Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

I'm not sure if I'm really an optimist in general, but I see it as good-ish news. To wit -- I'm not sure it's going to get much worse than right now. There was a big bad-news dump on Friday, that I think was strategically timed both in terms of the day of the week and the amount of time before Pennsylvania. I think now will be the low point, and things will climb from here. Maybe not enough to win Pennsylvania, but in general.

There are still all kinds of tensions within the Clinton campaign that could easily erupt in one way or another and send her downwards again. Obama is starting a transparency campaign (the Friday dump was part of that, tying up his own loose ends) that I think is both justified and will end up damaging Hillary. Obama has a lot of time to campaign not just in Pennsylvania but in the states after that, and bring more and more people around as he always does.

If the Wright thing turns out to be sticky, that could negatively affect things. Otherwise, I think we're seeing the worst of things now.

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OK, something Ive got to get off my chest.

It has become a long-standing talking point for the Hillary campaign to say that - well, maybe Obama has won more states (and more delegates, and more actual votes); but Hillary has shown that she can win where it matters. She wins the battleground states, the swing states, and those ones are the ones that will count in the general elections.

Here's a good example:

Quote:

In a briefing aboard her plane in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton said that Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania were essential to a Democratic victory in November because they represent a broad cross-section of the voters the party needs to defeat the presumed Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

"There is a generally accepted position that Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are the critical swing states for Democrats," she said. "You have to try to win at least two out of three. I'd like to win three of three."

She did not mention the fact that no delegates were awarded from the Florida contest because it was held in violation of national Democratic party rules. Neither she nor Mr. Obama campaigned there [..]

(NYT)

In addition to that fact check by the NYT reporter, there is a more substantive problem with Hillary's reasoning here however. And that's that there is no actual reason to assume that the politician who wins the primary in a state would also be best placed to win the general elections in that state.

In the end, the general elections outcome is decided by a great number of independents and swing voters, who overwhelmingly will not have participated in the primaries. And there is no reason to assume that the inclinations of primary voters in a state are necessarily representative of those of these indies and others in that state who did not take part in the primaries - but will be voting in the generals.

Nevertheless, let's, for a moment, suspend our rational disbelief, and pretend like winning the primary in a state implies being the more electable candidate in that state in the general elections. Does Hillary's argument make sense even then?

Well, if you're going to make the question of who does better in the primaries in swing states an issue, then you've got to look at all swing states, and not cherrypick a few that are to your liking. If you count Pennsylvania, where Kerry beat Bush by 3 points, you've also got to look at Minnesota, which had the same result. If you're going to look at Florida, where Bush won by 5 points, you've also got to look at Colorado, where the result was the same. How do the virtual Electoral College numbers add up?

To figure that out, you can use an interactive map like this one: http://www.270towin.com/. Reset the map to neutral and start colouring the swing states according to whether Obama won it or Hillary (say, red for Obama and blue for Hillary).

In short: if you only count the states that Bush or Kerry won by 0-3% of the vote (New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada), Hillary is at 34 electoral college seats' worth of states currently, and Obama at 27. (Not counting Michigan of course, where Obama wasnt on the ballot.) Close shave.

But then you dont even have Florida, let alone states like Missouri and Virginia, which should at least be conceivable wins for the Democrat this year. Or Oregon, which Kerry won by 4, but where McCain would stand a fair chance, at least against Hillary, judging by the polls.

Considering the current political climate, the Democrat should be expected to do better than John Kerry; and he/she will have to, if he is to actually win the elections, which is all that counts. So let's define swing states as states where Kerry won by less than 5 points (ie, at most 52-48), or where Bush won by less than 10 points (ie, at most 54-45). That adds Oregon, Colorado, Florida, Missouri and Virginia.

Now it's 67 Electoral College seats' worth of states for Obama versus 61 for Hillary - and the latter number includes 27 from non-contested Florida:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7708/demsswingstatesia2.png

The interesting thing is that if you would extend this logic to the entire country rather than just the swing states, and divide the states up on the basis of where the popular vote went in the primary, Clinton would so far have won 246 electoral college seats' worth of states and Obama 202.

In short, Clinton actually does worse in swing states versus Obama, according to the metric Hillary is suggesting, than in the country as a whole.

