White House maps out next phase of Court fight

The administration feels like it has the advantage — and plans to press the pace in April.

Supreme Court Justice nominee Merrick Garland arrives to a meeting with Republican senator Mark Kirk in the Hart Senate Office Building. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

03/30/16 05:20 AM EDT

Updated 03/30/16 03:39 PM EDT
Campaign for America's Future
ourfuture.org 

 

With small cracks emerging in the Republican Supreme Court blockade — and private indications from some GOP senators that they’d likely back Merrick Garland if he ever did come up for a vote — the White House is preparing to press its perceived political advantage when senators return from their recess next week. 

 

The next month will be all about meetings: The Supreme Court nominee will have met with 10 senators as of Wednesday, and the White House is looking to load his schedule full with the 52 additional senators (including 16 Republicans) who’ve said publicly they’ll see the judge once they're back from the two-week break. 

 

That will bring them to the next, one-week recess in May. Once senators get back from that time in their home states, the White House will shift its focus to calling for hearings: Garland has met with everybody who’s been willing to see him, they’ll argue, including a majority of the Senate. 

 

"It’s a game of inches at this point, but if you continue to put inches on the board, you cover some distance,” said one White House aide. 

 

White House aides say they have been surprised that they’ve made as much progress as they have in the two weeks since President Barack Obama nominated Garland.

 

And while they’re still skeptical Garland will get anywhere near being confirmed, the West Wing does at least see a path forward, if only for strengthening the case they'll make against Republican senators going into the fall elections. 

 

The calendar will inform the strategy throughout: The administration thinks it can capitalize on the end of the current Supreme Court term in June — and the possibility of more high-profile decisions deadlocking on 4-4 splits — coming just before the Senate’s summer recess. 

 

None of this eliminates the White House’s fundamental problem: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have been very clear they’re not moving. 

 

That’s despite the hammering Grassley’s been taking from Iowa newspapers. 

 

Asked after a town hall Monday in Ocheyedan, Iowa, whether he feels he’s doing the right thing, amid all the questions and pressure about obstruction at home, Grassley expressed confidence. 

 

“I’m being consistent with the past history of people in both political parties speaking out on this issue,” he said.

A Major Leap for the Minimum Wage

'Fight for $15' rally. (photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)

By Russell Berman, The Atlantic

30 March 16

readersupportednews.org

 

California announces deal to reach $15 an hour by 2022, New York could soon follow

hen it began a few years ago, the campaign for a $15 minimum hourly minimum wage seemed little more than a populist pipe dream. The target was more than twice a federal floor of $7.25 that hasn’t been touched since 2009, and it easily swamped the most aggressive proposals from leading Democrats, which barely scraped double digits.

That goal looks much different now, as two of the nation’s largest states are poised to write $15 minimum wages into law within the span of a week. Both California and New York would phase in their increases over several years, but simply enshrining a path to $15 marks a rapid advance that has surprised liberal activists and economists alike.

On Monday, Governor Jerry Brown struck a deal among top legislators, labor leaders, and his Democratic administration in California to reach $15 an hour by 2022 for large businesses and a year later for companies with 25 employees or less. The state legislature could enact the plan by the end of the week. In announcing the agreement, Brown leapfrogged fellow Democrat Andrew Cuomo of New York, who for weeks has been trying to cajole legislative leaders into raising the wage floor to $15 statewide within five years and sooner for New York City, where the cost of living is higher.

If both states pass their proposals, more than 5 million minimum-wage workers could see a raise, according to government estimates. Democrats might need to win the White House and both houses of Congress to enact increases at the federal level, but states and cities have been leading the way on the minimum wage for a while now.

The deal in California is “the biggest victory yet” for the Fight for 15 movement, said Kendall Fells, the campaign’s national organizing director. Momentum at the city level has been building since 2012, fueled by public pressure that included rallies and strikes by fast-food workers. Cities including Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have enacted paths to $15, and Massachusetts has moved to raise the hourly pay of home health workers to $15. In New York, fast-food workers are set to hit the target following action by the state’s wage board, which Cuomo controls.

