Congressional Democrats are pushing to give most Americans $ 2,000 stimulus checks, arguing that this is a quick and direct way to help millions of Americans as they struggle with the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. President Trump also supports payments of $ 2,000, but most Republicans in Congress do not. Because of opposition from the Republican Party in Congress, $ 2,000 checks are unlikely to become law. But Democrats think they have an issue of electoral victory ahead of the second round of the US Senate in Georgia.
Why many researchers are out of Georgia’s runoff
Public opinion seems to be on the side of the Democrats. Seventy-eight percent of Americans said they supported these $ 2,000 stimulus checks, compared with 17% who opposed them, according to a survey conducted December 22-28 by Data for Progress. Likewise, a survey conducted by Business Insider and Survey Monkey on December 21 found that 62 percent of Americans said that the $ 600 stimulus checks adopted in a recent project are not enough; 76 percent said payments should be more than $ 1,000.
[Why A Split Verdict In Georgia Isn’t That Crazy]
So the Democrats are putting a lot of pressure on the issue. Georgia Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have strongly embraced the $ 2,000 payment plan. His Republican opponents, Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are also suggesting that they support payments. But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is creating procedural barriers to prevent $ 2,000 payments from being passed in the Senate, giving Ossoff and Warnock the opportunity to suggest that Loeffler and Perdue are impediments to payments, as they support McConnell’s continuation as a majority leader.
So this all looks good for Democrats, right? Well, maybe. Democrats are promoting a popular idea just before what look like very tight elections, and the Republican Party is blocking it. The question may well help Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia next week. But we shouldn’t be so sure, for some reasons …
First, it is unclear whether voters care so much about politics when deciding who to vote for.
The most reliable indicator of how Americans will vote is partisanship: voters with a Republican tendency support Republican candidates and voters with a Democratic tendency support Democratic candidates. These party labels and identities, of course, contain ideological and political connotations: the Republican Party, at least rhetorically, is more cautious with large broad-based spending programs than the Democratic Party. But these implications do not seem to motivate the choice of vote. There are many examples of a party promoting unpopular ideas without its voters switching to the other party. For example, the Republican Party agenda in 2017 and 2018, attempting to repeal Obamacare and cut taxes for corporations, was quite unpopular among Republican voters, but these voters still overwhelmingly supported Republican Party candidates in the 2018 semester.
The Data for Progress survey suggests that 73% of Republicans nationally support payments of $ 2,000, including 52% who strongly support them. Based on these figures, most Republicans in Georgia are almost certain to support payments. Indeed, a DFP survey of likely Georgia voters conducted November 15-20, found that 63 percent of voters in the state said they would be more likely to support a candidate who favored a $ 1,200 payment for the majority. of Americans as part of a COVID-19 relief package. That 63 percent figure also suggests that these payments are widely popular and receive some support from Republican Party voters.
But it is very unlikely that many Republicans will support Democratic candidates in Georgia because of this issue. Yes, the two elections seem to be close, so even a small change in voting preferences is important. But in such a fierce election, if Ossoff and Warnock narrowly win, I would hesitate to attribute that victory to Democrats ‘support for this stimulus payment and McConnell’s opposition, as opposed to factors like the Democrats’ strong exit from voting operations in the state, Loeffler and Perdue’s weaknesses as candidates and Georgia’s growing liberalism.
[Related: Why Georgia Isn’t Like The Other Battleground States]
What about undecided / independent voters and others who are not necessarily linked to one of the two parties? Well, the evidence suggests that these types of voters do not necessarily have well-defined political preferences and also do not pay much attention to politics. So perhaps this stimulus debate will convince them that Republicans in Washington need to be dethroned. Alternatively, perhaps these voters are not as attuned to this stimulus debate as much as, say, Loeffler’s ads classifying Warnock as a radical or Warnock’s ads portraying himself as a good dog owner.
Second, voters may like Democratic economic ideas more than Democrats themselves.
In recent years, electoral initiatives to raise the minimum wage and expand Medicaid have been passed in conservative-minded states, where state lawmakers and Republican governors have blocked similar policies. But Republicans are still winning elections in those areas. This happened in Florida this year. A proposal to gradually raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour by 2026 was approved in the State of Sol, with 61% of voters adopting it. But Joe Biden, who strongly supports a $ 15 minimum wage, obtained only 48% of the vote in Florida, compared with 51% for Trump, who has been more circumspect about minimum wage increases.
These voting patterns are another illustration that partisanship cancels – or is simply independent – from voters’ political preferences, but there are other potential reasons for this disconnect. Voters can support certain economically populist ideas, but they can be wary of too much economic populism if they elect a Democratic candidate. Some voters may support the Democrats’ economic populism, but not support the party because it is very progressive on issues such as abortion rights or policing. For example, in the 2016 election, Lee Drutman, a New America scholar and contributor to FiveThirtyEight, found that voters who lean toward the conservative on issues such as immigration, but who lean to the left on economic issues, were more likely to support Trump than Hillary Clinton. Finally, many voters are simply not in tune with which party or candidate favors which policies.
When you bring this to Georgia, you can easily imagine some undecided voters who support $ 2,000 payments to Americans, but are even more supportive of supporting Republican Senate candidates and ensuring that Democrats in Washington do not have control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Finally, Trump shuffled the policy of stimulus checks.
You can also imagine that some voters are just confused about this issue. If Trump strongly supports the $ 2,000 checks and Loeffler and Perdue also indicate support for them, it may not be entirely clear to voters that the broader Republican Party is still opposed to payments and is the obstacle to getting them approved. Particularly in this lame period for Trump, McConnell is the most important Republican in Washington in terms of politics. But Trump remains the party’s defining figure for most voters and in an electoral context. If Trump is declaring that he supports $ 2,000 payments, voters in Georgia may conclude that Republicans support them more widely, even if McConnell is blocking payments and Loeffler and Perdue are effectively helping him do so, as is case here.
[What The Early Vote In Georgia Can — And Can’t — Tell Us]
That said, this debate over direct payments coinciding with the Georgia elections showed how electoral policy and governance intersect in interesting ways. While it is not clear whether the stimulus payments debate will affect election results, It’s Of course, the next election affected the stimulus debate. Republicans were concerned about opposition to direct payments on the eve of the Georgia race, helping to ensure that $ 600 for most Americans was put into the economic stimulus COVID-19 that Trump signed on Sunday. Republicans are now concerned about a possible electoral reaction in Georgia for opposing the $ 2,000 payments. These electoral concerns have resulted in Loeffler and Perdue, who generally take more conservative positions, breaking with McConnell and other Republicans to publicly support payments. (Of course, Loeffler and Perdue are likely to follow McConnell’s strategies to ensure that $ 2,000 payments do not become law.)
Therefore, Democrats may have figured out how to get more populist policies to be adopted: push them around election time. But even if Ossoff and Warnock win next week, the evidence that popular economic policies are automatically electoral incentives for Democrats will be somewhat weak.