So basically, you have an argument here that is bogus (winning the primary in a state doesnt imply much of anything about being the most electable in that state in the generals) -- and even if it werent bogus, the numbers wouldnt actually add up in Hillary's favour.

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Yep, I completely agree! It's been a pet peeve of mine for longer than "did she really win Texas?" even!

I haven't said it with such pretty graphs though. :-)

Here's one article I cited on it:

"The Primary vs. General Election Fallacy"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23591347/

Here's what I excerpted, but the whole thing's good:

Quote:

But there's just one fallacy to these dueling arguments that hasn't received much attention: Recent history shows that winning a state in the primary season ?- no matter its importance on the map ?- doesn't guarantee success in the general election.

In 2004, for example, John Kerry won early Democratic contests in Iowa, Arizona, and Missouri, but he fell short in all three states when pitted against George W. Bush.

In 1992, Bill Clinton captured primaries in Florida and Texas, but lost those states in the general election. And in 1984 ?- in a primary that has drawn parallels to the current Democratic race ?- Walter Mondale secured the Democratic nomination over Gary Hart in part by winning large industrial states like Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania.

But in the end, he wound up winning just one state against Ronald Reagan: his home state of Minnesota.

The opposite also is true. There are numerous examples of candidates losing states during the primaries but then going on to win them in the general election.

[...]

The reason for this primary-general election disconnect? It's pretty simple, say political pollsters and analysts: The voters who turn out in a primary are very different from those who turn out in the general.

"I think it is dangerous to generalize from primary to general election," says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

"A swing voter in the general election is a different person than a swing voter in a primary," he adds, explaining that while Clinton might win in a state among white men ages 45 to 59 or that Obama might win independents, they are doing so only among those participating in that Democratic primary.

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sozobe wrote:

I haven't said it with such pretty graphs though. :-)

Or such complete analysis -- don't want to dis that.

Just happy to see it addressed. Has really annoyed me how many people are accepting this canard. ("If she wins the big states, that means she's more electable.")

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Almost exactly a month ago, right after the Potomac primaries, I wondered:

nimh wrote:

Did Obama finally break the working class code in Virginia and Maryland?

Throughout the primary campaign, Obama has faced a popularity deficit among working class voters. He usually does better among those with higher incomes than among those with lower incomes. A bigger chasm opened up from the start between those with higher education and those without. In fact, the higher the education category, the more Obama voters you'd find, the lower the educational category of voters, the more Hillary voters.

I tried to summarise some of the theories that were being suggested about why this was so, and then recapped the data:

Quote:

Education and income divided electorates

[..] Before the Potomac primaries, Obama's share of the votes among those without college degree varied wildly, from 19% in Oklahoma to 64% in Georgia. Among those with college degrees, his vote varied from 32% in Arkansas to 69% in Illinois. Obviously, the differences from state to state were greater than the differences between the two groups within any state.

But the difference in his appeal between the two groups within each state were real. In the starkest case, Oklahoma, he got only 19% of those without college degree, and 50% of those with degree - a 31-point gap. In New Mexico, the gap was 24 points. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah, it was 14-18 points.

The result was that Hillary could win one group, Obama the other - which was true in no less than nine states (MO, DE, CT, AZ, NM, TN, CA, NH and OK).

More tellingly still, there were only five states in all (for which exit polls were held, I mean - they were not conducted in most caucus states), in which he did got a majority of the voters without college degree. And those five included Illinois, his home state, and four states in which African-Americans made up at least 48% of the primary voters. A larger proportion of blacks tend to not have a college degree, whereas of course they are Obama's staunchest voting bloc, so a large share of black voters will mostly cancel out the education gap that exists otherwise.

In fact, there had been just one (1) state in which Obama led Hillary among those without college degree that wasnt either Obama's home state or a state where blacks made up about half or more of the voters, and that was Utah.

But then I noted that the "Potomac Primary" - the primaries in Virginia, Maryland and DC - seemed to signal a clear change in the pattern:

Quote:

Virginia and Maryland - harbingers of a new phase?

But the exit poll data for the Virginia and Maryland primaries suggest that something might have changed. Of course, it would be foolish to base any definite conclusions on two primaries in neighbouring states -- there may be regional factors at play. But the comparions is nevertheless striking.

