As Adam pointed out in his post earlier, the Deseret News story seems to make a conflict out of two findings that probably do not conflict. The seemingly different findings can be reconciled when a few basics about the nature of public opinion are understood. What are some of the basics?
First, information is quite important for having and shaping opinions. The more information in the environment about a particular policy, the more likely individuals are to have access to information.
Second, when individuals are asked specifics about policy or something else, those individuals who have the most information about that policy will be more likely to offer an opinion.
Third, the source of the information matters. Individuals have strong incentives to trust information from sources they find credible.
Finally, individuals who have relatively weak opinions about issues are the most likely to change their opinions. Conversely, people with strong opinions are least likely to change. Complicating the opinion-change calculation is that individuals with the strongest opinions are also the ones most likely to have information about policies (See John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion).
Taking all of these together, we would expect some uncertainty to appear among respondents when asked about the LDS Church’s stances on several different bills (not much information about each bill). As the issue receives more coverage, those individuals who had little information at the beginning would be expected to show the most movement.
So public opinion has both a static element (what do people know at a given time) and a dynamic element (when does a change in the amount of information produce changes). Both of these elements seem to be in play with the two analyses.
Taking these two studies together, we find that (1) many people don’t know the LDS Church’s stance, but (2) those who do know it tend to move in the Church’s direction, at least if they are LDS Republicans.
Today, the Deseret News highlighted our recent posts by BYU professors Chris Karpowitz and Quin Monson. Their article began with this headline: “Two BYU studies conflict over influence of Mormon church in shaping immigration views” (read it here).
It’s a good article and I encourage folks to read it. However, I’m not sure that the two studies conflict all that much.
Quin finds that public opinion among LDS Republicans moved toward the LDS church’s stance between October and January, presumably as a result of the Utah Compact and the LDS Church’s statement of support.
Meanwhile, Chris finds that many Utahns, whether LDS or not, do not know the Church’s stance.
In my mind, these two studies do not conflict. Taking these two studies together, we find that (1) many people don’t know the LDS Church’s stance, but (2) those who do know it tend to move in the Church’s direction, at least if they are LDS Republicans.
Those aren’t conflicting findings; they are two pieces of the same puzzle. And if both findings are true, then the LDS Church was probably wise to reiterate its stance on immigration a couple weeks ago.
The big news last week was that Utah County Republicans approved a resolution calling for a repeal of the guest worker law (HB 116). Perhaps the bigger news was that similar resolutions failed at Republican conventions in several other counties (Weber, Davis, Iron, Box Elder, etc). From reading Quin’s and Chris’s research, I wouldn’t be surprised if the LDS’s recent statement specifically supporting HB 116 played a role in preventing anti-HB116 resolutions from passing in more counties.
Update: The Deseret News has made some improvements to their article as a result of this blog post and some email correspondence with my colleagues. If you follow the link to the DNews article that I gave above, you may wonder why I wrote this post. Well, now you know the rest of the story.
Just what do Utahns believe about the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on immigration? Paul Rolly in his column expresses incredulity at calls from Salt Lake County Republican convention delegates to overturn the state’s recent guest-worker law (HB116). Senator Curt Bramble says the Church’s position on immigration has been “distorted,” and the Church itself responded yesterday with a clarification about its position. In this statement, the Church expresses appreciation for all the bills passed by the Utah legislature, including HB116, which is referenced by name.
In a recent poll, we asked Utahns about their opinions of these immigration bills and also about their impressions of the LDS Church’s position on those bills.1 Here’s one question we asked:
“Below is a brief description of four immigration bills recently passed by the Utah state legislature and signed by the governor. Please indicate how much you favor or oppose each bill.”
HB116 authorizes a guest-worker program that will allow undocumented people to pay fines and stay in Utah.
HB469 allows Utah citizens to sponsor immigrants.
HB497 requires local police to check the immigration status of those arrested on felony or serious misdemeanor charges.
HB466 establishes a partnership with the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon to allow workers to come to Utah using federal visas.
