Nicole Sawran's blog

...to Republicans

By Bill McInturff and Liz Harrington
Public Opinion Strategies

It is very important to core Republican voters that the American president “is committed to keeping America strong and secure around the world.” This should not come as a surprise. Republican core voters differ from other voters by being more likely to support a president who “will be willing to act on our own without ally support if our country’s security is threatened.” Further, harder-edged messages regarding America's war on terror resonate much more strongly with Republicans than Democrats and Independents.

Our research, however, picks up a noteworthy shift in the dialogue with Republicans. Republican voters today have a new appreciation for an American foreign policy that stresses closer partnerships with other countries. Our survey results provide evidence for a trend away from Republican unilateralism and toward greater global engagement.

For example, Republican voters react positively to appeals for the need to work cooperatively to combat terrorism. Two messages: "America cannot face all of its enemies alone or solve the world’s problems alone" and "given all the threats in the world today, we have to work together" test almost equally well with Republicans as they do with Democrats and Independents. Our results also show that the third most important personal attribute Republican core voters seek out in a presidential candidate is the ability to show " the right balance of toughness and diplomacy in working with other countries." Additionally, party members now rate the issue of “America’s dependence on foreign oil” as among their top three international concerns other than Iraq.

The survey, though, provides a cautionary note for Republicans as well. There is an important bloc of swing voters who supported Bush last time by more than 20 points who today say they plan to vote for a Democratic candidate for president by eleven points. This segment is decidedly less receptive to a message only about America’s strength or acting alone and is more responsive to a broader message that talks about the country’s need to work with other countries around the world.

These voters tell us we are moving from the terrorism concerns post-9/11 to a world shaped by post-Iraq attitudes, which have helped convince these voters that American partnerships with other countries constitute a critical element of our security. Our survey shows us that a shift in language or tenor is required to appeal to these voters and that this shift can be accomplished without alienating the party’s core.

The bottom line is that going into 2008 Republican voters are much more receptive to messages stressing the need for global cooperation.

...to Democrats

By Geoff Garin
Peter D. Hart Research Associates

The attitudes revealed in the UN Foundation's polling represent a broad discomfort with, and to a significant extent an outright rejection of, what Americans have come to see as the "Bush doctrine" in world affairs. This discomfort positions Democrats to take the initiative in a new debate on foreign policy and national security issues.

The most salient elements of that indictment, which Democrats should capitalize on, include the following:

• an excessive inclination to depend on military responses in achieving national security objectives, to the exclusion of diplomatic responses;
• a stubborn willingness to “go it alone” in pursuing our objectives in the world, rather than enlisting the help and cooperation of other countries;
• a cavalier disregard about the value and importance of maintaining respect for America around the world, and allowing America’s good name to be tarnished in ways that make it harder for us to achieve our national interests; and
• a single-minded focus on terrorism as the only critical foreign policy and security issue of our time, at the expense of other important (and connected) priorities, including repairing America’s standing in the world and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

It is important for Democrats to recognize there is a new “sweet spot” in the discussion of how America should pursue its interests in the world, and that sweet spot is represented by the world “balance.” Americans are now looking for a president who will have the right balance between using military power and diplomacy. While the current Administration may be judged to have been woefully deficient in drawing the right balance, by no means should this be read to indicate that Americans now want a diplomacy-only approach or a military-never approach. If Iraq is one great fault line in the politics of national security, the other fault line revealed in this survey occurs around the question of whether a president should be willing to use military force unilaterally if it is necessary to protect the country. Democratic voters are on one side of this fault line, but (in contrast to our findings about Iraq) Independents come closer to Republicans in embracing someone who is willing to use military power on our own when necessary.

Indeed, while the intervening event of the Iraq war has changed the arc of public opinion in many important respects, one element that has not changed since 9/11 is that, at the end of the day, Americans want a president who “is committed to keeping America strong and secure around the world.” While there are significant opportunities for Democrats to express a clearly different view from Republicans about what it means to be strong and safe, protecting America’s security remains a threshold requirement for those who are seeking the public’s trust and confidence – particularly among the key swing elements of the electorate.