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

Really good point.

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State by state, Obama clearly more electable; but neither Dem would beat McCain

Part 1: The Data

You will have seen many a poll that claims to be the arbiter on which Democratic is the more electable one. Who wins against John McCain? Obama? Clinton? Both or neither? And who of the two Democrats does best against the Republican?

But why trust any single one of them, when you've got an obsessive politics geek on your forum to collect every single one of them in one ginormous table?

This time round: an update on state polling. After all, the general elections will be decided by the Electoral College, not the popular vote, so why not just skip the national polls and delve into the question of who is set to win which state's electors.

Here's the updated table, with every state-level poll I could find in the time frame December 2007 - April 2008.

The three main pollsters doing these polls are Survey USA, Rasmussen and Quinnipiac, so I check their websites for updates; they form the backbone of this table (note that Rasmussen pretty consistently has the Democrat polling at the low end of the number span, and Survey USA pretty consistently has the Democrat polling on the high end).

But in addition I used the overview of polls at TPM to track any other polls done, and I fitted them in where there was place: they're designated by little footnotes in the cell to the left, right, or below.

For each candidate's match-ups there's a column on the right where I've assigned a colour by state on the basis of these polls. The color coding is self-evident, I think.

Click to enlarge, and you may have to click the image again when it's opened to get it on true size.

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/3451/demsvsmccainstates2hf5.th.png

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State by state, Obama clearly more electable; but neither Dem would beat McCain

Part 2: The States - Assigning Advantage

In the table above, as said, you can find a column on the right of all the polls for the Hillary vs McCain race, and to the right of all the polls for the Obama vs McCain race, in which I've assigned a colour to each state. The colours go, obviously, from deep red for a McCain landslide in that state to deep blue for an Obama or Hillary landslide.

In assigning the colour I've purely gone on the poll results, not taking any background knowledge about the state into consideration. But I did pay more attention to a poll the more recent it is, and took the contrasting trends of SUSA and Rasmussen polls into account.

For clarity's sake, here's those two columns lifted out from the table and juxtaposed, both with each other and with John Kerry's result in 2004:

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/7240/demsvsmccainstates2asseez8.png

Part 2: The Maps - Approximates

Tables suck. So let's map the above assessments out on ... a map (with thanks to 270towin.com for the nifty mapping tool).

What would the electoral map look like, on the basis of recent polling, if Hillary were the nominee? What would it look like if it were Obama? And to get to the bottom line, what would the electoral college outcome look like?

In the maps below, I've assigned the states that I marked as "strong Dem" and "safe Dem" the same hard blue colour (same with the Rep states of course), but the states I marked as just "lean Dem" (or Rep) have a lighter colour blue or red. The odd state I marked as a complete tossup is left blank.

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/151/obamamccainassessiz3.png

Obama would make significant headway in the West: Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada would all go his way, and even Montana turns a little purple (or pink, in the case of this map).

He's also strong in the upper Midwest: Minnesota, lately a relatively close shave for Democratic contenders, and Iowa, which voted for Bush last time, become Obama bulwarks.

But none of that is enough, and the main culprit here is the Eastern half of the Midwest. Michigan and Pennsylvania become noone's land, and Ohio stays Republican.

Notable is also that Obama doesnt flip any Southern state. Not Missouri, surely a top target for the Dems this year; Obama does lousy there. And not Virginia, either - he polled well there for a while, getting narrow wins over McCain in the Survey USA polls of February and March and being only narrowly beaten in the Rasmussen ones, but come this month the mood in the state has apparently flipped back into safe Republican mode.

All in all the result would be a photo-finish. But to win the Electoral College, Obama would need both of the "no-mans land" states of PA and MI, while McCain would get a majority even just by winning one of those two.

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/6627/clintonmccainassessih9.png

While Obama wouldnt win, Hillary does clearly worse. She'd be beaten in the Electoral College by a margin of at least 58, and that's only if she would win all three tossup states, Washington state, New Jersey and Maryland.

New Jersey, really? Isnt that in her own back yard? Yes it is, but to little avail: Rasmussen has her losing by three points this month, and back in February it was eleven. On the flipside are a SUSA poll from last month showing her with a lead of five and a Quinnipiac poll from two months ago with a Hillary lead of six; hence the tossup status.