Strongly or Somewhat Oppose
32%
14%
14%
17%
Neither Oppose nor Favor
9%
13%
5%
13%
Strongly or Somewhat Favor
52%
62%
79%
58%
Haven’t heard enough about it to have an opinion
7%
11%
2%
13%
A majority of respondents favored each of the bills. This majority ranged from 52% in the case of HB116 (the guest worker program) to 79% in the case of HB497 (which emphasizes enforcement by local police departments). Most respondents had opinions about the bills, with those saying they hadn’t heard enough to form an opinion never exceeding 13%. Opinions appeared to be most well developed about the enforcement measure, with only 2% of respondents claiming they hadn’t heard enough about HB497.
After asking respondents about their own opinions, we also asked them for their “impressions of how much the LDS Church favors or opposes each bill.” The same descriptions that were given on the previous question were provided on this question. The percentage of respondents reporting that they didn’t know the Church’s position on each bill is reported below:
HB116 (Guest Worker)
HB469 (Sponsoring immigrants)
HB497 (Enforcement by local police)
HB466 (Partnership with Nuevo Leon)
Don’t Know
44%
45%
46%
46%
The results show considerable uncertainty among Utah voters. Between 44% and 46% of respondents claimed they didn’t know the Church’s position on the bills passed by the state legislature. This level of uncertainty persists even among the active Mormons who responded to our survey (42% of whom said they didn’t know the Church’s position about HB116, for example) and among active LDS who were also Republicans (43% of whom said they didn’t know their church’s stand on HB116).
If we exclude those who said they didn’t know the LDS Church’s position (see table below), a majority of the remaining respondents believed it favored each of the bills. For example, approximately 60% of respondents who said they knew the Church’s position believed that it somewhat or strongly favored HB116. By contrast, 22% believed the Church somewhat or strongly opposed the guest worker bill, and 18% believed it was neutral. The numbers are roughly similar with respect to the other bills, with especially large percentages of respondents believing that the Church supported HB469.
HB116
(Guest Worker)
HB469 (Sponsoring immigrants)
HB497 (Enforcement by local police)
HB466 (Partnership with Nuevo Leon)
Strongly or Somewhat Oppose
22%
12%
17%
14%
Neither Oppose nor Favor
18%
16%
23%
19%
Strongly or Somewhat Favor
60%
72%
59%
67%
The fact that as many as one-fifth of respondents who claimed to know the LDS Church’s position believed that it opposed a bill like HB116 shows both the significant lack of clarity among Utahns about the LDS Church’s stance and the challenge of moving individuals away from their predispositions.
A more sophisticated regression analysis reveals that among those who had an opinion about the Church’s position, correctly perceiving its support for HB116 was not associated with political party, gender, religion, or even the level of activity in the LDS Church. Instead, the strongest finding is that those who supported HB116 themselves (controlling for partisanship and religion) were also more likely to believe the Church supported the bill, too. In other words, Utahns viewed the LDS Church’s positions through the lens of their own attitudes. The more they supported bills like HB116, the more they believed that the Church supported it, too, regardless of party or religious affiliation.
In addition, those who were more educated were significantly more likely to believe that the Church supported the immigration bills. This connection between education and knowledge of the Church’s position may be enhanced because church leaders did not express their immigration positions through ecclesiastical channels such as an address in General Conference or a formal letter to congregations. (This may also help explain the lack of connection between religiosity and knowledge of LDS stances on the bills.) Instead, the Church made its position known through the media, its website, and its presence at the governor’s signing ceremony at the end of the legislative session. The better educated may have been more likely to attend to these sources of information. While we have no direct measures of media consumption on the most recent UVP, considerable research has shown a strong connection between education and newspaper readership, for example.
Because the UVP was conducted early in the month of April, it does not capture the recent efforts of the LDS Church to clarify its position. Research on public opinion does indicate that the more institutions speak out on certain topics, the more likely those messages are to be received by the population. More opportunities to encounter these messages should reduce some of the uncertainty that voters have about the Church’s position, especially among certain subgroups. As recently as the end of this year’s legislative session and despite the presence of LDS leaders at the governor’s signing ceremony, however, Utahns still had considerable uncertainty about the Church’s support for Utah’s immigration bills. Where these bills are concerned, it appears that many Utahns still haven’t received the message.
The publicity about the Compact, including the Compact’s moderate stance, likely helped move active Mormons and strong Republicans toward more opposition to an Arizona-style law.
Can public opinion on controversial issues moderate or change in response to public debates? Political science has long studied1 the effects of endorsements and other elements of campaigns on public opinion and policy outcomes.