In Virginia and Maryland, Obama received 63% and 60%, respectively, of the votes of those without college degrees. This instantly put both states in the top four of his states in this category, along with only Illinois, his home state, and Georgia.

They are also immediately the only two states in his top 7 on this score that werent either his home state or home to a black population that made up half of the voters. (In Virginia, black voters made up 30% of the Democratic primary voters; in Maryland, 37%. This puts them closer to Delaware and Missouri in that respect than to Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana or South Carolina.)

Mind, they were just two very good states for him overall. He also did very well among those with college degrees, getting 65% and 57% of the vote among those. That puts Virginia into a shared third place for him in that category, but Maryland only in an 11th place.

In short, the "class gap" almost disappeared in these two states. It was just 5 in Virginia - lower than in any previous state except for South Carolina; and in Maryland, Obama actually did better among those without college degrees - which is a first.

For the table I created with the relevant numbers by state, see the original post.

OK - so far, so good. But now it's a month later, and an update has long been overdue.

First there was a primary in Wisconsin, which went very well for Obama - including among working class voters with less education and/or a lower income. The Wisconsin results were very much in line with those in Virginia and Maryland, and seemed to confirm that Obama had made a breakthrough of sorts. It didnt hurt that Wisconsin was from a very different part of the country.

But then came March 4, with a clear loss for Obama in Ohio, and a narrow loss in the popular vote in Texas. Clinton also easily won Rhode Island, which left Obama only with Vermont.

Finally, after caucuses in Wyoming for which we have no exit poll data, there was the primary in Mississippi. Obama won easily, but it was a largely racially based win: he got 92% of the African-American vote, and 26% of the white vote.

So what role did class play in these contests? Specifically, to go with the starker indicator on this count (the differences by income are also significant, but a lot smaller): how did Obama and Clinton do among those with less education? How did the class gap develop in these states?

An updated table will be in my next post.

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The March 4 primaries: Concealed in an overall setback, the return of the class gap

The March 4 results were a setback for Obama, obviously - and it should be emphasised that it was a setback for him across the board, both among voters with college degrees and among those without.

E.g.: While Obama had won 57-65% of college graduates in Virginia, Maryland and Wisconsin (there were no exit polls in DC), the numbers varied between 43-55% in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island. About ten percentage points lower, in all.

Even in Vermont, the 62% he got of the college graduate vote was unexceptional in comparison with earlier results, which may explain why it wasnt quite the expected blowout.

However, the setback among those without college degree was larger.

In Virginia, Maryland and Wisconsin, he had won 56-63% of their vote, a surprisingly consistent score across the three different states. On March 4, he got close in Vermont (55%), but dropped far back in the other states. The results there were also strikingly similar: 42% of those without college degree in Texas voted for Obama, 40% in Ohio, and 38% in Rhode Island. So here, the difference was more like twenty percentage points.

While VI, MD and WI all ended up in the top 6 states so far in terms of Obama's appeal to lower-education voters, Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island all ended up in the lower middle of the table.

In short, those without degrees went for Hillary in three out of the four March 4 states, while college graduates went for Obama in three of the four.

Here is the updated table. The Potomac primaries and Wisconsin are highlighted in yellow; the March 4 states are highlighted in green:

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/1338/demsbyeducation3kw7.png

One further state is highlighted in green in this table, and that's Mississippi, which voted a week after "Junior Super Tuesday".

Mississippi was another case altogether. There, Obama did very well among those without a college degree, getting 58% of their vote - almost as much as he got of the college graduate vote (62%). A very even score among the two categories, then.

But Mississippi can not be directly compared with the above-mentioned states. Half of the Democratic primary voters was black, and those black voters overwhelmingly voted for Obama. And presumably because African-Americans, at least in the Southern states where they constitute a major share of the population, are on average less likely to be college graduates, states where they make up half or more of the vote differ strongly from the other states on this count.

Look at what I have dubbed the "class gap": the difference between the lead or deficit that Obama had on Hillary among those without college degree and that which he had among those with a degree. South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and now Mississippi are four of the eight states where this "class gap" is lowest.

Moreover, these states plus Alabama also make up five of the ten states where Obama's support among those without college degree is highest. In short: it's always tricky to speculate on national trends on the basis of the resuls in individual states - Ohio is not Wisconsin, and the Potomac states are developing demographically in ways not mirrorred elswhere. But this is true to a greater extent still for states where half the voters are black; they are too different demographically to be able to say much about national trends based on the results in a state like Mississippi.