Yet California would be the first state to enact $15 statewide across all industries—unless Cuomo can strike a deal in New York that would increase the state’s $9 minimum wage at a much faster clip. While the governor’s office told The Wall Street Journal that Brown’s announcement would not impact negotiations in Albany, a top union advocate for increasing the state’s minimum wage said otherwise. “It’s absolutely lit a fire under the negotiators,” said Michael Kink, the executive director of the Strong Economy for All Coalition, in an interview Tuesday afternoon. Kink said he expects Cuomo and legislative leaders to announce a budget deal that includes a minimum-wage increase within the next 24 to 48 hours. “There’s a competitive streak in our governor,” Kink added, in what most political observers would consider an understatement about the second-term Democrat. “I think that he intends to demonstrate national leadership.”

Unlike California, New York could create different minimum-wage time lines for New York City as compared with the rest of the state. But the Golden State proposal includes key “off ramps” that have not—thus far—been under consideration in New York. They would allow the governor to unilaterally pause or slow the yearly increases if job growth stalls or tax revenue plummets. Once the minimum hits $15, however, the governor could not lower it. “You get a big recession, and particularly in different parts of the state where wages are a lot lower, there could be real problems in terms of a reduction of jobs,” Brown said. The off ramps, as he called them, would take into account “the vagaries of the capitalistic economy.”

There were already indications on Tuesday that Republicans in New York were seizing on the fine print in the California proposal to extract concessions from Cuomo, which liberals vowed to fight. “We would oppose the kind of off ramps proposed in California, and they’re not under consideration in New York,” said Bill Lipton, the state director of the New York Working Families Party. “A $15 minimum wage is the minimum that it will take to make sure working people can support themselves and their families, and when families can not just survive but thrive, that’s good for the economy.”

While Cuomo has been pushing for a $15 minimum wage in New York for the last six months, Brown faced a different political dynamic in California. The deal he struck was, he acknowledged, an attempt to head off a ballot initiative that was expected to pass in November. The proposal on the ballot would have phased in the increases sooner and without giving the governor flexibility to slow them during a recession.

Union leaders who had been backing the ballot initiative said they would scrap it as soon as the legislature passed the compromise proposal. Fells said it was an acceptable trade-off for most workers. “The difference between a year or two is not a big difference when you haven’t been receiving any raises at all,” he said. “That’s the situation these workers are in.”

Brown’s demand for off ramps underscores the concern that exists even among supporters of a higher minimum wage that an increase to $15 an hour could have negative economic effects, especially in regions where prices and wages are lower.

Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist and the former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote last October that while a “moderate” minimum wage should have little to no effect on employment, a $15 an hour floor “could well be counterproductive,” at least on the federal level.

Longtime opponents of higher minimum wages have far fewer doubts that the new laws would discourage hiring. “We’ve already run the experiment. We know the answers,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the president of the conservative American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. He said the impact would be particularly bad for teenage unemployment, which shot up to more than 20 percent after the last federal increase was enacted in the middle of the Great Recession. “They are the classic low-skilled, least-experienced kind of worker that gets hit by the minimum wage,” he said on Tuesday. “We’ll see the same thing in California and New York and whoever else decides to go that way.”

Holtz-Eakin said, however, that the consequences would be more subtle than mass layoffs. “The caricature of the employer throwing them out the front door—that’s not how it happens,” he said. “They can’t afford to expand, and the new locations can’t afford to start, and the dynamics of employment growth get interfered with.”

Supporters of minimum-wage increases argue that any negative effects on hiring will be more than outweighed by the boost in the purchasing power of workers with bigger paychecks, who will spend more money and spark a virtuous cycle for the economy. And they say $15 is not as large—or dangerous—a figure as it might look at first blush. Because the minimum wage was never indexed for inflation, either on the federal level or in most states, it lost value over the years, and the sharp increase merely catches it up to where it was—relative to the broader economy—in the 1960s. As Kink put it: “This is not necessarily a wild experiment.”