Did the Utah Compact actually sway Utah public opinion? And, if so, who was more likely to change their views?
Two Utah Voter Polls (UVP) help provide some insight to these questions. The UVP is a periodic survey of Utah voters who were randomly sampled for participation in an Internet survey panel through an invitation during the Utah Colleges Exit Poll.
In both October 2010 and January 2011, survey respondents were asked the following question:
“As you may know, the state of Arizona recently passed a law that gives the police the power to question someone they have already stopped or arrested about their legal status in the country. Under the law, the police may turn over confirmed illegal aliens to federal custody. Currently, similar legislation is being sponsored in Utah. To what extent do you oppose or favor such a law?”
Opinion modestly shifted from October to January with those who “Strongly Favor” tough enforcement decreasing nearly 9 percentage points while those who “Strongly Oppose” an Arizona-style law increasing by nearly 7 percentage points and those who “Somewhat Oppose” increasing by about 4 percentage points.
Who changed their mind?
The real strength of the survey is that about 170 of the same respondents participated in both surveys. By looking only at these 170 respondents, we can get a feel for what types of people were more likely to change their minds between October and January.
Of these 170 people, most (61%) gave the same answer in both October and January. Of those who changed their minds, most (27%) moved toward opposing an Arizona-style immigration bill. Only half as many (12%) moved toward supporting an Arizona-style immigration bill.
Before going further, it is important to emphasize that this analysis examines attitude change. It does not predict who will favor or oppose an Arizona-style law. However, it does predict who is most likely to adjust their position on the issue.
Using advanced statistical techniques, we found that self-identified “very active Mormons” and Republicans were most likely to change their minds during this period. As you can see from the previous figure, our question used a 5-point scale ranging from “strongly oppose” to “strongly favor.” Other things being equal, we found that a “very active Mormon” was likely to move 0.50 points (on average) further toward opposing an Arizona-style bill than a “less than very active Mormon.” Likewise, we found that a self-identified “strong Republican” was likely to move 0.55 points further toward opposing an Arizona-style bill than an “independent leaning Republican.”
Putting it together, then, we found that respondents who considered themselves both “very active Mormon” and “strong Republican” were likely to move 1.05 points further toward opposing an Arizona-style bill than respondents who considered themselves “less than very active Mormons” who were “independent leaning Republicans.”
Note that we are comparing self-identified very active Mormons to those who are less than very active Mormons, and we are comparing strong Republicans to independents who lean Republicans. We found virtually no movement among Democrats and non-Mormons.
The most important immigration-related event between October and January was the Utah Compact and the LDS Church’s statement of support. The publicity about the Compact, including the Compact’s moderate stance, likely helped move active Mormons and strong Republicans toward more opposition to an Arizona-style law.
It is impossible to separate the effect of the Utah Compact from the LDS Church’s support in the model. Both occurred on the same day and in the same direction. But the model suggests that some voters received the signals sent by prominent political, religious, and business leaders who signed the Compact, along with the LDS Church’s support.
Jordan Stauss, an undergraduate research assistant and political science major at BYU, contributed to this post.
An overwhelming majority (78%) say that “the public’s right to access” is the most important.
Public opinion toward complex issues is difficult to measure, especially as the issues involve a choice between important values. The recent debate over the Utah State Legislature’s attempt to reform GRAMA presents such a case.
Pollsters often simply ask respondents to rate the importance of individual values, But, asking citizens in one question whether they favor transparent government and another question if they favor protection of privacy will illicit strong support for both values. But at some level the two positions come into conflict. Too much transparency compromises privacy and vice versa.
Pollsters can estimate the importance of these different values by asking respondents to rank them. Respondents can then presumably weigh the different tradeoffs, thereby providing a more reliable sense of what values they think are really important. Respondents may still feel that all of the values are important, but ranking questions allow pollsters to better understand how citizens make difficult tradeoffs among competing values.
To this end, the April 2011 Utah Voter Poll (UVP) included a question asking voters to rank the different policy goals associated with the GRAMA reform.
Question Wording: “The governor has convened a working group to consider changes to Utah’s open records laws. In considering changes, lawmakers must balance several different considerations. Please rank each of the considerations below in order from most important (at the top) to least important (at the bottom). Click on a statement and drag it to change the order.”
% Ranking 1st
Average Ranking
# of Respondents
The public’s right to access information about government business.