In general, Hillary's strengths and flaws are the opposite of Obama's. She does carry both Pennsylvania and Ohio, with their many ethnic, catholic, blue-collar voters. In the South, she wins her home state Arkansas, and at least brings Missouri, as well as Florida, into play.

But she has nothing like Obama's appeal in the West. Colorado would remain solidly Republican if she were the Democratic nominee in hypothetical elections today, and Nevada and New Mexico would remain out of reach as well.

What would do her in, however, would be her weakness in what I've seen described as "Greater New England". This is the northern region, stretching all the way from New England itself, through Michigan and the Upper Midwest and the Dakotas, to the Northwestern Pacific states Washington and Oregon. States where Catholics are relatively rare, and people are largely of Scandinavian, German (or Dutch..) descent, while they are less likely to have an Irish, Polish or Italian background.

Obama has excelled in the primaries in this region, with the notable exceptions of NH, MA and MI. Clinton, it turns out, doesnt do well here at all against McCain either. Maine and Minnesota return to their marginal status, Washington becomes a toss-up, and Oregon and Michigan actually turn red. (In Michigan there's been four match-up polls in the last three months, three successive ones by Rasmussen and one by EPIC-MRA, and the best Hillary's done is a tie in the earliest Rasmussen one.)

Meanwhile, whereas the Scandinavian/German-American states tend to be good for Obama, Hillary has been doing very well in the primaries in a band of counties where a plurality of residents, when asked about their ethnic ancestry, simply says "American". This is a surprisingly narrow band, through the Appalachians and then Tennessee and Arkansas/Missouri into Oklahoma and Texas, and has been overwhelmingly Hillary country in the primaries. But there's the thing: in the general elections, these lands will go for McCain over any Democrat anyway.

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Neither Dem would beat McCain. Why do you waste so much time on completely irrelevant horseshit.

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More match-up maps to come - maybe tomorrow. In the meantime I can post an only tangentially related map, found elsewhere on the net. It goes with what I was just saying:

nimh wrote:

What would do [Hillary] in, however, would be her weakness in what I've seen described as "Greater New England". This is the northern region, stretching all the way from New England itself, through Michigan and the Upper Midwest and the Dakotas, to the Northwestern Pacific states Washington and Oregon. States where Catholics are relatively rare, and people are largely of Scandinavian, German (or Dutch..) descent, while they are less likely to have an Irish, Polish or Italian background.

Obama has excelled in the primaries in this region, with the notable exceptions of NH, MA and MI. Clinton, it turns out, doesnt do well here at all against McCain either. Maine and Minnesota return to their marginal status, Washington becomes a toss-up, and Oregon and Michigan actually turn red. (In Michigan there's been four match-up polls in the last three months, three successive ones by Rasmussen and one by EPIC-MRA, and the best Hillary's done is a tie in the earliest Rasmussen one.)

Meanwhile, whereas the Scandinavian/German-American states tend to be good for Obama, Hillary has been doing very well in the primaries in a band of counties where a plurality of residents, when asked about their ethnic ancestry, simply says "American". This is a surprisingly narrow band, through the Appalachians and then Tennessee and Arkansas/Missouri into Oklahoma and Texas, and has been overwhelmingly Hillary country in the primaries. But there's the thing: in the general elections, these lands will go for McCain over any Democrat anyway.

A map to go with this is probably helpful. This one's based on the 2000 Census info. Note also the overlap between the Obama/Clinton divide and the divide in dominant ancestries when you go West of the Mississippi. The states where the majority ancestry is overwhelmingly German or English (eg Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Oregon and everything north from there) all went for Obama; the states where the dominant ancestries are a mix of American, Hispanic/Spanish, Mexican and American Indian (eg California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas) all went for Clinton.

http://www.valpo.edu/geomet/pics/geo200/culture/ancestry.gif

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Roxxxanne wrote:

Neither Dem would beat McCain. Why do you waste so much time on completely irrelevant horseshit.

