REMEMBERING ANDREW KOHUT - Andrew Kohut, the pollster who founded and led the Pew Research Center, died on Wednesday of complications from leukemia at the age of 73. Tributes immediately poured in from across the spectrum of survey research from those who knew him as a “boss,” "mentor“ and ”friend“ or simply as an ”honest broker and voice of sense and responsibility.“ They recalled Kohut as a ”a wonderful man and consummate professional“, a ”legend“ and ”an absolute giant in the study of public opinion."
From Gallup to Pew Research - Adam Bernstein: “A onetime graduate student in sociology, Mr. Kohut worked his way up the venerable Gallup organization in Princeton, N.J., and served as its president from 1979 to 1989. He left Gallup after its sale to a market research firm and co-founded Princeton Survey Research Associates, a polling business specializing in media, politics and public-policy studies. Simultaneously, he commuted to Washington to oversee a politics and policy research group headed by Times Mirror, formerly the parent company of the Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers. He stayed on when the Pew Charitable Trusts began funding the organization in 1996, and he became the first president of the Pew Research Center, founded in 2004. He led the organization until January 2013.” [WashPost]
The 'platinum standard’ - Norm Ornstein: “Andy Kohut…was not just the gold standard for public-opinion polling—he was the platinum standard. Andy knew everything about the realities and problems with polling. He insisted on rigid standards, and honed the questions and survey formats to be as accurate and as utterly objective as possible. He used some of the resources at Pew to examine what kinds of instruments work and don’t work in surveys, and to keep the industry as honest and competent as possible. There are good pollsters and good polling organizations out there, and a lot of smart and conscientious people in the profession. But no one, frankly, came close to Andy—and no organization even begins to rival the Pew Research Center he built.” [The Atlantic]
An ‘incomparable force of will’ - Michael Dimock, current president of the Pew Research Center: Andy’s force of will was incomparable, and he went into tackling his leukemia with the same drive, attention to detail and optimism that he brought to everything else in his life. To us, Andy was indestructible, which makes his loss inconceivable. But Andy will remain with us because of the impact his work will continue to have on the world. We at Pew Research Center live this every day, in an organization whose principles, methods and approach to doing research were forged by his leadership. He taught us the importance of innovation, relevance, rigor, objectivity, humility, and ultimately, getting it right. Andy’s values and mission drive the center, and we continue to strive to live up to the standard he set." [Pew Research]
A ‘Cold Eye’ for truth - Tom Rosenstiel: “When people saw or heard Andy, they sensed his passion for the truth….He was blunt and brilliant. He was intuitive and passionate. He was driven but creative. He cared deeply about the people he worked with and about the work of trying to understand the public mind. And he proved over and over in his career that you could flourish doing both. Those qualities made Andy not only the wisest interpreter of data about the public I’ve ever known. They made him a brilliant teacher and mentor, a colleague I trusted to always be honest with me, and an even better friend.” [Poynter]
‘It’s all about the question you ask’ - Kohut’s son, Matthew: “My dad started working as a public opinion pollster the year I was born, and he was keenly aware that asking the wrong question would elicit the wrong answer. Nothing was more important to him professionally than intellectual honesty in his work. He was an analyst, not an advocate. In presidential elections he did not root for Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives — he rooted for the number that resulted from trying to ask the right question and read the data with as little bias as possible. More often than not, he had his finger on the pulse. Though I didn’t inherit his gene for not taking sides in the political arena, he helped me develop a nose for faulty thinking and self-delusion.” [Medium]
Thank you, Andy - Mark Blumenthal: My perch in journalism has provided few honors as great as the opportunity to meet and learn from Andrew Kohut and benefit from his kindness. His philosophy for the measurement of voter preferences, taken from a 2006 interview, is worth remembering. Kohut: “[W]hat I learned from Paul Perry at the Gallup Organization was to not use ad-hoc judgments, but to focus on the survey measures that we use to estimate the size of the vote of the party or a candidate…I’m not a handicapper, I’m a measurer. There’s a difference….What I learned from Paul Perry - and I keep going back to him because he taught me everything I know about this - is that what you should be prepared to do is to have a way of measuring all of the things that you’re interested in covering and be able to look at those measurements in the current election relative to your experience in previous elections. And we try to do that.” [Pollster.com]