78%
1.35
658
A citizen’s right to privacy when communicating with legislators
15%
2.28
658
The administrative cost of conducting open records searches.
6%
2.88
658
The legislator’s right to privacy.
2%
3.5
658
The first column of data in the table gives the percentage of voters that ranked each value first. Of the four values, an overwhelming majority (78%) say that “the public’s right to access” is the most important. Another way to think about these results is to compute the average ranking for each value. The “public’s right to access” also has the lowest average, which means that it was consistently ranked highly by respondents.
At the opposite end, only 2% of respondents ranked protecting a “legislator’s right to privacy” as most important and its average ranking was much lower than the other three values. For public officials who argue that privacy and cost are the most important values, Utah voters disagree.
Public officials face difficult tradeoffs when making public policy. If public opinion is to be a guide for the kinds of policy outcomes pursued by public officials, it makes sense to consider the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the issues when measuring public opinion.
I just learned that there was a story in the Tribune yesterday that linked to this site’s analysis of Mormons and Democrats. I can see from my site statistics that many people are coming to my site’s home page, but they aren’t finding the specific posts referenced in the article. The posts you are looking for are listed below. You’ll want to read both posts to get a full picture of the analysis.
Redistricting, of course, is about more than ensuring that every district has equal population. It is also an opportunity for political actors of all stripes to try to draw the lines in their favor.1
Because Republicans control a supermajority of seats in both chambers of the Utah legislature, we can expect that they will try to draw lines in a way more advantageous to the majority party. But Utah politics isn’t just about Republicans and Democrats. It’s also about conservative Republicans versus moderate Republicans. With that in mind, I was curious to see which of these Republican factions was better represented on the redistricting committee.
As it turns out, the legislature’s redistricting committee is a good sample of the legislature as a whole. Some will applaud this, others will not. But both sides might be interested in the numbers.
Following the 2011 legislative session, three groups issued report cards for Utah legislators: The Utah Taxpayers Association, Parents for Choice in Education, and the Sierra Club. (More rankings may be forthcoming; we’ll see.) I rescaled all these rankings so that 100 meant “extremely conservative” and 0 meant “extremely liberal,” then I averaged across all three rankings. These 2011 ideology scores range from 15 (Tim Cosgrove and Rebecca Chavez-Houck) to 93.3 (Eric Hutchings), with an average of 69.9 and a median of 61.3.
The table below shows the median ideology score for those on the committee compared to those not on the committee, broken down by caucus. As you can see, the differences are generally small. A difference of 0 would be very hard to achieve, so it’s actually impressive that these differences are as small as they are. The biggest difference is among Senate Republicans, where those on the committee are somewhat more moderate than those left out, but even there the difference is modest. The Senate GOP is balanced out by the Senate Democrats, though, whose committee members are somewhat to the right of those left out.
Not on the committee
On the committee
Difference
House GOP
82.7
81.3
-1.4
House Dems
29.5
25.3
-4.2
Senate GOP
86.9
80.9
-6.0
Senate Dems
41.7
45.9
+4.2
Everybody
81.3
79.7
-0.6
If we pool all 75 Representatives and all 29 Senators together, we find that the median ideology score of those on the committee (81.3) is almost exactly the same as the median ideology score of those left out (79.7). The difference of 0.6 points is trivial.
So what does it mean? It means that Speaker Lockhart and President Waddoups apparently did not try to stack the redistricting committee. It looks from these numbers that they made a laudable effort to ensure that the committees would be a faithful subset of the legislature as a whole. There will still be plenty of conflict about where to draw the lines, but I see little reason to fault leadership based on who they put on the committee.
In 2011 the legislators with the most floor power were Sen. Stuart Adams and Rep. Don Ipson.
If we look at floor votes in the Utah House and Senate, who are the most powerful legislators? Hint: It’s not the Speaker or the Senate president.
What’s a “floor power” score?
First, let me explain what I’m doing. For each member of the Utah legislature, I calculated a “floor power” score. Floor power is a number between 0 and 100, representing the percentage of floor votes where each legislator got his or her way.
For example, suppose you vote “aye” on a bill that passes. You got your way. Now suppose you vote “nay” on a bill that passes. You didn’t get your way. If you get your way on 85% of your votes, then your floor power score is 85.