Some people like to spend their excess time bloviating, chest-thumping and picking fights; others prefer to waste it examining various reams of trivial, obscure or nitpicky data. Both things are a waste of time, really - so I guess it's just a question of different strokes for different folks.

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State by state, Obama clearly more electable; but neither Dem would beat McCain

Part 4: The Data - Pinpointing the Current Averages

The above table and maps, based on an assessment of the ongoing polling, have an advantage but also a disadvantage. The advantage is that there's a bit of flexibility built in. The disadvantage is that there's room for subjectivity in assigning the status of the race in a state.

I can imagine that some would prefer maps that are simply based on the hard, current averages.

So let's rerun the exercise. That will also make it possible to pinpoint more precisely where Obama does better than Hillary and vice versa.

Here's a table that simply has the average for each state of the match-up polls done there in the past three months. Whether Rasmussen, SUSA or other, any poll conducted in February, March or April counts equally in these averages. The colours are based on exact numbers now:

Dem +14 or more = deep blue
Dem +6-13 = sky blue
tied - Dem +5 = pale blue
Rep +1-5 = tan
Rep +6-13 = light orange
Rep +14 or more = dark orange

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5530/obamahillaryvsmccainads0.png

Part 5: The Maps - The Current Snapshot

Here, then, are the electoral maps showing how an Obama-McCain and a Clinton-McCain race would play out if general elections were held now again. But this time no assessment of shades of play; just the snapshot of how the states would fall according to the above averages of the polls since February.

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/2980/obamamccainexacthn6.png

Compared to Kerry, Obama wins Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, but loses Pennsylvania: McCain is elected with a narrow majority in the Electoral College.

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/9108/clintonmccainexactmx8.png

Compared to Kerry, Hillary Clinton wins Arkansas, but loses a bunch of states: Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Jersey and New Hampshire. (Note how five of those six are in "Greater New England"). McCain wins comfortably

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State by state, Obama clearly more electable; but neither Dem would beat McCain

Part 6: Who's the More Able Match for McCain?

Like I wrote above, using the exact average of polls from the last three months makes it possible to pinpoint more precisely where Obama does better than Hillary and vice versa.

Here's the above table again, but with an added column, quantifying the difference between Hillary's and Obama's score in the match-up against McCain:

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7897/obamahillaryvsmccaintt9.png

There appear to be clear layers of performance here:

In the bluest of states there doesnt seem to be much difference between the two candidates' performances. (With the exception of Massachusetts, where Obama is consistently polling weakly.)
In the moderately and marginally blue states, Obama almost always does better - the only exception is Pennsylvania. Sometimes his advantage is big. Both in the Pacific Northwest (WA, OR) and in the Upper Midwest (WI, MN), there have been a bevvy of polls pretty consistently showing Obama with a significant advantage.
In most of the marginally red states, Obama does better. In Iowa, Colorado and Nevada he does much, much better than Hillary, the difference being even starker than in the Pacific Northwest or the Upper Midwest. In NM he does better too; but Hillary has an edge in Florida and a clear advantage in Ohio.
In your regular red state, however, the kind that Kerry lost by 7-20 points, Hillary does better. Or perhaps I should say, in your regular Southern red state. Hillary does far better in her home state Arkansas, but also in neighbouring Tennessee and in Kentucky, and she does moderately better in Missouri as well.

These four states, centred around the middle Mississippi, are the focal point for the preference for Hillary over Obama. Or maybe, rather, the focal point of antipathy to Obama? Arkansas is home ground for Hillary, of course, but these are also the four whitest states of the South ...
Finally, in hardcore Republican country Obama does better again, but mostly this just seems to reflect the regional breakdown again. Hillary does better in the Southern states Texas and Alabama; Obama does better in the Western states of Montana, North and South Dakota and Kansas, as well as in Alaska.

Here's how all of that translates onto a map:

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/9821/whodoesbetteragainstmccbm7.png

Pretty striking picture huh?

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Wow, did you make that? Very cool.

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NY is a surprise...

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sozobe wrote:

Wow, did you make that? Very cool.

Yep. I used the interactive map-thing at 270towin.com for the basics, and then adapted the rest (colours, legend, headings and the like) in Photoshop.

sozobe wrote:

NY is a surprise...

