Credit FDR for birthing political polling process

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Sunday marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of former New York Gov. and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. …

But while there is much to admire about Roosevelt and his legacy, there is a very much overlooked chapter of his innovation legacy that FDR leaves behind for elected officials and political candidates today – namely the invention of modern political polling techniques used to help develop, refine, and execute political campaigns, using not gut instinct or intuition, but rather leveraging data and empirical validation. CONTINUED

Bradley Honan & Elisabeth Zeche (Honan Strategy Group), Times Union

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Biden’s legislative problem is threadbare margins, not left-wing overreach

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… It’s hard to act alone on major national problems with threadbare congressional majorities.

Like all presidents, Biden won his office for multiple reasons. Many of his 81 million voters surely wanted him just to replace Donald Trump’s divisiveness with calm and tame the pandemic. But many others cheered his calls to lift struggling middle-class families, respond to climate change or temper racial injustice. …

That 2% of the Democratic caucus can thwart the remaining 98% does not mean the party has split between moderate and conservative factions. It means the White House is vulnerable to the tiniest splinter. CONTINUED

John Harwood, CNN

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Majority of Americans want Biden to consider ‘all possible nominees’ for Supreme Court vacancy

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A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that a plurality of Americans view the Supreme Court as motivated by partisanship, while President Joe Biden’s campaign trail vow to select a Black woman to fill a high-court vacancy without reviewing all potential candidates evokes a sharply negative reaction from voters. …

And this new ABC/Ipsos poll shows high disapproval of Biden’s handling of a range of issues. A glaring weak spot for Biden is inflation, where 69% of Americans disapprove of his handling of this key issue. CONTINUED

Brittany Shepherd, ABC News

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Students value free speech, but feel theirs is threatened

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As politics have grown more combative in last few years, college campuses — long thought of as homes for open debate — have followed along. At many schools the question of where free speech ends and campus tensions begin has become an important topic.

A new poll from the Knight Foundation and Ipsos finds some growing concerns about limits to free speech among the nation’s college students and offers some insights about where they think the line is between the First Amendment and students’ desires to feel protected.

The most important finding in the poll may be just how important today’s college students believe free speech is to democracy. For all the talk about how today’s students fear that serious debates can lead to hurt feelings, the survey found a strong belief in the need for free speech in the United States. CONTINUED

Dante Chinni, NBC News

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Do Republicans love Donald Trump as they once did?

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No one should underestimate former president Donald Trump’s standing within the Republican Party, especially the passionate allegiance of a substantial part of the GOP base. But there are signs that, since the assault on the Capitol last year, his support within the party may not be quite as robust as it once was. …

Whether this is the beginning of something genuinely threatening to his standing or a minor hiccup that is of no real consequence is what all those Republicans with an eye on the White House want to know. CONTINUED

Dan Balz, Washington Post

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Fewer Americans believe that free speech is secure

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… The past few years have left a clear imprint on our collective views on free speech. While free speech is still a universally appreciated value, partisans are bitterly divided on how secure it is. At the same time, many feel that it’s easier for the “other” to express themselves, another indication of how deeply tribalized we have become. How lasting these effects will be remains to be seen. CONTINUED

Clifford Young & Catherine Morris, Ipsos

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