In calculating these scores, I ignore the MANY votes where 80% or more of legislators voted the same way. (If I didn’t omit lopsided votes, then the scores wouldn’t be very interesting.) As a shorthand, I’ll say I’m looking at floor power only in contested votes.
Who has the most power in floor votes?
In 2011 the legislators with the most floor power were Sen. Stuart Adams and Rep. Don Ipson. Let’s break it down by chamber.
The Senator with the most floor power was Stuart Adams. He got his way in contested floor votes 96.3% of the time. He was closely followed by Curt Bramble (95.7%), Wayne Niederhauser (92.9%), Mark Madsen (92.7%), and Jerry Stevenson (90.3%).
The most powerful Representative was Don Ipson (91.2%), the only Representative to get his way in more than 90% of contested floor votes. Rounding out the top 5 are Greg Hughes (87.8)%, Curt Webb (87.7%), Jeremy Peterson (87.4%), and Kraig Powell (85.7%).
Meanwhile, Senate President Michael Waddoups (81.7%) ranks 32nd of 104 legislators, 15th of 29 Senators, and 15th of 22 Senate Republicans. House Speaker Becky Lockhart (70.5%) ranks 64th of 104 legislators, 45th of 75 Representatives, and 45th of 59 House Republicans.
If you want to see floor power rankings for all 104 legislators in 2011, or if you want to see scores from 2007-2010, you can find the complete Utah legislature floor power rankings at my other website.
What does it mean?
It means that it’s one thing to be decisive in floor votes, but quite another thing to be decisive overall. One thing that political science research teaches us is that we can expect the “median voter“–the one smack in the ideological middle–to have the most influence on a vote, and that’s what we’re seeing here.
Let’s take a look. Based on 2010 floor voting records, I calculated ideology scores for all legislators who served in 2010. (I’ll calculate 2011 scores soon, but let’s use 2010 for illustration.) These scores range from 0 (extremely liberal) to 100 (extremely conservative). You can read more about these scores by clicking here.
The median score in Utah’s 2010 House was 65.3. Half of legislators were more liberal, half were more conservative. If you had a score of 65.3 in 2010, your predicted floor power in 2010 would have been 80.1%, other things being equal. But suppose your ideology score were 10 points away from the median–that is, suppose your score were 75.3 or 55.3. Then your predicted floor power would have been only 73.0%.
The figure below (click to enlarge) shows the actual data from 2010. Each dot is a legislator. The legislator’s dot is further right if the 2010 ideology score (x-axis) was more conservative, and the legislator’s dot is further up if the 2010 floor power score (y-axis) was higher. The red line shows you where the median legislator’s ideology (65.3) falls on the x-axis. You can see that floor power is highest for those with an ideology close to the median.
Are the Speaker and President really that weak?
Of course not. Most power in the legislature is exercised behind the scenes. The Speaker and the President play a decisive role (together with the Rules Committee) in deciding which bills will even come to a vote. Although they have little influence in whether a vote passes or not, legislative leaders have far more influence in whether a vote happens or not.
I’m still gathering data for my “backdoor power” scores. I’ll post them when they’re ready. But I expect that leaders in both chambers will fare much better in backdoor power than in floor power.
HB477 passed faster than 99.4% of the routine bills that passed in 2011.
There have many complaints about HB 477, the bill that revised Utah’s GRAMA bill. One of those complaints is that the bill was rushed through the legislative process. The bill was publicly introduced on Tuesday, March 1st. By Friday, March 4th, the bill had cleared both the House and the Senate and was on its way to the governor for a signature. So here’s a question: Just how fast was that?
Of the 782 bills (and resolutions) introduced during the 2011 general session, the average bill aged 13.1 days before coming to its first vote. Of the 504 bills that actually passed in 2011, the average bill aged 23.2 days between its introduction and its final vote.
As you can see in the table below, these numbers are actually lower than has been typical in recent years. Between 2008 and 2011, there were typically 14.9 days between introduction and the first vote, and there were typically 26.2 days between introduction and final vote. HB 477 was definitely unusual.