Yes. Both this month and last month, Rasmussen and Quinnipiac both had polls out for NY in which Obama and Hillary did almost exactly the same against McCain. Survey USA, OTOH, had Hillary doing much better this month, but Obama doing much better in February.

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A commenter on another site repeated the talk about Hillary being the safer shot, because she will win Ohio, while Obama won't and the rest of his shots are just gambles.

It annoys me - as Obama sympathiser, of course, but primarily because it's so counterfactual - it annoys my inner geek. (Which on this thread is very much an outer geek.)

So let me get this out of my system and write an answer, based on the data I just posted in this thread:

Quote:

You sound confident, but your take doesnt match the actual polling out there.

Yes, most polls done in the last three months on Ohio (four out of six) have Hillary defeating McCain there. (This month, it's one out of two). Obama on the other hand, the polls overwhelmingly agree, doesnt stand a chance there.

But why only look at Ohio? It's hardly the only swing state out there.

Take Iowa. Went for Bush in '04. In the last three months, five out of five polls have Hillary losing there against McCain. All five polls had Obama winning.

Take New Mexico. Went for Bush in '04. In the last three months, three out of five polls have Hillary losing there against McCain. Four out of five had Obama winning.

Take Colorado. Went for Bush in '04. In the last three months, three out of three polls have Hillary losing there against McCain. All three polls had Obama winning.

What about states where the Democratic nominee will have to play defense?

Take Wisconsin. In the last three months, four out of six polls have Hillary losing there against McCain. Five out of six had Obama winning.

Take Oregon. In the last three months, three out of five polls have Hillary losing there against McCain. All five polls had Obama winning.

Pretty stark, I'd say. Enough with the "Hillary can win the states the Dems will need to November" talk. She can win Ohio, yeah - 20 votes in the EC. But IA, NM, CO, WI and OR together are good for 38.

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Americans: No, Obama does not look down on the average American, and he doesn't look down on working-class Americans

In fact, if anything they think that description applies to Hillary.

Quote:

Only 26% Say Obama Looks Down on Americans
All three presidential candidates are generally viewed as respectful

Gallup.com
April 22, 2008

Most Americans reject the suggestion that any of the leading presidential candidates look down on the average American -- though more say it applies to Hillary Clinton (32%) than to Barack Obama (26%) or John McCain (22%).

Nearly identical results are produced when the question asks specifically about "working-class" Americans, rather than "average" Americans.

The campaign flap over how the candidates perceive average Americans stems from Obama's recent comments about the psychology of working-class, small-town voters in Pennsylvania, saying, "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Sens. Clinton and McCain have both labeled these comments "elitist," and Clinton, in particular, has tried to capitalize on them leading up to Tuesday's crucial Pennsylvania primary election. But, as noted, according to the new USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted April 18-20, only 26% of Americans believe Obama "looks down on the average American" -- a smaller percentage than say this of Clinton -- while 69% think he "respects" the average American.

Gallup finds no difference in perceptions about Obama's outlook among high- versus low-income Americans. Also, there is virtually no difference among Democrats in the percentages saying Obama and Clinton each look down on average Americans -- 15% and 18%, respectively.

The "elitism" charge could play a bigger role in the national election -- working against the Democrats -- as roughly half of Republicans perceive that both Clinton and Obama look down on average Americans. Less than a third of Democrats say this about McCain.

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nimh wrote:

Americans: No, Obama does not look down on the average American, and he doesn't look down on working-class Americans

In fact, if anything they think that description applies to Hillary.

[/quote]
Since when do polls become the final word? Are you aware that about half of the people in a poll think martians landed at Roswell?

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Hey, cool!

It's not the final word on anything, but it's an interesting snapshot of what people are thinking. And it seems to show that the whole "bitter" episode hasn't stuck to Obama. That's very good.

Nice bonus that they actually think Hillary is more elitist...

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okie wrote:

Since when do polls become the final word? Are you aware that about half of the people in a poll think martians landed at Roswell?