Carbon Emissions Highest They Have Been in 66 Million Years

Environmentalists burn a symbol of carbon dioxide during a 2008 demonstration in front of the Klingenberg power plant in Berlin. (photo: Theo Heimann/AFP/Getty Images)

By Alister Doyle, Scientific American

27 March 16
readersupportednews.org

 

Outpouring of CO2 is 10 times higher than it was when the dinosaurs lived

he rate of carbon emissions is higher than at any time in fossil records stretching back 66 million years to the age of the dinosaurs, according to a study on Monday that sounds an alarm about risks to nature from man-made global warming.

Scientists wrote that the pace of emissions even eclipses the onset of the biggest-known natural surge in fossil records, 56 million years ago, that was perhaps driven by a release of frozen stores of greenhouse gases beneath the seabed.

That ancient release, which drove temperatures up by an estimated 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) and damaged marine life by making the oceans acidic, is often seen as a parallel to the risks from the current build-up of carbon in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

"Given currently available records, the present anthropogenic carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years," the scientists wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago, perhaps after a giant asteroid struck the Earth.

Lead author Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii said geological records were vague and "it's not well known if/how much carbon was released" in that cataclysm.

Current carbon emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are about 10 billion tonnes a year, against 1.1 billion a year spread over 4,000 years at the onset of the fast warming 56 million years ago, the study found.

The scientists examined the chemical makeup of fossils of tiny marine organisms in the seabed off the New Jersey in the United States to gauge that ancient warming, known as the Paleoeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).

U.N. studies project that temperatures could rise by up to 4.8C this century, causing floods, droughts and more powerful storms, if emissions rise unchecked. Carbon dioxide forms a weak acid in seawater, threatening the ability of creatures such as lobsters or oysters to build protective shells.

"Our results suggest that future ocean acidification and possible effects on marine calcifying organisms will be more severe than during the PETM," Zeebe said.

"Future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM," he said. During the PETM, fish and other creatures may have had longer time to adapt to warming waters through evolution.

Peter Stassen, of the University of Leuven who was not involved in the study, said the study was a step to unravel what happened in the PETM.

The PETM "is a crucial part of our understanding of how the climate system can react to carbon dioxide increases," he told Reuters.

Media Unimpressed as Sanders Barely Gets Seventy Percent of Vote

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders arrives for a rally at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon on March 25, 2016. (photo: Steve Dykes/AP)

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

28 March 16
readersupportednews.org 

ernie Sanders failed to impress major media outlets over the weekend as he barely managed to win seventy per cent of the vote in three western primaries.

The major cable networks briefly mentioned Sanders’s vote tallies in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii but noted that he ran out of steam well shy of eighty per cent.

“There’s no point in sugarcoating it,” one analyst put it. “Rough night for Sanders.”

According to one cable executive, Sanders needs to “put up some big numbers fast” if he expects the networks to continue giving his campaign airtime.

“It’s going to be harder and harder to justify covering him while he’s stuck down in the seventy-per-cent range,” the executive said.

While Sanders campaign officials remain optimistic about the upcoming primary in Wisconsin, media outlets are calling it a “do or die” state after his sputtering finishes over the weekend.

“I think if he limps across the finish line with, say, seventy-five or seventy-nine per cent, it’s going to be time for him to reassess things,” one cable representative said. “That would have to be a wake-up call.”

A spokesperson for CNN could not be reached for comment, as the network was busy preparing a ninety-minute special on the birth of Donald Trump’s new grandchild.

Sanders Soars: The Democratic Race Is Closer Than The Republicans’

March 28, 2016

Robert Borosage
Campaign for America's Future
ourfuture.org 

Bernie Sanders routed Hillary Clinton in three Western states on Saturday. He isn’t just winning; he’s winning with stunning percentages: Alaska 82-18; Hawaii 70-30; Washington 73-27. He’s taken five of six in the West, and chipped away Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates, trailing in pledged delegates by 1243 to 975.

The Clinton campaign, echoed by the talking heads, sought to discount the victories as “expected” from the “largely white and liberal” Pacific northwest. But just as Clinton’s victories in the South should not be dismissed because they were built on loyal African-American voters, Sanders’ victories shouldn’t be dismissed either. Liberals are Democrats, too.