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Analysis: Back to square one?

The problem with comparing the Potomac primaries (+ Wisconsin) with the March 4 primaries is of course that those are both samples of just 3-4 states, and demographic, cultural and political differences will have weighed in heavily on how each of those primaries turned out.

Consequently, there's obviously nothing like a straightforward 1:1 equation between how the results on those two/three dates turned out and what the development of Obama's appeal and momentum over time was. For that you would have needed a revote in Virginia and Maryland three weeks later...

Nevertheless, if you like speculating on the basis of data, you deal with the data you have. The March 4 primaries were geographically widely flung, and equally varied in terms of the educational data. In Vermont, just 34% of voters lacked a college degree, while it was 62% in Ohio. In spite of the image that the March 4 primaries acquired as being "blue collar primaries," the average share of those without college degree in the four states (50%) was actually a little lower than the average of all states so far. When it comes to the distribution by income, the March 4 states also on average actually had a smaller share of lower-income voters (35%) than the total of states so far (40%) - thanks not just to Vermont but also Rhode Island and Texas.

Meanwhile, the Potomac two + Wisconsin are of course geographically far less representative, but the share of lower-educated voters in those states was, on average, exactly that of all states so far (53%). So, while keeping the qualifications that follow from the geographic specificities in mind, it's interesting to look at how Obama's scores have come out in three successive categories of states:

a) the states that voted on Super Tuesday;
b) the Potomac two + Wisconsin;
c) the March 4 states:

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/2341/demsbyeducation3bpn8.png

Comparing March 4 with the preceding Potomac category, Obama drops 14 points among those without college degree, and 8 points among college graduates.

(Talking average by state, of course; not weighing by population. This will overrepresent VT and RI voters, but hopefully those will roughly cancel each other out in electoral terms, one being an Obama stronghold and the other a Hillary stronghold.)

This is, however, a question of losing most where you won most. In the Potomac + WI round, Obama had picked up an additional 6 points among college graduates, but a much more impressive 17 points among those without college degree.

The theory was that Obama already reached close to his potential among college graduates by Super Tuesday, and could only top his number from then up a little; but that by the Potomac round, he finally succeeded in winning over lower-education voters as well, so that both groups belatedly pulled even in their evaluation of Obama.

The March 4 states pose a challenge to that narrative. He basically "lost" (using the word loosely, since we're talking different states) everything he won in the previous round - ergo, a fair share of higher-education voters, but a heftier chunk of lower-education voters. Back to square one?

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I have said many times that I am not a big fan of polls, but I do find them somewhat interesting.

I found this today, and I think its worth posting.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105073/McCains-67-Favorable-Rating-Highest-Eight-Years.aspx?version=print

Quote:

McCain's 67% Favorable Rating His Highest in Eight Years
Obama has a 62% favorable rating, while Clinton's is 53%
USA
Democrats
Election 2008
Republicans
Americas
Northern America
by Frank Newport
PRINCETON, NJ -- John McCain's 67% favorable rating is the highest of any of the three major candidates running for president, and ties for his highest in Gallup polling history.

Quote:

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's favorable rating is now at 62%, by one point the highest Gallup has recorded for Obama since the first reading in December 2006 (at which point almost half of Americans did not know enough about him to give him a rating). Obama's ratings have been fairly stable in recent months, ranging between only 58% and 61% across five Gallup Polls conducted since January.

Quote:

Hillary Clinton's favorable rating, 53%, is significantly lower than those of the other two candidates, in part no doubt because of her long history in the public eye, including eight years as first lady in her husband's administration. Still, this is Clinton's highest favorable rating since October of last year.

Quote:

One reason for the higher favorable ratings McCain and Obama enjoy is their cross-appeal to Americans who identify with the "other" party.

McCain gets an extraordinarily high 52% favorable from Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, while Obama gets a 39% favorable rating from Republicans and Republican leaners. Clinton, on the other hand, receives only a 20% favorable rating from Republicans and Republican leaners.

McCain is also helped by the fact that he receives an 87% favorable rating from Republicans, higher than the 80% and 79% that Clinton and Obama, respectively, currently receive from Democrats.

