A FB correspondent remarks:
The trouble is, presenting facts doesn’t work. They ignore their failures, and just repeat their mantras. Bah. I wonder if the people of Kansas will bother to notice.
Let’s look at what we can know, which is the results of surveys. Governor Brownback, former Senator for Kansas, was elected in 2010, winning a four way race with 63% of the vote, according to Ballotpedia. At the time, cjonline.com (Topeka Capital-Journal) reported,
Immediate priorities in the Statehouse will be cutting state taxes and regulations in an effort to spur private-sector job growth, Brownback said. He vowed to reduce state government spending.
“My vision for Kansas is to see our economy grow so we will be able to fund the state’s core services,” he said. “My economic growth team and I are working hard to develop a balanced budget and tax plan, which will release the entrepreneurial spirit of Kansans and create the economic environment necessary for Kansas to become more globally competitive.”
Taking his vote percentage as an approval rating is probably a dubious practice, but it’s indicative of his dominance (second place had 32%). What happened in the 2014 election? Again, according to Ballotpedia, this time he won 49.8% to 46.1%, with a libertarian candidate taking the rest. His approval rating in 2011, according to local news station KWCH, was 51%, but in 2013 fell to 35% ; during the 2014 race, polling seemed to show he was frequently behind his opponent, to the extent that his campaign protested the cjonline.com poll, conducted by SurveyUSA:
In the midst of a challenging re-election campaign in 2014, Brownback’s staff now takes a disparaging view of SurveyUSA’s capacity to sample the public’s political pulse. The Clifton, N.J., company’s latest poll in Kansas’ race for governor, revealed Tuesday, had Democrat Paul Davis leading 48 percent to 40 percent for Brownback.
“SurveyUSA has a history of inaccurate polling,” said John Milburn, a spokesman for the governor and former Associated Press reporter who covered Brownback and other Kansas politicians for more than a decade. “This latest release from the organization is more of the same.”
Brownback campaign manager Mark Dugan, who worked for Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, discounted SurveyUSA’s work product as “another absurd poll showing the governor losing.”
Was the polling inaccurate? Biased? FiveThirtyEight had forecast Brownback to lose – big:
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is in trouble for three related reasons: a Republican party split, economic woes and education. For as long as most of us have been alive, Kansas has leaned to the right, practicing its own brand of moderate Republicanism. Brownback, though, has governed as a pure conservative.
It has hurt him; Democrat Paul Davis has been endorsed by scores of moderate Republicans upset by cuts to education necessitated by Brownback’s large tax cuts.
According to SurveyUSA, taxes and education remain among the most important issues to voters in 2014. The result has been disenchanted Republicans. The share of registered Republicans in Kansas was 9 percentage points higher than the share of self-identified Republicans, according the latest Marist College poll. Many of these Republicans now identify as independent, a group Davis is winning by a 26-point margin.
Although polls have narrowed from a few months ago, most surveys have Davis riding Republican discontent to a lead. He’s an 82 percent favorite.
However, they do not appear to have conducted any polls of their own, just relied on others. I found this courtesy Kevin Waisfeld, who goes on to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude.
So, back to the original question: do people learn? I think they do. Not enough, in this case; or perhaps they decided to accept the Governor’s assertion that he just needs more time. That might be understandable, although in four years a lot of damage can be done. But I think that electing a governor involves issues that are close to home: highways and education. Let’s be honest: even WAR seems far away and irrelevant if you don’t have family members in the service – and there’s no draft to spread fear and discontent amongst the eligible; foreign policy? For wonks. Social Security and MediCare – hardly anyone touches those any more, and if they do they get to retire.
But when it’s close up and personal, then people do learn. Which, of course, doesn’t really explain the Minnesota experience of an improved economy resulting in the Democrats losing the state House of Representatives.