Sanders remains an underdog, but he keeps surging and Clinton keeps sinking. Sanders has won 15 primaries and caucuses compared to Clinton’s 20, and he’s virtually tied four others (Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri and Illinois). This from an unknown candidate who started at single digits in early polls. His crowds keep growing. The turnout in Washington was “huge,” state officials reported, nearly at the unprecedented levels of 2008. And he’s done this in spite of a mainstream media that can’t cover his campaign without dismissing it.

Sanders has now caught Clinton in the most recent poll of Democrats. He raised more money than she did in February (probably one reason the Clinton campaign didn’t blanche at sponsoring a $353,000-a-plate sit down with the Clooneys on April 15 in San Francisco. That number is not a misprint.)

What’s troublesome for Clinton is that she’s getting less popular as the campaign goes on. She’s now viewed unfavorably by over 50 percent of registered voters, the highest negatives – other than Donald Trump – since 1984 when they began asking the question. Voters have valued her experience and electability. But she’s had to walk away from many of her former views. And she continues to fare less well than Sanders in hypothetical face-offs with potential Republican candidates. Those polls are of questionable import, but they do suggest that electability may be a declining asset for the former secretary of state.

Even as his candidacy gains traction, Sanders keeps spreading the word and rousing activists. A presidential campaign isn’t a movement. At best, an insurgent can issue a call to action, elevate alternatives, and infuse millions with a sense that there is an alternative. Sanders is doing just that, particularly with young voters who fill his rallies and caucuses.

He’s raised a stunning $140 million from some 2 million donors, proving that a candidate needn’t depend on big money to be competitive. This is a big deal. Sanders has shown it can be done at the presidential level. Now, we’ll see insurgents testing out similar efforts in Senate and House races.

The Sanders campaign has also virtually invented what is called “distributed organizing.” His talented campaign team has learned how to benefit from activists that can and are organizing themselves, creating their own communities online and in neighborhoods. This is energy that will continue long after the campaign is over.

Clinton operatives suggest Sanders should cool it, and stop challenging the secretary. She is trying to avoid a debate before the New York primary. Sanders is well justified to turn up the heat. He’s driven the debate, with Clinton adopting increasingly populist positions. He’s now beginning to challenge Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy. His speech on the Middle East showed remarkable courage and sense.

He ran a moving ad in Hawaii featuring Hawaii veteran, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, arguing, “Bernie Sanders will defend our country and take the trillions of dollars that are spent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars and invest it here at home.”

Sanders still faces formidable challenges – including competing with Clinton in her home state of New York where she served as senator. But what’s clear is that he is still building. Wisconsin is next on April 5, with the Wyoming caucuses on the 9^th. New York is on the 19^th. Instead of continuing their 24/7 Trump fixation, the mainstream media would be well advised to cover the Sanders surge, not dismiss it, and put a bigger spotlight on the Democratic race.

Why Either Trump's or Cruz's Tax Plans Would Be the Largest Redistributions to the Rich in History

Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

26 March 16

readersupportednews.org

 

he tax cuts for the rich proposed by the two leading Republican candidates for the presidency – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz – are larger, as a proportion of the government budget and the total economy, than any tax cuts ever before proposed in history.

Trump and Cruz pretend to be opposed to the Republican establishment, but when it comes to taxes they’re seeking exactly what that Republican establishment wants.

Here are 5 things you need to know about their tax plans:

1. Trump’s proposed cut would reduce the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent – creating a giant windfall for the wealthy (at a time when the wealthy have a larger portion of the nation’s wealth than any time since 1918). According to the Center for Tax Policy, the richest one tenth of one percent of taxpayers (those with incomes over $3.7 million) would get an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million each every year. Middle-income households would get an average tax cut of $2,700.


2. The Cruz plan would abandon our century-old progressive income tax (whose rates increase as taxpayers’ incomes increase) and instead tax the amount people spend in a year and exclude income from investments. This sort of system would burden lower-income workers who spend almost everything they earn and have few if any investments.


