarizing legislative victory achieved within the past ten years. The Republican leadership tried to obstruct the passage of the bill in nearly every way possible. After it’s passage, the bill was immediately condemned, and the leadership promised to repeal it and replace it with some sort of commonsense alternative (warning: applause light).

This promise even made it to an entire section of the Pledge, entitled “Repeal and Replace the Job Destroying Health Care Law, containing the statement that “[b]ecause the new health care law kills jobs, raises taxes, and increases the cost of health care, we will immediately take action to repeal this law”.

How does the public feel about the Health Care Law? According to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation (found via pollingreport.com with the methodology reported here, given as a .pdf), we see the public split with roughly half supporting the bill and half opposing it, with little change over time:

(For every poll picture, you can click on it for a link to the full-size version.)

(Don’t forget that it’s very important to know how to read and interpret polls correctly! This Youtube video from CQ Politics is a good guide, as is this essay from Columbia University. I have provided you with all of the sources and methodologies of the polls, so you can check my work and make sure I’m not cherry picking polls.)

However, does this opposition transition into a case for repealing the law? The same poll found little support either way, and other polls find a slim majority in favour of repeal:

(The dates printed here are confusing, so here’s some help: 4/7-12/11 means that the numbers were from those polled between April 7, 2011 through April 12, 2011.)

Opposition and Trust by Party

And is this opposition broad, or polarized? A CBS News / New York Times poll (methodology) found that an overwhelming majority of Republicans favour repeal while an overwhelming majority of Democrats do not, as we would expect, with independents more or less split. More interestingly, this poll compares itself to an identical poll taken one year ago — the Republicans and Democrats don’t change their opinion by any statistically significant margin, but independents shift to favor the bill by a majority:

Also, it’s interesting to note that in this Kaiser Poll, the majority does not seem to be behind the Republicans. Instead, people overwhelmingly support the basic concept of the Health care bill, and a majority trust the Democrats more to fix the bill than they trust the Republicans to do so.

The Varieties of Support and Oppose

So, if the public seems to dislike the bill, why do they also seem to support it and trust the Democrats more? One reason is revealed in this ABC News / Washington Post poll (methodology) — not everyone dislikes the bill because it’s an agressive government overreach, but because, by containing no public option, it isn’t enough of a reach. Some say the bill doesn’t go far enough:

When we group people by the numbers, only 35% of the population is opposing the bill “from the right”, agreeing with the Republicans that the bill needs to be removed and government needs to get out of healthcare, whereas 58% of the population don’t agree with the Republicans, and want the bill either as is, or want more reforms.

Furthermore, we can turn to an AP-GfK poll (methodology), which seems to confirm the sentiment that a majority of the population wants the bill either kept or increased, not repealed.

This poll also reveals, interestingly, a breakdown of support by each part of the Health Care law, with a statistically significant majority favouring mandatory employee coverage and statistically significant pluralities favouring varieties of pre-existing condition regulation. It turns out that the real controversy in the bill seems to be the individual mandate, with a statistically significant majority opposing it.

So, it seems that there is a decent amount of opposition to the Health Care Law, but there is no clear support for “repeal and replace”. It seems as if voters merely want the Republicans to be angry about the law, especially the individual mandate, but not do anything about it. This is probably a good thing, considering the law likely would not be able to function without the individual mandate.

Mandate on Tax Cuts and Budget Balancing?

What about when it comes to one of the Republicans’ most signature stances — their opposition to tax cuts in nearly any form, even if levied solely upon the wealthy? The “Creating Jobs” section of the Pledge starts out saying that:

if we’ve learned anything during the recession, it’s that we cannot tax and spend our way to prosperity. The best way to get people working again is to rein in the growth of government and end the uncertainty facing small businesses. By addressing both issues, our plan revives free enterprise and moves America away from a debt-driven economy. [...] We will help the economy by permanently stopping all tax increases, currently scheduled to take effect January 1, 2011.

Furthermore, the GOP Plan also calls for massive budget cuts. Their section entitled “Cutting Spending” contains plans for cutting hundreds of billions of dollars. More recently, Paul Ryan’s budget (endorsed by some, but not all, of the Repbulican party and leadership), calls for cutting $6.2 trillion from the budget. It seems that the Republican platform calls for cutting a lot of money from the budget, while not raising taxes at all.

How does public support line up or against this? Does the public also feel the same way, and wish for lots of budget cuts and no tax increases? Again, we’d have to look at the poll results:

Blame and Support

This CNN/Opinion Research Poll (methodology; all polls found via PollingReport.com) shows that slim majorities now support Obama’s plan instead of the Republicans, after months of wallowing in tiny, statistically insignificant, advantages. Interestingly, the poll also shows a majority placing blame upon Bush for the economy, even after 3 years of Obama’s presidency.

This USA Today / Gallup poll (methodology) shows a slightly different story — it finds support for Republicans on the outermost edge of statistical insignificance, as well as finding support for Ryan’s plan vs. Obama’s plan a statistical tossup.

More interestingly but not very thoroughly, this poll also tests a few potential arguments against each party’s budget. While there really isn’t enough information here to make determinations (since it would be nice to see breakdown by partisanship), it does seem that the public perceives the Democratic plan as taxing too much and cutting too little, whereas the Republican plan is biased toward the rich and cuts too much:

Lastly, this Washington Post poll (methodology) finds again no statistically significant support for either the Democrats or the Republicans, but does demonstrate that more people think the Democrats are acting in good faith to negotiate, while the Republicans are labeled as “playing politics” rather than being serious:

Overall, it seems that the Republicans aren’t winning over popular support any more than the Democrats on budget issues. No side is winning, but the Democrats are doing a tiny bit better.