So, how unusual was HB 477? In 2011, there were 21 bills (other than HB 477) that were passed within 3 days of their introduction. Most (12) of them were directly or indirectly related to the budgeting process, and it’s routine for budget bills to be held until the very end of the session. Another of them was HB497, Sandstrom’s immigration enforcement bill. This bill went through the entire process previously under a different number, so we can’t really say that it passed in 3 days. Another 5 of these 22 were resolutions, not bills, that were of little importance.1 That means there were only 3 “real” bills other than HB 477 to pass so quickly.2
Punchline: HB 477 passed faster than 95.8% of the other bills that passed in 2011. If we ignore the 18 budget bills, resolutions, etc listed above, then HB477 passed faster than 99.4% of the routine bills that passed in 2011. For more perspective on how the legislature usually processes bills, check out the table below.
2008
2009
2010
2011
Average
Bills numbered
837
896
833
928
837.5
Bills introduced
744
800
713
782
759.8
Average day of session when bills are introduced
9.2
10.8
12.4
15.5
12.0
Bills that came to a floor vote
586
633
541
585
586.3
Average age of bill at first floor vote
15.9
16.1
14.4
13.1
14.9
Bills that passed
436
518
481
504
484.8
Average age of bill at final passage
28.7
26.7
26.0
23.2
26.2
(Updated 2/3/2012 with some minor corrections to the statistics.)
Despite the crummy salary, service in the Utah legislature has become a career.
Take a look at the figure below (click to enlarge). For each odd-numbered year (i.e. each year after an election), it shows what percentage of Utah legislators were there for the very first time. I mean “first time” literally. If they previously served in the other chamber, or if they served 20 years ago but decided to come back, they don’t count as a first-timer.
The pattern is striking. From 1897 into the 1940s or 1950s, you could expect to have at least 40% of legislators attending their first legislative session in any given year. By contrast, we’ve generally seen around 20% first-timers in the past decade.
Let’s be more precise. Between 1897 and 1937, 61% of legislators in any given session were true freshmen (on average) in each legislative session. Even if we exclude the first two decades (when everybody was new), we find a 57% freshman rate between 1917 and 1937.
Between 1981 and 2011, by contrast, only 22% of legislators were freshmen (on average) in any given session. Between 2001 and 2011, the average fell to 19%. Despite the crummy salary, service in the Utah legislature has become a career.
My first thought is that this rise in careerism seems to parallel the rise of one-party Republican electoral dominance. But that can’t be the cause, because the same pattern has occurred in many state legislatures and also in Congress. The table below shows how many freshmen there were in the U.S. House (as a percent) over various periods of time.1
1789-1901
1901-1995
1995-2007
2007-2009
44.0%
23.3%
13.6%
12.4%
If this shift toward careerism had happened only in Congress and in the California legislature, where legislators earn over $100,000 per year, then I might say that the salary and perks were leading elected officials to cling to their jobs. But this shift happened in Utah, too, where salaries stink.
So I’m at a loss. I can’t pin this shift on uncompetitive elections, and I can’t pin it on perks. I’m still puzzling over what may have caused this pronounced shift.
(Post updated: All raw numbers converted to percentages.)
We are professors of political science sharing academic research relevant to Utah. Posts are not peer reviewed and may discuss work in progress that is subject to future revision. Learn more. Each post reflects only its author’s views.
As Adam pointed out in his post earlier, the Deseret News story seems to make a conflict out of two findings that probably do not conflict. The seemingly different findings can be reconciled when a few basics about the nature of public opinion are understood. What are some of the basics?
First, information is quite important for having and shaping opinions. The more information in the environment about a particular policy, the more likely individuals are to have access to information.
Second, when individuals are asked specifics about policy or something else, those individuals who have the most information about that policy will be more likely to offer an opinion.
Third, the source of the information matters. Individuals have strong incentives to trust information from sources they find credible.
Finally, individuals who have relatively weak opinions about issues are the most likely to change their opinions. Conversely, people with strong opinions are least likely to change. Complicating the opinion-change calculation is that individuals with the strongest opinions are also the ones most likely to have information about policies (See John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion).
Taking all of these together, we would expect some uncertainty to appear among respondents when asked about the LDS Church’s stances on several different bills (not much information about each bill). As the issue receives more coverage, those individuals who had little information at the beginning would be expected to show the most movement.
So public opinion has both a static element (what do people know at a given time) and a dynamic element (when does a change in the amount of information produce changes). Both of these elements seem to be in play with the two analyses.
About Kelly Patterson: Kelly Patterson is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University and a senior scholar at the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.