3. Cruz also proposes a 10 percent flat tax. A flat tax lowers tax rates on the rich and increases taxes for lower-income workers.


4. The Republican plans also repeal estate and gift taxes – now paid almost entirely by the very wealthy who make big gifts to their heirs and leave them big estates.


5. These plans would cut federal revenues by as much as $12 trillion over the decade – but neither Trump nor Cruz has said what they’ll do to fill this hole. They both want to increase the military. Which leaves them only two choices: Either explode the national debt, or cut Social Security, Medicare, and assistance to the poor.

Bottom line: If either of these men is elected president, we could see the largest redistribution in American history from the poor and middle-class of America to the rich. This is class warfare with a vengeance.

   
Comments

+35 # tswhiskers 2016-03-26 15:32

So what else is new? By now we Dems all know the basic dogma of the Rep. Party: Cut upper class taxes to almost nothing and take the difference out of the hides of middle and lower class Americans i.e. the Sheriff of Nottingham School of Economics. WE DON'T WANT TO TAX THE ARISTOCRACY; AFTER ALL THEY KEEP US IN POWER. As always one wonders why the blockhead voters in the Rep. Party still haven't figured it out.

+18 # Farafalla 2016-03-26 22:05

This clip is worth sending around.

-11 # economagic 2016-03-27 07:38

Not really. We already know the big picture, and the details -- much less their implications -- are explained in a way that confuses more than it enlightens. If Professor Reich also wrote the mangled title ("either/and") he must have done the whole thing in his sleep! (On the other hand, the title may have been written by the staff, or by Marc Ash himself, all of whom are undoubtedly sleepless over the floundering funding.)

+8 # Velma 2016-03-26 22:54

So vote in your primaries and caucuses for the democrat you prefer but be ready to campaign for and vote for WHICHEVER democrat gets the nomination or this prediction of a Cruz or Trump term will come true.

+3 # tclose 2016-03-27 09:10

Agreed - Dems cannot afford to let purity be the enemy of stopping these bastards.

As usual, Prof Reich boils down the economics to the bottom line. Let that motivate us to do what needs to be done, come November.

 

+4 # kyzipster 2016-03-27 07:34

The GOP's so called "Fair Tax" is their Holy Grail. People who insist there's no difference between the two parties aren't acknowledging the facts. Quite a few red states have eliminated the state income tax entirely, shifting more of the tax burden to working people and the poor. There's a movement to accomplish this at the federal level.

Of course our media is obsessed with Trump's sensationalism and Sanders' socialism, unconcerned about the extremism of the conservative agenda.

+2 # Marshalldoc 2016-03-27 09:08

Wanna see real 'class warfare'? Elect either of these neoliberal reprobates, allow Congress to pass those tax cuts, let the results bake a year or so and... Bingo! Class Warfare. With luck left-wing, socialists will win; but by no means guaranteed.

 

+3 # Astoriapepe 2016-03-27 09:58

Class warfare already is running, and since the Reagan administration, the oligarchs are winning. The disappearance of the Middle Class, and the impoverishment of the Working Class (manufacturing jobs going abroad and service jobs not providing a living income) are the results of the economic policies carried out by both republican and democratic administrations .

Sanders Edges Ahead of Clinton in Bloomberg Poll

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton speaks during the AIPAC conference in Washington, March 21, 2016. (photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty)

By Justin Sink, Boomberg News

25 March 16
readersupportednews.org

 
ore than halfway through a nomination race that she entered as the clear favorite, Hillary Clinton finds herself deadlocked with Bernie Sanders among Democrats.

Even after more than two dozen primaries and caucuses in which Clinton’s amassed a commanding lead in votes and in delegates needed to win the nomination, a Bloomberg Politics national poll found that Sanders is the first choice of 49 percent of those who have voted or plan to vote in this year’s Democratic contests, while the former secretary of state is preferred by 48 percent. 

