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

nimh wrote:

To give an impression of how little polling is being done on the states that are up next, especially in comparison with the polling onslaught that characterised the run-up to the votes in IA and NH, this is the complete scorecard of polls done so far in January...

[..]

Republican race

Look at the immense number of undecideds! Much higher than in the Democratic race. That should serve as a big warning flag about the volatility of the race.

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I f*cked up in the Republican table there.. all the numbers for the candidates are OK, but the dont know/other category is incorrect. Forgot to deduct Huckabee's numbers from it.

So you can forget about the "warning flag" remark I made there - not that the race isn't volatile, but you wouldnt be able to tell from the number of undecideds.

Here's a corrected version of the table. Note that it's also got a new Florida poll.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/9581/beyondnewhampshirerxm7.png

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About that new Florida poll (Survey USA, 9-10 January), it's the first poll for Florida from after the NH primaries, and at first blush suggests an impact of the results there.

In the Republican race, as you can see, McCain gets a lot more than in the pre-NH polls by other pollsters, and though it's tricky to compare results across pollsters, his NH win would seem an obvious explanation. Huckabee on the other hand seems to be fading away.

In the Democratic race, meanwhile, the results are:

Hillary 51%
Obama 32%
Edwards 11%

I.e., Obama does about as well as in the pre-NH polls by two other pollsters, but Hillary does a solid 10% better than in both those. The number of those saying other/undecided has decreased by 5-10% meanwhile, partly because of Richardson dropping out.

Interesting crosstabs:

Hillary wins the white vote by 61% to 16% each for Obama and Edwards, while Obama wins the black vote by 66% to 21% for Hillary. If this portends an increasing "segregation" of the vote, Obama is in trouble.
There's not much difference in the results among liberal and moderate Democrats, but among the small minority of conservative Democrats Hillary does a lot worse, while Edwards and Other pick up some.
Obama gets 52% among young voters (18-34), but only 20% among those over 65.
Hillary does 13 points better among women than among men, while Obama does 13 points better among men than among women.

In the Republican race,

Huckabee and Thompson do (far) better among conservatives than moderates, while McCain does better among moderates.
Huckabee's support shoots up in the panhandle of northern Florida, where he gets 40%, while Giuliani does best in the Southeast (Miami, right?).
Rudy also does well among Hispanics (so I'm guessing that's the Cubans).
Huckabee does best among the young, and McCain does best among the old.

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Meanwhile, in a post-NH poll done by Survey USA in New York, Rudy Giuliani is down to 32% and just a three-point margin over John McCain with 29%. Huckabee gets 12%, Romney 7% and Thompson 6%.

Hillary still leads Obama massively there, 56% to 29%.

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Like I predicted, the "beer track vs wine track" analysis is all back in vogue again after the NH results. Hillary represents the "beer track" in Democratic policies; Obama the "wine track".

Here's Michael Barone sketching the Democratic political landscape:

Quote:

The presidential selection process is supposed to enable the parties to come together, to agree on a widely acceptable nominee. But so far, the process has separated the parties into separate and hostile factions. One faction of the Democratic Party is relatively upscale, well educated, young. This faction is supporting Barack Obama. The other faction is relatively downscale, less educated, old. This faction is supporting Hillary Clinton.

This is not a new split in the Democratic Party. If you put John Edwards' votes aside, the New Hampshire primary results last week look very much like the New Hampshire primary results in 2000, when Al Gore narrowly defeated Bill Bradley by almost exactly the same percentage margin by which Clinton defeated Obama.

Clinton, like Gore, ran strongest in the northern mill town of Berlin and in the state's largest city, Manchester, and its suburbs, in the former mill towns of Dover and Rochester and in the modest-income towns between them and Manchester. Obama, like Bradley, ran best in the college town of Hanover, in the Vermont-like strip of towns along the Connecticut River and in yuppie Portsmouth and vicinity.

In the days of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, these two factions were not evenly balanced. The Democratic primary electorate was heavily downscale, ethnic and religious. But now the two factions are roughly equal in size. The downscale constituency has tended to prevail, but not always and not inevitably.

George McGovern, with upscale support, defeated Edmund Muskie in 1972, and Gary Hart, McGovern's 1972 campaign manager, came close to defeating Walter Mondale in 1984. Gore defeated Bradley by only 4 percent in New Hampshire in 2000, but prevailed because it was five more weeks to the next contest and Bradley couldn't sustain his campaign. But there are only 11 days between New Hampshire and the Nevada caucuses, where the Culinary Workers Union and the Nevada SEIU have endorsed Obama. This is a race either faction's candidate could win.

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Update on current polling for the Michigan Republican primary:

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/4346/michiganrepstb7.png

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So nimh, who do you think has the best shot now? My preferred Republican, Romney, is struggling, and just about has to win Michigan to have a shot, it seems, as of right now? Or will McCain's luster tarnish if he begins to lose a state or two? And can Huckabee survive a closer look by conservative voters at his not so conservative record? Or if these three beat up on each other, will it actually allow Giuliani to score a big victory somewhere and be off to the races?

