Cross Posted At Dailykos
It is interesting to see the huge differences in candidate support online in straw polls such as those taken at Dailykos. One of the reasons I find the large gaps between candidates so interesting is that there does not appear to be a huge number of policy differences between the candidates who are receiving a significant amount of online support. Consider the top three finishers at Dailykos, who also happen to be the top three finishers in most early state and national polls of the Democratic field: Clinton, Edwards, and Obama.
- Health Care: All three support government mandated private insurance, with breaks that allow individuals and / or business to purchase private insurance plans cheaper. Essentially, this is a health care tax on individuals who currently do not have health care, with most of the tax receipts going to private insurance companies.
- Energy and Global Warming: All three support a cap and trade system, but not an accompanying carbon tax ala Al Gore. In fact, they all seem to support exactly the same cap and trade system.
- Residual Forces: As I have repeatedly documented both here and at MyDD, Clinton and Obama support nearly identical residual force plans that would require at least 40,000 American troops to remain in Iraq. Edwards seems to support less, but he has personally muted the differences between the three of them on this issue, which I don't take as a particularly good sign.
Now, on other major issues, it seems that at lest one of these three has yet to release a major proposal of some sort. For example, I can't find anything significant about immigration on Edwards's issue page. Also, apart from pre-school I can't find anything about education on Clinton's website. Further, I can't find much of anything about trade on either Obama's or Clinton's websites. Still, I imagine that when they do all release their plans, there will not be significant differences. Further, for anything that must go through Congress, which is just about all of this, what slight differences there are likely to be erased in the legislative process.
The point is that I am not sensing much of anything in the way of policy differences that could be leading to the great differences in support the three candidates are receiving at Dailykos (39% Edwards, 21% Obama, 11% Clinton). The major policy differences seem to be coming from the so-called "second tier" candidates. Dodd, who is at 7%, is in favor of a carbon tax and voted against Levin-Reid from the left. Richardson, who has seen his support at Dailykos drop recently, has been campaigning on no residual forces for some time. Kucinich, who regularly hovers in the mid-single digits, is in favor of single payer health care, and a whole range of other left-wing policy proposals. These candidates, however, have not combined for more than 14% of the vote in the Dailykos straw poll since May, and have never combined for more than 18% of the vote in the straw poll.
Given the general lack of difference between the top three, I can only conclude that something other than policy proposals are the driving force behind the candidate preferences of the majority of people who participate in Dailykos straw polls. Now, I know it is isn't exactly a shock that not everyone chooses which candidate to support for President based on policy positions. There are other and, I think, valid reasons to support a candidate, even if these reasons are fairly nebulous. Several reasons I can think of include:
- Relative connection to the "elite / establishment" and "netroots / grassroots," aka, who someone will side with in the party once they become its de facto leader.
- Sense of a "progressive core," aka, what are the general tack will a candidate adopt in policy areas that are currently unforeseen in the campaign.
- "Electability," both personally and in terms of down ticket races.
- "Fighting the noise machine," or whether or not a candidate is likely to fight back against Republican attacks, both personally and when such attacks are lobbed at progressive more generally more generally.
- Partisanship, or the degree to which someone will fight for the entire party or just triangulate in order to improve his or her own position within the political and media establishment.
- Cultural / identity politics, or the potential offered by having the first member of a given demographic group occupy the highest office in the land.
- "Leadership," or the degree to which a candidate will fight to move the rest of the party and the country in a more progressive direction.
While clearly there is a minority segment voting on policy, as seen perhaps most clearly by the steady support of Kucinich in the straw poll, the majority of the decision making for the participants in the Dailykos straw poll seems to come from these are other, non-policy related areas.
As I already said above, I want to emphasize that I don't think that this sort of decision-making is necessarily wrong. Some of these issues matter to me quite a bit, although to varying degrees (1,2,4 and 5 jump out at me as important). However, I think it is fair to say that these criteria are also much more nebulous than policy differences, and that they are also more similar to the decision making process of "low information" voters than policy focused differences. Regarding the latter, I cringe when I hear about people supporting someone in a primary based on a "gut feeling," for example. Mainly, I dislike this sort of response because I don't think there is anyway to sway a voter like that, making it extremely disempowering from an activist perspective. Also, it feels dangerously close to treading into the vacuous "change versus experience" territory that has unfortunately dominated much campaign coverage so far. Maybe it is simply a bruise to my ego as a netroots activist, but I like to think we rise above all of that online more frequently than in other medias.
So, rather than making any definitive statements, I want to use this post mainly to ask a question: do you base your vote mainly on policy distinctions between candidates, or mainly on other, non-policy oriented factors such as, but not limited to, those that I listed above? I know that it is probably a mix for most people, and also probably varies from election to election, but in the poll attached to this post I am asking you to identify which side toward which you lean most heavily in 2008. If you side mainly with non-policy qualities in your 2008 decision making process, I'd also like to hear from you in the comments as to what those qualities are.
And yes, this is connected to Richardson dropping in the Dailykos straw poll, despite his stance on no residual forces. Primarily, I am interested in listening to people on this one, and understanding where they are coming from.
Update: Reading over all the comments both here and at Dailykos, I will certainly say one thing. It strikes me that people have so many different ways that they select candidates, that most arguments over candidates online are probably talking past each other. there simply isn't agreement on how to select a candidate, much less on which candidates match up to different criteria. This has been very enlightening.
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