GOP Convention: Paul Ryan, Ann Romney, Gov. Christie on "Polls"

Paul Ryan takes the stage Wednesday night at the Republican Convention in Tampa. About three-quarters of Americans give an opinion of Ryan when asked, but it is unclear exactly how in-depth those opinions are, given his relatively short period of time on the national stage. As I point out in this analysis, Ryan has become better known since Aug. 12, but opinions of him are slightly less positive now than they were then.

Given Ryan's historical record in Congress, the assumption is that his speech Wednesday night will focus on the government's budget, the deficit, entitlement programs, and spending. Focusing on the government is not new; I believe that it is the most important and central theme of this election. Republicans view government warily and want less of it. Democrats view government charitably and want government to be more involved in society's efforts to ameliorate social and economic problems.

Several themes emerged from the two major speeches delivered in prime time Tuesday night -- by Ann Romney and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. One them was gender. Ann Romney explicitly focused on women in her speech. That makes sense from a polling perspective. The gender gap in American politics is alive and well, as I documented here. Taken as a whole, women support Obama by 50% to 42% over Romney, based on the three weeks of Gallup Daily tracking ending Sunday, Aug. 26. Men, on the other hand, support Romney over Obama by 51% to 41%.

Among independent voters, the target Ann Romney was most likely aiming for, the gender gap is muted but still evident. On the other hand, some analysis I just completed shows that undecided voters -- so far in August about 8% based on our tracking data -- are slightly more likely to be male than female.

Meanwhile, Gov. Chris Christie's speech stole some of Ryan's likely thunder by focusing on the role of government in society. As noted, that's a broadly dominant theme in general among Republicans this year. At a time when only 22% of Americans say they have a positive image of the federal government, and 60% say they have a negative image of government, it provides an easy target.

It should be remembered in view of Ryan's speech that he is a sitting member of Congress, a body which currently gets an all-time low job approval rating of 10%. We'll see what Barack Obama and Joe Biden have to say about their views of the federal government next week.

Christie also took on unions in his speech, particularly teachers' unions -- a body against which he has been waging war in New Jersey. Unions have a 52% job approval rating among Americans at this point, same as last year, but up slightly from the 48% of 2009, the lowest in Gallup's history. That history, by the way, dates back to 1936, making union approval one of the first questions asked by Gallup lo those many years ago. Christie was preaching to the choir re unions in terms of his audience of fellow Republicans, who give unions very low approval ratings. Of course, next week, it will be a completely different story. Democrats have overwhelmingly positive opinions of unions. We'll have more on unions going into Labor Day weekend here at gallup.com

One last point. Christie certainly got my attention when he mentioned polls in his speech on Tuesday night. Here's what he said:

There's only one thing missing now. Leadership. It takes leadership that you don't get from reading a poll. You see, Mr. President -- real leaders don't follow polls. Real leaders change polls. That's what we need to do now. Change polls through the power of our principles. Change polls through the strength of our convictions. Tonight, our duty is to tell the American people the truth.

This is not a new sentiment, but an important one. It exemplifies the historical trade-off between a focus on elected representatives (including governors) attempting to pay attention to and heed the will of the people they represent, as opposed to doing what the elected representatives think best and hoping that the people will follow. By "change polls" I assume Christie was implying that if elected representatives do what they personally think best, even if it goes against the will of the majority of the people as measured by polls, the majority of the people will ultimately come to realize the error of their ways and change their attitudes about the issue.

And there is the issue of the verb "follow" as well. When Christie says "real leaders don't follow polls" does he mean that they ignore polls and by inference ignore the attitudes and will of the people?

That's a pretty dangerous path to go down. In my view, real leaders pay close attention to the will of the people as measured by polls and take that will into account as a highly important (but not sole) source of input and wisdom in making necessary policy decisions.

Last September we asked the American public "If the leaders of our nation followed the views of public opinion polls more closely, do you think the nation would be better off, or worse off than it is today?" We found that 68% said "better off." So, I guess it can be said that Gov. Christie was exemplifying his own beliefs Tuesday night -- as he was himself not following the polls when he made his statement about not following the polls.