Read the entire article for more info, including HOW the poll was conducted.

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Whence the class gap? Reevaluating.

What could this mean about some of the theories that were suggested about Obama's initial deficit among lower-education (and lower-income) voters? If anything?

One theory - one that I have advocated, even as I still supported Obama anyway - was that there is something about Obama's appeal, his priorities, his language, that doesn't do an optimal job of speaking to the working class. As I wrote a month ago, he spends a lot of time talking about postmaterialist and process-oriented causes like changing the tone of politics and tackling the lobbyists, which may be a kind of "luxury issues" more valued by voters who dont have to worry about their daily income; while Hillary lays a greater emphasis on bread-and-butter issues.

And maybe working class voters, who will on average have experienced a somewhat larger share of gritty struggle in life, are less inclined than those who went on relatively quickly from a college education to a fairly well paid job to believe that dialogue, respect and a new tone in politics will do the trick. Maybe they're more likely to think a proven fighter is needed.

That theory seemed blown out the water after the primaries in VA, MD and WI. Obama did roughly equally well there among those without college degrees and those with a lower than avarage income as he did among college graduates and those with an above-average income. And he did so without having changed all that much about his style or priorities.

A parallel theory laid greater emphasis on what could be dubbed the information trickle-down effect. The higher educated are on avarege likely to be more aware of the political day-to-day news. So they know Obama the best, whereas for those who pay only fleeting attention to politics, he was still more of an unknown for a longer time.

There is a consistent trend of Obama catching up rapidly as the campaign in a state takes off and progresses, so why wouldnt the same be true for class? Those most informed and interested in politics would simply be the first to be persuaded by Obama, but the others will follow with a time lag as the campaign reaches them as well.

Now if this latter theory is correct, you would expect:

a) Obama doing better among working class people in later primaries
b) Obama doing better among working class people in primaries with long/intensive campaigns

Basically, later primaries and/or those with intense campaigns should see Obama's support among those without college degree rising at a later moment in time, but eventually reaching the same level as his support among college graduates.

This theory certainly seemed validated by the results in the Potomac Primary and Wisconsin. But Texas and Ohio had the longest and most intensive campaign of any state since Iowa and New Hampshire, and they took place a month after Super Tuesday. Yet Obama's numbers by educational level were basically back where they were on February 5. There's only marginal differences: Obama on average did three percentage points better among those without college degree on March 4 than on February 5, and two points worse among college graduates.

The national polls, too, are still seeing solid demographic divisions between the two candidates' appeal that do not seem to be budging - something that probably behind overall deadlock in the daily tracking polls. In short, what we're seeing in the Democratic primaries looks a lot more like a more systematically cultural wine track/beer track kind of division again.

The education gap: Two faces of the primary map

This is relative of course: if Hillary leads among lower-educated voters by 55% to 45%, and Obama leads among higher-educated voters by the same margin, that means that there are many, many "beer track" Obama voters and "wine track" Hillary voters. It's still ridiculous to bang on, like some columnists, about how Obama voters are just elitist snobs, or all Hillary voters are salt of the earth. Yet a look at what the electoral map looks like by educational category does show two different worlds.

Here's what the electoral map would have looked like (only counting states that actually had exit polls, of course) if only the votes of those with a college degree had counted -- respectively, if only the votes of those without such a degree had counted:

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/8062/mapdemprimeduccw3.png

Basically, if only college grads would have had a say, all Hillary would have been left with would be her home states Arkansas and New York, three states around New York, and Florida, where there was no campaign. Six states out of 28.

If only those without college degree would have had a say, Obama would have fared marginally better: he would get 11 states against 17 for Hillary, but in terms of delegates he'd be almost equally far down as Hillary is in the other case. The states where voters without college degree have preferred Obama are five Deep South states where blacks made up about half the voters; the Potomac two plus Wisconsin, and his homestate Illinois; and Vermont and Utah.

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Finally, to round this set of posts off, here's a neat graph to illustrate the role of the education gap in the Democratic primary.

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/2181/demsbyeducationgraph2ju9.png

In short: every red dot represents the result of Obama in one of the primary states (for which exit poll data are available). Every blue dot represents a Clinton result.