The collection of enthusiastic first-time voters, those under 35, men, and self-described independents that he’s leaned on to win in states like New Hampshire and Colorado are keeping Sanders in the race, as is his message singularly focused on addressing income inequality.

By a more than 2-to-1 ratio, Democratic primary voters say Sanders would fight harder than Clinton for the middle class and do the most to rein in the power of Wall Street. Nearly six in 10 say the Vermont senator cares the most about people like them, and 64 percent see him as the most honest and trustworthy candidate. Just a quarter of voters said that of Clinton.

“It comes down to this: Bernie Sanders is the one Democrats see as looking out for them -- meaning he will build a stronger middle class at the expense of Wall Street,” said J. Ann Selzer, whose firm conducted the poll. “They trust him to do it. In the end, Hillary Clinton has a trust problem.”

Matthew Slater, a 26-year old retail manager from Gulfport, Mississippi, said he doesn’t view Clinton “as believable and authentic.”

“Seeing the issues that Hillary Clinton has flip-flopped on, has once supported and is now against or the other way around, I don’t believe in her,” Slater said. “I don’t really trust her.”

The survey also signaled some trouble for Clinton in holding on to Sanders supporters in November. In general-election match-ups, Sanders holds a 24-point edge over Donald Trump, a 12-point lead over Ted Cruz, and a 4-point advantage over John Kasich among likely general-election voters. Clinton, by contrast, trails Kasich by 4 percentage points. She would carry a sizable lead into a contest against Cruz, where she holds a 9-point advantage, and Trump, whom she beats by 18 points.

The poll found some encouraging signs for Clinton as the Democratic race moves into its second half. She leads Sanders 50 percent to 47 percent among those yet to vote in a Democratic primary or caucus, an indication that her drive toward the Democratic nomination won’t be impeded. She has 1,690 of the 2,383 delegates needed to become the party’s nominee to the 946 that Sanders has amassed, according to Associated Press estimates on Wednesday.

The voting groups that Clinton has relied on to dominate in primaries and caucuses continue to be her biggest advantage. She leads Sanders by 27 percentage points among voters over 35, by 18 points among those who identify as Democrats, and by 15 points among women.

She’s also rated more highly than Sanders on presidential characteristics. More than half say she has the better temperament to be president and would work most effectively with Congress. Almost three in five say she knows the most about how to get things done, and half say she’d be better at managing the economy, 10 points better than Sanders.

Clinton may also benefit from the shifting focus to foreign policy in the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, which killed at least 31 people. Asked which candidate can best combat Islamic terrorism, Clinton bests Sanders by a more than 3-to-1 ratio.

Six in 10 Democratic primary voters say she has the most appropriate life experience to be president, and she’s favored 56 to 31 percent over Sanders when voters are asked who would be better with dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sixty percent said it bothered them that Sanders has little foreign policy experience.

Jane Martin, a 57-year-old from St. Louis who participated in the poll, said Clinton’s foreign policy experience was one of the top reasons she’s backing her over Sanders.

“She’s done a really good job as secretary of state,” Martin said in a phone interview. “I do like Bernie Sanders and some of the things he’s suggesting, but I don’t think he has the same experience.”

Clinton also may benefit from warming views of President Barack Obama, with whom she’s closely aligned herself during the campaign.

The president’s approval rating among all Americans hit 50 percent in the poll, up six points from November. His favorability rating is up nine points from November and, at 57 percent, at its highest point since December 2009. More than half of likely or past Democratic primary voters who cast a ballot in 2012 for Obama -- 55 percent -- said they were backing Clinton.

More than half the country -- 54 percent -- approve of his handling of the vacancy left by recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and 62 percent say Republicans in the Senate are wrong not to hold hearings on the nomination.

Nearly half of all Americans -- 49 percent -- say the president is doing a good job on the economy, up 5 points from November. And 46 percent approve of Obama’s handling of health care, his highest marks since 2010.

The national poll of 1,000 adults was conducted March 19-22 by Selzer & Co. of West Des Moines, Iowa. The overall sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, while the subgroup of 311 Democratic primary voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points. The subgroup of 815 likely general-election voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.