Data In One Place.
By Tom Smith and John Ellis.
(Source: agnusreid.org)
2. American Pessimism:
As the country nears another inflection point in November, there are many citizens who feel its reign as a global hegemonic force is nearing a close. A majority (60%) of Americans believe the “American Age” will be over soon or is finished already. Three-in-ten (31%) say there is still more time left in its run as the chief global superpower, while one-in-ten (10%) believe there is no end in sight.
Past Trump voters (65%) are more likely than 2020 Biden voters (56%) to say America’s dominance on economic, political and cultural matters is over or ending soon. (Source: agnusreid.org)
3. Fox News Voter Analysis, Iowa Caucuses, 2024:
Iowa Republican caucus-goers were united in their desire for change in how the country is run – hardly surprising with a Democrat in the White House. The lion’s share (56%) would prefer substantial change, while one-third (33%) were looking for complete and total upheaval in the country’s governance. Trump had an advantage among those looking for substantial change, but those looking for complete upheaval turned the caucuses into a blowout. (Source: foxnews.com)
4. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has slightly increased his lead over second place Nikki Haley in New Hampshire with four days left until the state's first-in-the-nation primary, according to the results of the latest Suffolk University/NBC10 Boston/Boston Globe tracking poll. The survey results, released Friday morning, have Trump at 52%, two percentage points higher than he had polled in the first two days of the poll. Haley, meanwhile, dropped a percentage point, landing at 35%. DeSantis remained a distant third at 6% for the second straight day. Another 1% chose someone else, 4% were undecided and 1% refused to answer. The survey of 500 likely Republican primary voters was conducted from Jan. 17-18. The margin of error is 4.4%. (Ed. Note: Changes of percentage points within the margin of error are statistically meaningless. Source: nbcboston.com)
5. Axios:
Donald Trump's longtime pollster told donors and select supporters Friday that the former president "is set to deliver a South Carolina smackdown to Nikki Haley in her home state where she is best known," according to a private polling memo obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: The new polling sets high expectations for Trump in the critical South Carolina primary but may convince the GOP establishment to further consolidate behind Trump because the memo suggests that none of Trump's rivals have a chance going forward.
Trump is trying to effectively end the GOP primary next week with a big win in the New Hampshire primary after a 30-point victory in Iowa on Monday.
By the numbers: The poll conducted by Tony Fabrizio — Trump's chief pollster in 2016 and 2020, who is now working through the main Trump-aligned Super PAC — found Trump beating Haley by 39 points in the state where she was governor.
Fabrizio found Trump with 64% support in South Carolina, Haley with 25%, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 8%.
Fabrizio said 58% of Trump supporters will "definitely" vote for him while only 18% of Haley supporters say the same.
If DeSantis dropped out, Fabrizio found that more DeSantis voters went to Trump than Haley, a trend other polls have also found.
6. Nick Eberstadt:
Glad tidings about employment may have contributed the year-end holiday cheer on Wall Street, insofar as it was already clear in early December that the US had beaten a 2023 recession.
But a closer look at the prime age labor market numbers shows that that this crucial component of the US workforce has not broken free from some of its own ghosts of Christmas Past. More specifically: prime age men have not yet been able to exorcise the labor force woes that have been haunting them for the past two generations.
We see this clearly in Figure 4, which scales labor force participation rates for prime age men and prime age women against their 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
In the decade from late 2013 to late 2023, female workforce participation rates witnessed a roaring comeback: pushing well above the pre-pandemic ceiling from significantly depressed pre-Trump levels. For prime age men, on the other hand, the snap-back might charitably be described as tepid: barely recovering to 2019 levels. If we scale 2019 at 100, prime age female LFPRs were five points higher at the end of 2023 than a decade earlier—while prime male rates were up by barely a point.
So the prime age work force recovery is basically flying on just one engine. If we look at labor force performance for prime age women, we see records being set. Their work rates nowadays are higher than any ever previously clocked.
By contrast, US prime age men are still following the dismal trajectory that I detailed in Men Without Work back in 2016. Prime age LFPRs for men were only marginally higher in 2023 than a decade earlier, back in the “Obama doldrums”—even though employers today are still practically begging for job applicants.
And the 2023 work rate for prime age men was only a twitch higher than back in 1983.
In other words: work rates for prime age men today—after an economic recovery, during an economic expansion, and in the midst of a labor shortage—are barely as high as they were at the bottom of the trough after the severe Reagan-era recession. (Sources: aei.org, amazon.com)
7. Times of Israel:
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz would easily form a ruling coalition if elections were held today, and trumps Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the public’s preferred prime minister, according to opinion polls released Thursday and Friday.
The Maariv and Channel 12 news surveys demonstrated the ongoing public dissatisfaction with Netanyahu and his hardline, right-wing allies, and particularly their handling of events on and since October 7, when Hamas terrorists stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking over 240 people hostage.