Not half... Razz

It's an imperfect metric, for sure, but yes, it's the best tool we have. This kind of question doesnt appear on ballot forms, so the only alternatives to polling or deeper survey research are to go on your own direct environment, by definition limited, or take the word of opinionators from this or that TV station, political camp etc for it.

I do take polls with a big grain of salt, f'sure. And I dont imagine any polling number to really be a to the point precise reflection of reality or anything. But I'll take a poll's results over what the talking heads on TV are telling me about it. And if a poll - a Gallup poll especially - shows 70% of Americans believing Obama does not look down on Americans or on working class Americans, then maybe it's 80%, maybe it's 60%, but it's a pretty safe bet that it's a clear majority.

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Obama and Hillary: Beer-track Democrats vs. Wine-track Democrats? Well, not if you approach the question literally...

Time for a fun post Razz

FiveThirtyEight.com has the map: "Wine States versus Beer States?"

"This is the states split up 50:50 based on their relative consumption levels of wine and beer, as tracked down from this Matt Yglesias article. For what it's worth, Obama leads Clinton 13-10 in wine states, and 12-7 in beer states."

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2420/2449669583_97183b4815_o.png

Silly? Well, he wasnt even the only guy who came up with the idea. Check out the maps on many eyes. They're better, too. That's the map for "Gallons of beer per capita per year" - Montana and North Dakota constitute the beer heartland - but you can toggle to the "Gallons of wine" map (New England, minus Maine, and the Pacific coast are the wine bulwarks.)

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Obama in trouble?
Clinton ahead in both tracking polls for first time since March 7

Today, the Gallup daily tracking poll has Hillary expanding the 1-point lead she'd had for two days into a 4-point lead; her biggest lead since March 20.

The Rasmussen poll's numbers are quickly catching up. Today, the poll has Hillary ahead for the first time in some two and a half weeks.

On average, the two polls give Hillary 48% and Obama 45%. That 3-point lead may seem modest, but it's the largest she's had since March 7.

Here's the overall graph:

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7240/galluprasmusdems15nd5.png

In the Gallup poll, Hillary leads 49% to 45% now; that's her highest rating since March 19, and his lowest in almost two weeks.

In the Rasmussen poll, she's leading Obama 46% to 44%, which is his lowest score since April 2 and her highest since March 27. It was also March 27 that she last led by 2 points in the Rasmussen poll.

Here's the graph illustrating the margin between the two candidates:

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/5984/galluprasmusdemslead13pl3.png

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The below two graphs illustrate, first, Obama's numbers in the two polls since January 23, and then Hillary's numbers in the two polls since that date:

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4035/galluprasmusobama5fb9.png

http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/4967/galluprasmusclinton5mw5.png

But this time they both come with a variation. That's because I wanted to follow JPB's advice on how to use trendlines.

The below two graphs only show the two candidates' polling since February 16, when Obama's upward surge levelled off and the race stabilised. And they show linear trendlines for that period for each of the pollsters.

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6222/obamalinear2cs1.png

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/7471/clintonlinear2gi7.png

Note how Hillary's trendlines, especially the Gallup one, show absolute stability: no move upward, no move downward.

That must be pretty unique in a primary race, I'd venture?

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The Democrats have the future?

Quote:

The GOP Generational Time Bomb

Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic
28 Apr 2008

It's no secret that Republicans have a brand problem; the gap between Dem and GOP party identification is greater today than at any point since the vanguard of the Reagan revolution, when Republicans held a double-digit advantage.

Researchers at Pew have put a decade's worth of data through their analytical minds and come to the conclusion that the leading edge of the Democratic edge is among young voters. This isn't surprising, but it is noteworthy. Consider: Voters under 30 in the Midwest are twice as likely to call themselves Democrats as they are to identify as Republicans. 63% of women under age 30 identify as Democrats versus just 28% who call themselves Republicans. Democrats even have the affiliation of a majority of young men.

A potential objection: that old canard, that young people are liberal and become more conservative? The historical data doesn't support it. When Bill Clinton was elected, a plurality of people under 30 identified themselves as Republicans. Same thing when Ronald Reagan was elected. Politically, today's cohort of 18-to-29 year olds came of age during the Bush presidency. It has turned them into Democrats.

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

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