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Incurious George famously didn’t govern by polls and didn’t read the newspapers. In Bushie’s case this is the fallacy of the false premise, in that Bushie didn’t govern — Rove and Cheney governed. But elected representatives in legislative bodies seem to love to say, "I personally disagree with my vote, but that’s what my constituents want me to do." What do they base that on? Apparently phone calls and e-mails are the thing. Here are two examples I’ve collected.
In the 2009 session of the New Mexico Legislature, a bill (Senate Bill 12) was introduced that would have established domestic partnerships as a form of registered relationship here in New Mexico. Christian churches generally opposed the measure, but the Roman Catholic Church was particularly active about its opposition. The Democratic Party has solid control of both houses of the legislature, and Governor Bill Richardson was known to favor passage of the measure. So, why don’t we have domestic partnerships in New Mexico?
The measure had to go through the Senate Judiciary Committee to make it to the floor. When the vote was taken, one Democratic Senator was absent from the room (Bernadette Sanchez, D-Bernalillo) and another voted "Nay" (Richard Martinez, D-Espanola). The motion failed because the vote was 5-5 with Senator Sanchez not voting.
Why did Senator Martinez vote against the measure? Let’s put this in his words, as quoted in the Albuquerque Journal. (Warning: this is behind a subscription wall)
"I’ve probably gotten more e-mails and calls about a ‘yes’ vote since I voted against it than I did prior to the vote," Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Española, said Tuesday.
Martinez estimated he had gotten only 10 messages in support of the bill, compared to some 800 against it."I’ve always been a strong advocate of people’s civil rights," Martinez said. "I think gay rights falls under the same category, I sure do, but that’s not why I voted the way I voted. It’s because my constituency sent me the message that they did not want me to vote for it. I’m here for them."
In other words, "I disagree with my vote, but that’s what my constituents wanted me to do."
What did Senator Sanchez have to say about her absence? Again, from the Journal.
Sen. Bernadette Sanchez, D-Albuquerque, missed the vote because of what she described as an important phone call, but she later told reporters she would have voted no.
"My constituents want me to vote no," Sanchez said.
A "no" vote by Sanchez would have defeated a favorable recommendation on the bill with a 6-5 committee vote.
I think we can assume that Sanchez’s communication ratio was probably similar to Martinez, 50:1 against or so. The question of course, is what evidentiary value do these sorts of things have? Most of the time we have no way to tell, but in this case we do. The ACLU commissioned surveys of registered voters in Martinez and Sanchez’s districts. The survey was conducted by Research and Polling, Inc of Albuquerque. What did the ACLU find?
The chief question was, "A state law has been proposed that would allow two adults, regardless of their gender, to become domestic partners. It would give them the same legal rights and protections as a married couple. This would include the right to make medical decisions for each, to be next of kin if one them died and receive similar health and financial protections that married couples now get."
In each district, more than 60 percent of the registered voters interviewed said they either strongly or somewhat supported that proposal.
The margin of error on the survey (n about 400 in each district) was 5%. In other words, a solid majority of the registered voters in both districts favored the passage of SB-12. So, what do you suppose Senators Martinez and Sanchez thought of the results?
Asked Friday by the Journal what effect the survey might have on his position, Martinez said, "None whatsoever."
"The questions were asked so they could get the answers they wanted," Martinez said. "It doesn’t change my mind in any way."
Sanchez also said the survey didn’t change her thinking, but she declined to elaborate, saying "I’m through talking about this bill."
Senator Sanchez at least had some change of heart, because a few days later a motion to reconsider was made in the Judiciary Committee. Sen Sanchez did not have an important phone call this time, and voted, "Aye." Unfortunately, SB 12 failed on the Senate floor. While Sanchez voted to pass SB-12 in committee she voted against the measure on the floor.
I promised you two examples. The second example is fresh news, just this week. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll showed that 76% of the sample respondents favor a public option in any health care reform enacted. The key question and its tabulation are below. (Warning: this is a pdf.)
In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance — extremely important (41%), quite important (35%), not that important (12%), not at all important (8%), not sure (4%). The margin of error is about 4%.
But we hear from the White House and Congress that calls are running heavily against any public option. Quelle suprise, non? The insurance lobby are like a husband caught having sex with his wife’s best friend: "What are you going to believe, baby? Me, or your lyin’ eyes?"
Now, I’m well aware that we have a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. One of the fundamentals of a representative democracy is that the representatives cast votes, but they are responsible to us for those votes. As Mark Kleiman says in the header of The Reality-Based Community everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. The facts (survey data are facts) are that most Americans want a public option in the course of health care reform.
Dear politicians: surveys are data, telephone calls are anecdotes. Anecdotal data are notoriously unreliable. If someone is out there whipping a minority to act, telephone calls and e-mails can easily run 80:1 against. It is well-known that negative opinions are stronger motivators than positive opinions. The Church is rabidly opposed to any recognition of gay relationships. The insurance industry is rabidly opposed to any effective public option in health care reform. They are busily creating astroturf groups to whip opposition, they are running frightening commercials about rationing and losing our doctors.
I’m not sure there’s ever a time to listen to anecdotal data for anything but a good story. If there is, this is not the time. If you care about public opinion, then study the polls. More important than studying the polls, study the economic issues. Figure out how best to fix this disaster that is posing as a health-care finance system. (By the way, here’s a free ticket for one leg on the Clue Bus: the problem lies in health care finance, not in the quality of care.) Once you figure out how to fix it, then pass legislation that will fix it.
I’ve studied this issue, and I have opinions on the matter. I believe that fundamental changes are necessary to fix the problems we have. Anything that fiddles with the margins, like requiring private insurers to insure all comers without controlling their pricing and benefit structures isn’t going to get the job done. Simply passing a law requiring people to carry health insurance isn’t going to get the job done. If you doubt that, look at Massachussetts. It doesn’t work.