The further right a dot is located, the higher the percentage of the vote the candidate got among those without a college degree. The higher up a dot is located, the better the candidate did among college graduates. In short: dots near the top right represent very good states for the candidate, those near the bottom left very bad states.

Any dot 'southeast' to the diagonal life represents a state where the candidate did better among those without a college degree than among college graduates. This includes almost all of Hillary's primary results - only in Mississippi did she do equally well in both and in Maryland did she actually do better among college grads.

Any dot 'northwest' to the diagonal life represents a state where the candidate did better among college graduates than among those without a college degree. This includes almost all of Obama's primary results - only in South Carolina did he do equally well in both and in Maryland did he actually do better among those without college degree.

The further from the diagonal a dot is, the larger the 'education gap' was in that state's primary.

I havent included all state names of course, because it would become chaos, but the data is in the table above. I've only labelled the ones that were the furthest from the average one way or another.

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Hey Nimh,

Can you link to the source of your data for that last, wonderful graph?

Cheers
Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Hey Nimh,

Can you link to the source of your data for that last, wonderful graph?

Hi Cyclo,

That graph represents the data in the table above, in this post. (And the data in that table in turn is all taken from the exit polls, except for the "class gap index", which is my own calculation.)

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Quote:

Pennsylvania Pitch: Can Obama Connect With Lower-Income Whites?

Wall Street Journal
March 18, 2008

After a look at the detailed demographic info ?- known as the "cross tabs" ?- from the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Republican pollster Bill McInturff thinks that Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama should tailor his Pennsylvania pitch toward the white, lower-income voters who have come to be a bulwark of rival Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign. "I think if he's going to win Pennsylvania he's going to have to do significantly better than he did with those voters in Ohio," said McInturff, who conducts the WSJ/NBC poll along with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

According the nationwide poll taken from March 7 to March 10, 49% of Democratic respondents making less than $50,000 said they would vote for Clinton, while 37% of that group opted for Obama. She also leads among white Democrats 51% to 39%. [..]

"There's significant concern about the economy in all this data," McInturff said. Citing similar statements from Peter Hart ?- his co-pollster on the WSJ survey ?- McInturff said that Obama has "got to get off the platform and start really connecting with voters in terms of their day-to-day economic concerns."

McInturff continued: "He's been losing the under-$30,000 income level through most of this race. So you'd say, look, there's women with lower levels of education and income ?- and their male counterparts ?- who she has done extraordinarily well with I think she's connected well with their economic concerns. And, you know, he's got to dig in and communicate a message to try to get a chunk of these people to kind of tip the scale, so he has a shot in a state like Pennsylvania."

That shot appears distant, according to a Quinnipiac Poll out today. Among likely Pennsylvania primary voters, Clinton leads Obama 53% to 41%, twice the six-point advantage she had in Quinnipiac's Feb. 27 poll. Clinton also boosted her lead among white voters to 61% to 33% and widened her advantage among working-class voters. Pennsylvania voters without college degrees give her 57% of their support in the latest Quinnipiac poll, compared with 37% for Obama.

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Yesterday's daily Gallup poll had moderately bad news for Obama: he was down a further point in the Democratic primary race (at 44%), while Hillary was stable at 47%. But there was a thorny detail in the short description:

Quote:

This is the second day in a row in which Clinton has had a slight advantage over Obama -- albeit not a statistically significant lead. An analysis of the day to day trends shows that Clinton had a significant lead in Monday night interviewing.

In short: although the three-day running tally was more or less stable, there was in fact a notable deterioration for Obama on the last of those three days.

The consequence of this was that even if yesterday's sample just had the same numbers as Monday's, the tracking poll would still see Obama take a dive today. Even just to keep that 44% to 47% deficit against Hillary would have required Obama to have scored a significant improvement on Monday's numbers on Tuesday night.

Well, it seems that this didnt happen. Today's Gallup tracking poll does indeed see Obama take that dive. He's down two points to 42%; Hillary is up 2 points to 49%. A three-point deficit becomes a 7-point one.

And again, this is just because Tuesday night's numbers were just as bad as Monday's; it didn't take any further deterioration to make it so. The accompanying description notes this too: "[Hillary Clinton] led by a similar margin in Tuesday night's polling as compared to Monday night's polling." Obama would have needed a significant improvement on Tuesday night just to keep that deficit at three points.