Popular Budget Solutions

Now that we know who the public blames, how would they solve the problem? What solutions are polling well, and how does this align with the stated GOP plan?

This ABC News / Washington Post Poll (methodology) shows that there is clear popular support for raising taxes on those making more than $200,000 a year; a solution the GOP has so far staunchly opposed. The poll also finds moderate opposition when it comes to cutting from the military, Medicaid, and Medicare; the last two of which the GOP has tried to cut:

However, in this AP-GfK poll (methodology), when the question is made more vague (and a different sample is polled under different conditions), a different answer emerges: “cutting services” is the go to choice over “raising taxes”:

This CNN / Opinion Research poll (methodology) put the most options on the table, and comes back with rather clear results. It seems that public opinion is very much on the side of saving education, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; somewhat on the side of saving assistance for the poor and military spending; and for cutting from government pensions, public broadcasting, and foreign aid.

Compromising vs. Staying with the Guns

With these basic strategies in mind, Republicans and Democrats are basically negotiating from two ends — Republicans want very deep spending cuts with no tax increases, whereas the Democrats want a balance of spending cuts and tax increases. This has inevitably lead to some friction, with both sides unable and unwilling to compromise. How does the public view this?

In this NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll (methodology), there is a breakdown of calls for the Republicans and Democrats to compromise, split by party. It finds Democrats and Independents in majority support for “compromise”, while the Republicans want their own party to stick to their own positions and continue to not give up:

Direction of the Country

So it seems to be that the poll data isn’t supporting much in the idea that the public specifically wants Republican policy. When we go to the polling data with an eye to see if the public is specifically demanding policy, we see very little support for either the Republicans and the Democrats.

This leads me to an alternate hypothesis: the public around November 2010 was fed up with the way government was working (or not working), and decided to vote for the Republicans not out of a desire for Republican policy, but because they were angry at how government was working and saw the Republicans as angry too.

But could the data support this, just as it supported the idea that there wasn’t much of a mandate for anything other than anger? Well, when we look at this CBS News / New York Times Poll, we see see a graph of the percent of people who are reporting that the country is going in the “wrong direction” (as opposed to the “right direction” or “unsure”), over time from April 2006 to June 2011, over many different polls:

Interestingly, dissatisfaction was at an all time high of 90% prior to the election of Obama, and then fell as people thought they saw Obama resolving their problems, eventually falling to only 50% reporting that the country was on the “wrong track”. However, by the time of the 2010 midterm election, this rose to 60%.

This may indicate that the public wasn’t as angry as they could have been during the election, despite a majority saying the country is on the “wrong track”. Most notably for the hypothesis though, is that unlike the Obama election which seemed to satisfy many people, the 2010 election appeared to satisfy no one — we were at 60% saying the country is on the “wrong track” prior to the election and remain at 60% after over half a year.

This seems to support the theory that the midterm election was not about finding satisfaction through a change in policy, but about a long-term anger that could never be satisfied by an election. Instead, the underlying causes of the anger would have to go away. Let’s see if this remains true when we look at a different poll from Gallup, instead not measuring whether respondents think the country is “on the wrong track” but whether they are dissatisfied with the way things are (from June 2007 to June 2011, note that this chart starts at 60%):

Here we see the same: starting off with a massive amount of people dissatisfied at the tail end of Bush’s term, only to be satisfied by the election of Barack Obama. And again, this satisfaction slowly went away as Obama’s term progressed (and his honeymoon period ended), and remains at this new high — not being solved by the midterm election.

This angry mood seems backed up by this May 2011 CBS poll, which reports that very few people feel like they have a say in government, very many people say that the government only benefits the rich, and that the government is too focused on interest groups instead of the people — all marks of people having low efficacy, a sign and cause of political anger:

But why would we expect this anger to be the case? If the public is angry, what are they angry about? Of course, we don’t have to play dumb on these questions, for the answer is already obvious: it’s the economy, stupid. Both this CBS poll and this ABC News poll seem to point that views highlighting the current economic downturn were high — people indicated that America was still in a recession that has not yet recovered:

However there may be some good news: this NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll poll indicates that now a majority of people think the worst is behind us:

Conclusion

So how’d we do? Well, we aimed to look at the GOP pledge on their key issues: (1) repealing and replacing the 2010 Health Care Act, (2) opposing all tax increases, (3) supporting tax cuts, and (4) cutting billions from the budget.

On these four issues, we found that Americans were rather opposed to repealing and replacing the Health Care Act, despite being angry about it. Unlike GOP leadership, Americans were rather supportive of tax increases on the upper 2%, and somewhat accepting of tax increases across the board. Furthermore, while Americans were in favor of both tax cuts and cutting from the budget, they were far less supportive of both than the GOP leadership; looking for more of a balanced approach combined with tax increases.

Meanwhile, the American people were downtrotten — heading into a midterm election with a sour view of the economy and dissatisfied with the direction of the economy, and leaving the election without a much improved mood. All of these facts look poorly on the idea of a mandate — if the voters really did give the GOP a mandate, we would see far more support for GOP policy and would see a rebound in satisfaction as soon as the Republicans started enacting their policy.

Instead, the hypothesis that the voters were presenting the Republicans with a “mandate to be angry” seems much more likely. As noted in the polls over Health Care, it seemed the voters wanted to vote for candidates who empathized and expressed the anger toward the government that they felt, but did not want the candidates to do anything specific about it, such as repeal and replace.

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