And will Obama score another takedown on Clinton somewhere and put her campaign into a tailspin again, thus requiring her to cry harder again?

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For what it is worth, okie and nimh:
I see McCain taking MI. There essentially is no Dem promary so the Independents may come out for him, especially after NH and IA. If that happens, Romney may be toast.
McCain by 6 over Romney and 12 over Huckabee.

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realjohnboy wrote:

For what it is worth, okie and nimh:
I see McCain taking MI. There essentially is no Dem promary so the Independents may come out for him, especially after NH and IA. If that happens, Romney may be toast.
McCain by 6 over Romney and 12 over Huckabee.

I see McCain beating Romney's ass in MI, no one else being a factor and then I see the door hitting Romney in the ass on the way out shortly thereafter. IMO, he's already in the toaster.

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OK, so we have a few more polls out now for the rest of the January primaries, so let's some general observations.

First, the Republican race. Wide open.

For the Michigan primary tomorrow, there's been seven polls out this month. I posted the graph a couple posts above. It's a three-man race, but Huckabee is clearly in the back seat, with Romney and McCain battling it out for first.

Both Romney and McCain have been rising in the polls over the month. There's a difference though: Romney has been polling pretty steadily - the last five polls all had him at 25-30%. McCains numbers have been far more volatile, bouncing between 18% and 34%.

My guess is that this is because Romney attracts reliably voting party faithful folk, whereas McCain depends more on the independent and moderate people who might or might not come out to vote. That would mean that McCain's score in the poll largely depends on whom the poll defines as a "likely voter", and would account for larger differences between the polls. Just a theory tho.

It would also mean that the outcome of the elections largely depends on how big the turnout is. If turnout is high enough - and quite a lot of people come in who are not hardcore party faithful - McCain wins, if not, Romney wins.

I wouldnt count Huckabee out for a second place showing though. He's scoring pretty consistently between 15-19%, but in Iowa he did outdo the polls quite a bit. I dont know how many born-agains/evangelicals there are in MI - not a whole lot I suppose - but there is a core constituency there that is roughly self-reliant in information and will not quickly respond to the media hype of the day, and might be undersampled in the polls. So I'm guessing he might get over 20% - although it's true that he did lose some of his post-Iowa momentum.

He will have to rely on his church faithful though, is my bet. He has attempted to appeal to a populist kind of resentment among the fairly plentiful Reagan Democrats in this economically depressed state, culminating in his clever dig at Romney that (paraphrasing) "people want a politician who reminds them of the guy they worked with who could be sacked along with them, rather than of the corporate executive guy who does the sacking". But I cant help but think that, in light of how impopular the Republican brand is now anyway, any disgruntled feeling Reagan Democrats wont bother coming to the primaries anyway, Huckabee or not.

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Funny, I have no idea how Massachusetts will vote in the primaries. Usually I have a good sense before hand.

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Then, Nevada.

There's been all of ONE poll out this month so far on Nevada, unless one slipped through today. This is what it's got:

Reno Gazette-Journal/Research 2000
1/11-13/2008
22% - McCain
18% - Giuliani
16% - Huckabee
15% - Romney
11% - Thompson

A surprisingly strong showing by Giuliani there, probably reflecting how little campaigning has been done in the state. Giuliani was the national frontrunner after all just a couple of months ago, and his numbers only started sinking in respective states as the campaign heated up. In Nevada the campaign never did heat up (yet), so perhaps you have this residual frontrunnerdom for Giuliani.

But overall it's a four- or even five-man race, with the numbers pretty evenly spread and nobody getting even a quarter of the votes. Wide open. Means perhaps that the Michigan result could have a decisive influence on the outcome in Nevada a couple of days later.

Mind how Nevada has caucuses, not primaries, and the share of Republicans in the state actually taking part in the vote will thus be very small. I think it was just 0,5% in previous iterations. This time it's different of course, they're earlier in the season, more in the limelight, but it'll still be just a couple of percent. So that might be to the advantage of whoever the choice of the hardcore conservatives is in Nevada (I have no idea whether Romney is the choice of the establishment in the West as well?)

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South Carolina:

Here's an update:

http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/7196/scpollsron2.png

As can be seen in the graph, South Carolina is the first of two states where there's been a clear break in the polls after the NH primaries. Up until Jan 8, Huckabee, himself rolling on the momentum of his IA win, was in the lead - and an ample enough lead too, by anything between 7-17%.

But McCain got a real bounce from his NH win. The later set of three polls shows him at between 4 and 11 points higher than any of the first three polls had had him at.

Meanwhile, although his third place finish in NH was widely forseen, Huckabee nevertheless suffered from passing on part of the momentum to McCain, and in all three newer polls did worse than in any of the first three. So now it's McCain in the lead, if by a much narrower margin of 3-7%.

Meanwhile, Romney is steady in third place, and Fred Thompson is - who would still have thought? - tentatively moving up behind him. A four-men race?

It'll be hard for Thompson or even Romney to compete though. Unlike in nationally, where the Republican party establishment is still very ambivalent about McCain and would rather support Romney, the party elite in SC is pretty solidly behind McCain. Meanwhile, on the grassroots this should be Huckabee country, with lots of evangelical christians and populist-minded conservatives. As I said above about Michigan, I think Huckabee stands a good chance of outdoing the polls, and the more conservative/Christian the state, the better that chance.