The facts are the same for all of us, our opinions may differ. If your opinions differ from mine, that’s fine. But please do me the courtesy of explaining how you’ve reasoned from the facts to your conclusion. I’m really interested, not least because I fully intend to hold you responsible if your fixes don’t work.
12 Comments
You get a recommend merely for the defense of data based decision making. But the thing is politicians don’t actually do that. Okay, that is too broad many don’t do it that way. One of the sad things about politics is lots of really smart people don’t have the skills to run. These can be developed, but when you are smart and used to people valuing you for that, it is often hard to get into the constant proving mode you have to have as a politician.
This leads to a lot of pols who are average in intelligence but good looking and well spoken, if not very deep in their critical thinking. Since the support of the people is what they need and humans tend to focus on the negative feed back they get instead of the positive they get run around like the Dems in your story.
New Mexico is a majority Roman Catholic state, and Sen Martinez’s district (Espanola, NM) is especially heavy in what are known here as Hispanic families. Around here, the term Hispanic means your great-to-the-n grandparents came up the Jornada del Muerto with Juan de Onate or shortly afterwards. (This is an illustration of what I call the Wallace Principle: Anything that works demonstrably elsewhere will fail in New Mexico.) These families tend to be have deep cultural roots in the Roman Catholic church. The Archbishop of Sante Fe came early and vocally against SB-12, and I’m sure his parish priests put out the message too.
I don’t doubt that Martinez’ communications ran 80:1 against. Bernalillo is not quite as Catholic as Espanola, but it’s close.
I guess my bottom line to legislators may be counterproductive to what we are trying to do, which is to run citizen-whipping projects. But the fact is, our whipping efforts are not necessarily indicative of the real opinions in any district. If legislators feel a need to know what the folks at home are thinking, they need to study (and if necessary, commission) polls.
There is also the politician’s dodge that a letter-writing constituent represents 10x non-letter writing constituents’ opinions. I think we need to continue whipping; it’s the way politicians defend their votes. But we also need to use polling results, perhaps in our whipping?
Thanks for this great diary. Recommended.
That 10:1 ratio is based on nothing that I can tell.
What you can tell is that someone who bothers to write a letter is strongly motivated. What you can’t tell is why they are strongly motivated. If they are strongly motivated because they’re being whipped by some interest group, then they probably don’t represent 10 other voters.
And we certainly should use polling results in our whipping when the polls favor our position. We should probably use them even when the polls say the public isn’t behind our position, but then we really need to explain the policy issues and why the sheeple are wrong.
It seems that our legislators are resisting evidence based legislation as vigorously as some MD’s resist evidence based medicine.
We do have a problem with health care quality in this country- as well as with health care finance. Self reporting and peer review? Not so effective.
As long as we are more focused on assessing blame and responsibility than we are on fixing systemic problems that cause bad outcomes we will have horrible problems with self-reporting and peer-review.
Our medical malpractice system is a part of this problem, maybe even a large part of it. People who are harmed by the medical system should be made whole, or as whole as possible. We need better monitoring systems in our post-graduate medical training. We need better monitoring systems in our licensing procedures, but they have to be instituted intelligently.
High rates of adverse outcomes might indicate a problem. Then again, they might not. An obstetrician who handles lots of high-risk pregnancies will have a high level of adverse outcomes because of the nature of her practice. A garden-variety obstetrician who has a high rate of adverse outcomes may well indicate problem.
Self-reporting and peer-review are anything but one-size-fits-all processes.
re evidence based legislation
i so want to see some comprehensive CBO scoring for the various healthcare reform proposals.
There will be once there are some proposals to score. The problem will be to keep them honest about it.
there appears to be some resistance to even doing the scoring (nothing on the single payer bills, incomplete scoring on the recent senate bill, etc).
I’m not a congressional staffer and I’ve never worked in the CBO, but I’m guessing those folks have plenty to do without working out the budgeting for things not expected to reach the floor of either house.
On the other hand, it’s very clear that this stuff is going to hit the floors of both houses.
I think we also have to remember that the last time something like this was tried (Medicare Part D), the Congress got bamboozled by Incurious George’s minions. The bad part of that is that the CBO was left holding the dirty end of the stick.
And here’s one more possibility: nobody wants this scored because no one wants any more leaks (and you can bet the Republitards will leak it) to cause Senators to have a serious case of the vapors.
I think the point that we need to push on the cost side is this. Why is it shocking and horribly problematic when a CBO partial report comes out and says reforming our health care chaos is going to cost $1.6T over 10 years, while when George W. Bush proposed tax cuts amounting to $1.9T over 10 years everything’s hunky-dory? Worse, those tax cuts were heavily skewed to benefit the wealthiest among us.
I agree with many of your points; but even when a hospital risk management department is there to provide cover, some physicians refuse to participate in peer review and hospital admins don’t have any impetus to compel compliance.
With regard to licensing, Why a different set of standards for physicians vs. nurses?
As for high risk populations, data is risk adjusted for severity of illness; not a problem.
Sorry for the delay in responding, my time to blog is very limited.
my understanding (can’t easily find the link at the moment) is that the cbo will do the analysis if requested by a committee chair, committee ranking member, member of the house or senate leadership. additionally by individual member request is as time/resources permit.
but my main issue is that by scoring only for federal budget costs the budget hawks will have ammo to do cost shifting. that’s why i want to see the numbers for costs to states, to employers and to households.
i don’t want to end up with something that increases total costs so much that everyone hates it and it goes down in flames (with the Rs being able to say that Ds are for expensive gov programs that suck). that could be worse than nothing.