Of course that was the hope: that Obama would indeed get improved numbers on Tuesday night, following his speech. Apparently he didnt. But it's reasonable enough to hope that the impact of such a speech doesnt register until a day or even a couple of days later, when all the media have covered it, viewers who didnt see the original speech may have seen its highlights, people have started telling each other about it, etc. Even after the most important primaries and caucuses (eg Iowa), there was no bounce yet the day after; the effect only really showed up a couple of days later.

But of course, if there's no bounce or recovery in these daily polls over the next couple of days either, thats bad news.

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Very interesting graphs and deep analysis, as usual, nimh.

What explains the recent Obama faltering?
I think it's the race factor brought by his pastor's sayings.

If we statistically "cleanse" the race effect on the votes by income data, I suspect we'll find an obvious pattern: whites with little formal education tend to shun Obama.
How important are these voters in swing states?
Who is the niche of the ill attacks against Obama based on "reverse racism"? Is it underprivileged whites? Is it moderates of all sorts? It would be interesting to find out.

On an aside, on the "obama 08" thread, on February 13th I asked:

fbaezer wrote:

Can anyone comment on Obama's Church?

Trinity United Church of Christ

All I got was silence.

Typically, Obama supporters avoided the issue.

---

Should I add that I personally think the pastor was right in several issues, but that my personal opinion counts for peanuts?
The pastor saw the USA as a foreigner does. Not good for a campaign.

In other words:

Michelle Obama worded wrongly her remarks about pride on being an American ("I've never been SO proud of being an American" would have sounded much better, in terms of political effect).
Barack Obama should have known that his pastor was a political liability. It was naïve of him to have him near.

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It was naive to call him his mentor.

It's the mentor comment specifically that causes me to think that Obama agrees with more of his Pastor's comments than he is letting on.

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fbaezer wrote:

Quote:

What explains the recent Obama faltering?
I think it's the race factor brought by his pastor's sayings.

The pastor saw the USA as a foreigner does.

Barack Obama should have known that his pastor was a political liability. It was naïve of him to have him near.

I think these are three true statements. I think they are key to what we are now witnessing. Earlier, my attention was drawn to the evidences of sexism that I saw in this election and I'd come to believe that sexism might be a tougher problem in US culture than racism. It now looks like that was an hypothesis too premature and too glib. I've really been taken aback by this present matter. It's really the first instance where race, by which I mean racism, has moved into high relief and it isn't pretty.

Obama, in his speech, talked honestly about the divide that yet persists and how it is acknowledge in the barber shops and beauty parlors, and particularly, on sundays in church services. That's the 'foreign' territory and viewpoint that fbaezer references. And there's a part of america's soul that is not comfortable with 'foreign'. It sits outside of agreements and narratives and it's probably dangerous and it's bound to be profane. Now, a common criticism of Obama's address to this coming from the right and evident on multiple platforms is that, in his speech, he 'threw his [white] grandmother under the bus'.

It's very depressing.

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Holy ****... this might be (much) worse (still) than we thought.

New state-level match-up polls by SurveyUSA. Polls conducted 14-16 March.

Admittedly in three states of which two (Ohio and Kentucky) have been polling very Obama-unfriendly almost throughout. Still, even in comparison, this is not good:

Kentucky

Code:



         Clinton  McCain  Margin     Obama  McCain  Margin



March       43      53     -10   ...   28     64     -36 



February    43      53     -10   ...   32     61     -29

January     41      51     -10   ...   35     54     -19

December    44      50      -6   ...   35     53     -18

Missouri

Code:



         Clinton  McCain  Margin     Obama  McCain  Margin



March       46      48      -2   ...   39     53     -14 



February    51      44      +7   ...   49     43      +6

January     44      50      -6   ...   40     51     -11

December    50      46      +4   ...   47     44      +3

Ohio

Code:



         Clinton  McCain  Margin     Obama  McCain  Margin



March       50      44      +6   ...   43     50      -7 



February    52      42     +10   ...   47     44      +3

January     46      48      -2   ...   43     50      -7

December    45      45       0   ...   38     47      -9

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Yes.

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Google's brilliant elections gadget

Look at this: nuff said. This is Alabama. Brilliant!

Go here to create such a map for any state.

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4065/googlemapsalprimarygn3.png

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Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

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