Most Arizona Republicans want their governor to veto a bill allowing discrimination against homosexuals. A political number cruncher quantifies the Academy Awards' woman problem. And Rasmussen quantifies Clown Hate. This is HuffPollster for Tuesday, February 25, 2014.
ARIZONA GOP FAVORS VETO OF SB1062 - Jim Small: "A poll commissioned yesterday by a Phoenix political consulting firm finds that more than twice as many Republican [likely] voters in Arizona want Gov. Jan Brewer to veto SB1062 than want her to sign it. In the automated poll of 802 Republicans by Coleman Dahm, a Republican political consulting firm in Phoenix, 57.1 percent of [Republican] respondents who were asked about the bill said they would like Brewer to veto it. Only 27.6 percent said they want her to sign SB1062. The remaining 15.3 percent had no opinion. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points. The controversial bill, which many say will allow businesses to use their religious beliefs as a reason to discriminate against homosexuals, has put Arizona in the national spotlight over the past week." [Arizona Capitol Times]
The text of the question - Coleman Dahm shared the question text with HuffPost: "Should Governor Brewer veto Senate Bill 1062, which redefines and expands the state's definition of 'exercise of religion'? This bill allows an individual, business, or corporation the right to refuse service to someone based on that individual, business, or corporation’s religious beliefs."
'PROJECT IVY' TAKES OBAMA DATA TECH DOWN BALLOT Zeke Miller: "[T]the Democratic National Committee announced a new effort Monday to make the advanced data tools used by the Obama campaign available to Democratic candidates across the country. The initiative, nicknamed Project Ivy, will take many of the sophisticated data, analytics, and communications tools used by the Obama campaign out of storage, allowing them to be used by Democratic candidates from school board to Senate...The project is built on top of the party’s longstanding Votebuilder database, which holds detailed records on more than 200 million Americans accumulated over the course of more than a decade of political activity." [Time]
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE OSCAR'S 'WOMAN PROBLEM' - Amelia Showalter, former Director of Digital Analytics for the 2012 Obama campaign: "Being a professional numbers nerd, I decided to cross-reference 80-plus years of data on acting nominations and best picture nods to see if any patterns emerged. The gender differences were surprisingly distinct. First, I noticed that actresses, unlike actors, are more likely to be nominated for performances in films that are not nominated for best picture. Films with meaty roles for women are, by and large, considered lower caliber by the Academy. Meanwhile, within the universe of movies that do get nominated for best picture, women-centric films are much less likely to win. Zero Dark Thirty and Black Swan, for instance, were good enough to make it to the final round in their respective years. But they joined a long line of actress-driven films that failed to win. In other words, the problem is not just that Hollywood produces too few films about women (and therefore smaller raw numbers of potential nominees). It's that even among those select films that meet the Academy's nomination threshold, the success rate for female-centered films is dramatically lower than the success rate for male-centered films. Women's stories, the data show, are not particularly valued by the Academy." [Newsweek]
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TUESDAY'S 'OUTLIERS' - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-57 percent of Americans think the United Nations is doing a poor job. [Gallup]
-52 percent of Americans approve of President Obama's decision to meet with the Dalai Lama, and just 14 percent disapprove. [YouGov]
-PPP (D) finds a narrowing Iowa Senate race, although Democrat Bruce Braley still leads. [PPP]
-A Fabrizio-Lee (R) poll commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce shows a close race in Florida's 13th District. [National Journal]
-The Hawaii Senate race remains in a "holding pattern." [Honolulu Civil Beat]
-Charlie Cook reports on a poll showing "broad-based support" for normalizing relations with Cuba. [National Journal]
-"Election polling in India is a notoriously unreliable exercise." [The Diplomat, via @LSimonetta]
-Corey Hulse reminds us that pie charts suck. [GraphGraph via @KWCollins]
-Colin Elman describes the data that will be shared through the Qualitative Data Repository. [WaPost's Monkey Cage]
-Selfiecity provides a detailed visual exploration of 3,200 selfies from five major cities around the world. [Flowing Data, Selfiecity]
-"Seventeen percent (17%) of government workers have considered running off with the circus, the highest of any working demographic." [Rasmussen]