If McCain wins Michigan, or even Nevada too, I think he should nevertheless be able to grab a win here too. And that would set him up very nicely for the rest of the race. But if Romney wins Michigan, and the sense of momentum dissipates among the field again, then Huckabee still stands a very good chance here.

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Finally, last state up this month will be Florida.

Here's an update of the polls from there - couple new ones out there:

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/6463/flpollsrnu9.png

Like the polls from SC, the polls from Florida seem to show a clear effect of the NH results. In the two polls done this month before NH, it was a four-men race with little or no discernible advantage for any one candidate. Huckabee, Giuliani, McCain and Romney were pretty much even.

Today it is still a wide-open race. But in all three polls since NH, McCain has snatched first place, if with sometimes tiny margins.

After Nevada, this is the second state where Giuliani can still make a stand. Florida, of course, was one of the "firewall" states for Rudy; never mind the early states IA and NH, was the reasoning in Rudy's camp, what counts is the big states that follow later on, and prominent among them were the state of New York and Florida - that place of exile for so many New Yorkers. And indeed Giuliani had a towering lead here for very long.

That's all gone now. Florida turned out to be no "firewall" once Giuliani started ending up at the back of the pack in the earliest states. But at least he remains competitive here, and this is a state where a lot of campaigning has already been done. He does well in Miami, among people from up north, among Cubans. He's got a shot, whereas Huckabee, for example, is much more restricted in how far up he might go, with his support much more regionally concentrated.

Which raises an interesting question. Imagine this: Huckabee won Iowa. McCain won New Hampshire. Imagine that Romney wins Michigan and thus buys himself extra time in the race - it's wholly plausible. McCain having lost some of his momentum again, he has to yield first place in South Carolina back to Huckabee. And with Huckabee's appeal in Florida limited and McCain set back in the pack, Rudy Giuliani grabs a first place in Florida and puts himself back in the first tier with the others.

Not saying it's the most likely outcome. But.. it's possible. Then you'd have four different winners in six states, and the race would be back to square one even as Super Tuesday comes. Wouldnt that be fun? Twisted Evil

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Meanwhile, on a quickie note re the Democratic race, note the rather surprising outcome of that one poll that's been done on Nevada this month:

Reno Gazette-Journal/Research 2000
1/11-13/2008

32% - Obama
30% - Clinton
27% - Edwards

Wide open race - and it's actually a three-way race again, with a surprising good score for Edwards. Surprising since Obama's got the culinary union, Hillary the teachers, and I havent really heard anything about the Edwards campaign in Nevada.

Again, a lot will probably depend on how much turnout will expand from the miserly levels of previous caucuses in the state - the higher it goes, I'm guessing, the better for Obama, while Hillary and perhaps even more Edwards do better among the core voters who come out regardless.

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Thanks nimh, all pretty fascinating. This is the most interesting Republican race in my memory. It serves the voters well to get a good look at all of these guys. When I watch the debates, I keep coming back to Romney, but he only has a decent chance, thats all. McCain seems to have the advantage if he wins Michigan, ironically propelled by non-republican voters. But McCain also needs to win Michigan in my opinion to give him the boost he needs to win later, just as Romney not only needs to do but almost has to do. I think we should have Republicans electing their own party nominee, instead of independants and Democrats doing it.

The back and forth between Obama and the Clinton machine is fascinating because it gives us a unique opportunity for Democratic voters to understand the tactics previously used on Republicans, however, the Clintons must walk a very fine line between scoring underhanded punches and offending the audience or referees, such as a not altogether cooperative press reporting the underhanded stuff as it truly is.

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That underachiever Romney says
"in the next 10 years, we'll see more progress, more change than the world has seen in the last 10 centuries."
We will be doing more than going from the 1st crusades to sliced bread and space travel but I'm sure Mitt is the one to take us there.
But, perchance, I misrepresent his case, as Okie might say, "it'a probably just a metaphor."

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If you quoted him right, dys, he is stretching it a bit. But who knows what will happen in the next 10 years?

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okie wrote:

If you quoted him right, dys, he is stretching it a bit. But who knows what will happen in the next 10 years?

Well of course I didn't "quote him right" I only quoted what he said just like when I quote Goldwater.
Why is it Okie that conservative republicans have this need to burn down black churches?

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Breaking News: Judge says MSNBC debate
must include Kucinich

-from the Los Angeles Times:

A judge in Nevada has just ordered MSNBC to include Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Tuesday's Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas or he will cancel the forum.

Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to comply. Kucinich had filed a lawsuit seeking to be included just this morning.

The judge ruled it was a matter of fairness and Nevada voters would benefit from hearing from more than just Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama. Kucinich had been invited to participate in the 6 p.m. Pacific debate Tuesday, but that invitation was rescinded last week ... So set up a fourth podium.

Andrew Malcolm, correspondent - The Los Angeles Times

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Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson got it right. Good for him.

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

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