TRUMP SUCCESS DEFIES PREDICTION BUT STILL A LONGSHOT - Nate Cohn: "When Donald Trump reached the top of the polls in July, his candidacy seemed very familiar, at least to me. His coalition was ideologically incoherent, and he had no support from party elites. His surge looked like a media-driven phenomenon with no foundation — exactly the sort of candidacy prone to collapse once coverage turned negative. It was a story that played out over and over again in the 2012 campaign. Two months later, Mr. Trump has not gone bust, as I thought he would. He has demonstrated that he can drive the media as much as the media is driving his support. And his coalition is united as much by affection for his demeanor as his policies — insulating him from fallout over inflammatory remarks that would doom other candidates. Suddenly, the question isn’t whether Mr. Trump is different from someone like Herman Cain in 2012, but how different?....Is he so different that he could even win?...Mr. Trump may be very different from past candidates, but his story could easily end the way theirs did. He remains an extreme long shot, for the same reasons that no candidate remotely like him has ever come close to winning a presidential nomination. His chances will depend on the extent that his celebrity, media prowess and self-funding can defy the party elites who traditionally decide nomination contests." [NYT]
Trump surge not over yet - Daniel Donner: "And so far, all he's done is rise in the polls. In fact, he's now been climbing longer than any of the 2012 Not-Romney flavors-of-the-month. The other candidates this year have been patient all summer, millions at their beck and call, just waiting for the inevitable implosion. But all that has come has been a stream of insults from the Donald. The GOP is cowed and cowering. Even more remarkable, Trump started the spring almost universally known among the Republican electorate, but with terrible favorability ratings. In a few short months, his numbers have completely reversed—a dramatic, unheard-of occurrence. Can he keep on this way? Could he possibly end up winning the Republican nomination? The short answer is, who knows? [Daily Kos]
Has the Trump Phenomenon thrown campaign fundamentals out the window? -Amy Walter: "At this point, it feels like we are in some kind of an alternative universe election where up is down, black is white and east is west. On the GOP side, a blowhard reality TV star insults a war hero, attacks a popular Fox News anchor and rises in the polls. On the Democratic side, the prospects for the first female presidential nominee in history may be derailed by a 73-year old white male socialist from a state with more cows than people. Should we throw out all we know (or thought we knew) about politics? Do the so-called fundamentals we've all taken as political Gospel no longer apply? This election, like every election, has a mood and rhythm to it and the candidates that succeed are the ones that understand and adjust to it. Trump and Sanders have and continue to do this better than any other candidates. We may look back at this election as the one that re-wrote the rules. But, at this point, it’s too early to say that. [Cook Politics]
Press coverage misreads who Trump supporters really are - David W. Brady & Douglas Rivers: "When Donald Trump announced he was running for president on June 16, the idea seemed faintly ridiculous….A month later, Trump was at 15 percent. Despite a stream of what would seem like embarrassing gaffes for most candidates, he is now over 27 percent in the RealClearPolitics averages—well ahead of anyone else. The big loser seemed to be the former front-runner, Jeb Bush, who is now mired in the single digits. How did Trump manage this feat? Will we look back at this next year as just a reality TV episode gone wrong? Or is this a real disruption in American politics with a large block of disaffected voters having found their oracle? We don’t pretend to be able to predict the future, but we think that a lot of the press coverage of Trump misreads who is supporting him and what it means." [RCP]
THIS WEEK'S POLLS
-Two surveys find Sanders essentially tied with Clinton in Iowa [HuffPost, Quinnipiac]
-Bernie Sanders continues to look competitive in New Hampshire and Iowa [HuffPost, NBC/Marist]
-Joe Biden gets a 10 percentage point bump nationally while Hillary Clinton's lead weakens. [HuffPost, Monmouth University]
-Poll shows Donald Trump is both the most liked and most disliked candidate in Iowa; Walker's support falls to 3 percent. [Quinnipiac]
-Trump becomes the first GOP candidate to shoot past 30 percent. [CNN]
-Most Americans support sending Kim Davis to jail. [HuffPost]
-One in five voters say their candidate must share their stance on immigration, six in ten say it's a voting issue that they will consider. [Gallup]
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THIS WEEK'S 'OUTLIERS' - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-Despite variations in question wording on minimum wage, support for it has remained consistent over time. [HuffPost]
-Jonathan Bernstein attributes Obama's stable poll numbers to a lack of events to push approval higher or lower. [Bloomberg]
-Philip Bump explains why Clinton is holding strong nationally but losing her lead in Iowa. [WashPost]
-Nate Silver objects to a Trump-Sanders comparisons. [538]
-A Biden run would hurt Clinton, not Sanders. [WashPost]
-Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley compile presidential election filing deadlines in all 50 states. [Sabato]
-Michael McDonald compiles information on how to obtain voters lists in all 50 states. [Election Project]
-Margie Omero and Kristen Anderson talk to MRA's Howard Fienberg about how new FCC regulations will affect pollsters. [The Pollsters]