According to Maariv, the parties in Netanyahu’s pre-war coalition would win just 44 Knesset seats compared to the 64 they won in the November 2022 elections, and two less than a previous poll by the daily, while parties in the previous ruling coalition would win 71 seats in the 120-member Knesset. (Source: timesofisrael.com)
8. Eurointelligence:
Here is the first poll (of German voters) we have seen that explicitly included Sahra Wagenknecht's newly-created party. She got 14%, the same as the SPD and a couple of points more than the Greens. This poll is of course only a snapshot. The number is so high because the pollster, Insa, included the party not with its initials BSW, but the name "Wagenknecht-Partei". She has name recognition. In another poll, she is now Germany's fourth most popular politicians, whereas Olaf Scholz's popularity has now sunk below that of the two AfD leaders.
As Insa also produced a normal poll, it is possible to deduce some of the potential voter movement. Of the 14%, 4 percentage points come from the AfD, 3 percentage points from the CDU, and 1 percentage point each from the SPD, FDP, and the Left Party. The latter will not reach the threshold for parliamentary representation. If the AfD and the Wagenknecht Party were excluded from a future coalition, there would only be a singular option for the next government: a CDU-led mega-grand coalition, with both the SPD and Greens as junior partners of approximately equal weight. This is a scenario that is almost optimal for both the AfD and the Wagenknecht party. Another ineffective grand coalition would only grow their voter base.
The other remarkable statistic is that the sum-total of the Wagenknecht party and AfD is 32%. This corresponds to our estimate that the AfD's potential is around one third, the same as the number of Germans who oppose the government's policies to support Ukraine. We don't see a big shift in the two-thirds/one-third split. The current policy will continue. But those who oppose Germany's engagement in Ukraine now have a choice between a party of the far-right and one on the left.
The fundamental difficulty for the Scholz-led government is that they did not have an answer to de-industrialization. It is no longer an abstract threat, but something that is happening and accelerating. (Source: eurointelligence.com. More on Sahra Wagenknecht here and here. The latter piece is particularly good.)
9. Eurointelligence:
Italy’s long economic stagnation is not just something you can see in charts and tables. It has a visual impact as well. But no image is as haunting as the one that encompasses every population data release: empty cradles in Italian infirmaries. The Italian economy faces a variety of problems. These have led to low productivity growth, and with it meager living standards. For the most part, they are at least theoretically solvable. There is almost nothing anyone can do, however, about Italy’s demographic decline.
The latest Istat birth-rate release is another sign of how acute the situation is. These figures are for 2022, as the population statistics usually lag by a year. They show Italy recording just 393,000 births that year, a record low. In 2010, Italy recorded 562,000 live births. Since then, this figure has been in inexorable decline, while the death rate has risen. Last year, deaths outstripped births by 321,000.
A long-read from Il Sole 24 Ore lays out starkly how this has already impacted the labor market. After the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, the percentage of Italian manufacturing firms reporting labor shortages shot up. Before 2020, the figure was generally around 1-2%. In Q3 2023, it was 9%.
According to Unioncamere, the Italian Union of Chambers of Commerce, labour shortages were responsible for €38 billion worth of lost added value in 2023. There are, of course, other shorter-term factors at play in the labour shortage. But the demographic situation is not helping. It is an enabler of the problem, even if it isn’t the trigger. (Source: eurointelligence.com)
10. The Telegraph:
UK Conservatives are heading for an electoral wipeout on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour, the most authoritative opinion poll in five years has predicted. The YouGov survey forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will sweep to power with 385 – giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority.
Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, the poll indicates, and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will be one of 11 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats. The result would be the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906, with an 11.5 per cent swing to Labour. It would all but guarantee Sir Keir’s party at least a decade in government, as no party with such a sizeable majority has ever lost the subsequent election.
There is also bad news for the Scottish National Party, which is predicted to lose almost half of its seats to Labour, retaining only 25. The poll surveyed 14,000 respondents over the course of New Year – around seven times as many people as a typical poll. Such a big sample size enabled YouGov to break down results by the constituencies in which the election will be fought using its Multi-Level Regression and Poststratification (MRP) method, which successfully forecast the 2017 and 2019 UK elections and more recently votes in Australia and Spain. (Source: telegraph.co.uk)
11. Voters in Taiwan recently handed a third consecutive victory to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which considers Taiwan separate from China and promotes a separate national identity. The election follows a recent Pew Research Center survey that examined how people in Taiwan feel about their own identity, as well as how they view China. While the Chinese government views Taiwan as a breakaway province, only 3% of people in Taiwan think of themselves as primarily Chinese. Nearly three-in-ten (28%) think of themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese, but the largest share by far (67%) see themselves as primarily Taiwanese. Although few in Taiwan identify as primarily Chinese, 40% still have an emotional connection to the mainland. Adults in Taiwan under the age of 35 are especially likely to identify as solely Taiwanese (83%). And women are more likely than men to do so (72% vs. 63%). (Source: pewresearch.org)
12. Pew Research:
Results of a Pew Research Center survey highlight language and customs as key components of national identity, while views on the importance of birthplace and religion are more divided.
Across more than 20 countries surveyed, a median of 91% say being able to speak their country’s most common language is important for being considered a true national, and 81% say sharing their country’s customs and traditions is important for true belonging. Views on the importance of birthplace and religion to national identity are mixed.
Of the four dimensions of national identity included in the survey, language is by far the most valued. In all countries where we asked about it, about eight-in-ten or more point to language as important for true belonging in the country. And in 13 countries, at least six-in-ten consider it a very important factor. (Source: pewresearch.org)