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

FWIW, I was never a Dean supporter...

Nimh, Texas has a really weird caucus set-up; do you know more about how it works? I can't figure it out.

Ooh, I hate it when my pretty charts end up at the bottom of the page.. <sulks>

( :wink: )

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Nimh, Texas has a really weird caucus set-up; do you know more about how it works? I can't figure it out.

Oh, I dont know actually! What's it like, roughly?

Ooh, I hate it when my pretty charts end up at the bottom of the page.. <sulks>

In states where the black population is less than 5%, Obama has a record of 7 wins, 2 losses and 1 undecided (NM). In states where the black population is 20% or higher, he is undefeated at 4-0. However, in states that are between 5-20% black, his record is a fairly dismal 4-10 (with one of those victories being Illinois).

The theory here is that Obama does well where the black population is so low that identity politics isn't an issue. And, he does well where the black share of Democratic primary voters is so high that he needs few white voters to carry the day. He has the hardest time in states that are black enough to have some racialized politics, but without enough black voters to completely tip the scales.

This corresponds to the long held observation that black candidates in general do best in either fairly non-black environments or in heavy black environments but struggle with the in between, where white majority fears that they will be the tool of an aggrieved constituency. (Some, of course, have broken that mold like Doug Wilder, and Carol Mosely-Braun and Obama himself).

For Obama's upcoming contests, this bodes well for Maryland, D.C., Virginia, Nebraska and Vermont and maybe Rhode Island, but not so well for Ohio and Texas.

Is Media Missing 'Bias' Issue in Obama-Clinton Contest?
By Greg Mitchell - E & P
February 06, 2008

There may be nothing to this -- as some suggested after New Hampshire -- but once again on Super Tuesday the exit polls did not line up with the results, and Obama once again did much, much better in caucus states where voters have to take stand in public.

Last month, I took some heat, and praise, for suggesting that there might be something to the idea that Obama was upset in New Hampshire partly due to his race.

It seemed suspicious that the exit polls, in such a small state, were so far off, lending at least some support to the theory that people will sometimes fail to pull the lever for a African-American candidate but then tell pollsters that they did. Remember that Obama had just swept the Iowa caucuses -- where voters have to take a very public stand.

Actually, in that earlier column, I did not fully endorse the notion that this had happened in New Hampshire. I merely took exception to all the pundits who were claiming that surely racism was dead among all those good Democrats of New Hampshire and played little or no role in his defeat.

End of discussion. In all the feel-good stories about Obama in the weeks since, race was mainly discussed in the context of Bill Clinton's alleged attacks, with very little analysis or probing of actual voter attitudes -- and why, if racism is almost dead, anyone would be worried about anyone playing the "race card."

Anyway: The results of Super Tuesday make me revisit this subject, again very tentatively.

Without going into all the results, just note Obama that inspired unexpected landslides in nearly all of the caucus states (see tallies below) while barely eaking out wins -- or getting trounced -- in nearly all of the voting booth states.

He did win Georgia easily, but like in South Carolina, he had a huge black base there, and of course he rumbled in home state Illinois. But once again there is the haunting evidence that most exit polls yesterday suggested very tight fights, or even Obama wins, in California, New Jersey and several other places -- where he ended up losing badly. How did that happen?

Exit polls indicated that he got about 43% of the white vote around the U.S. -- but does this even come close to lining up to the likely votes cast? If someone could crunch those numbers it would be interesting to know if there is any way Obama could have performed so middling in nearly all of the non-caucus states, unless white voters were not being straight with pollsters. That 43% figure just doesn't seem to fit.

I put this forth not with tremendous confidence but just as a way of sparking some discussion and investigation, which has been notably lacking beyond the "Bill Clinton on the loose" headlines of the past month.

Here are Obama's wins in caucus states only so far this year. Check out those margins: Iowa 38-29, Minnesota 67-32, Colorado 67-32, Kansas 74-26, Idaho 81-17, North Dakota 61-37, Alaska 72-27, and he leads New Mexico 49-48. He lost Nevada 51-45 but won the most delegates there.

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

Exit polls indicated that he got about 43% of the white vote around the U.S. -- but does this even come close to lining up to the likely votes cast?

The exit polls are adjusted through election night to take the actual results into account, and once the full results are in, they are re-weighted again so that the topline numbers conform to the actual vote.

So if you look at the exit polls the day after the elections, their numbers will add up to the actual results.

I dont know when the author got the 43%, during the night or afterwards. Exit polls are by state, so to get a figure for "around the US" would involve a lot of calculating, and you'd miss some too as no exit polls were held in most of the caucus states. But I did post an overview of the white vote for Obama and Hillary by state in the Polls thread. I'd say 43% seems a bit high - the median is at 37%, but that's not accounting for the size of states.

Otherwise a very interesting article by the way.

Interesting analysis of the race issue from a Daily Dish reader:

Quote:

In states where the black population is less than 5%, Obama has a record of 7 wins, 2 losses and 1 undecided (NM). In states where the black population is 20% or higher, he is undefeated at 4-0. However, in states that are between 5-20% black, his record is a fairly dismal 4-10 (with one of those victories being Illinois).

The theory here is that Obama does well where the black population is so low that identity politics isn't an issue. And, he does well where the black share of Democratic primary voters is so high that he needs few white voters to carry the day. He has the hardest time in states that are black enough to have some racialized politics, but without enough black voters to completely tip the scales.

This corresponds to the long held observation that black candidates in general do best in either fairly non-black environments or in heavy black environments but struggle with the in between, where white majority fears that they will be the tool of an aggrieved constituency. (Some, of course, have broken that mold like Doug Wilder, and Carol Mosely-Braun and Obama himself).

For Obama's upcoming contests, this bodes well for Maryland, D.C., Virginia, Nebraska and Vermont and maybe Rhode Island, but not so well for Ohio and Texas.

You vote, then get a ticket, and can go caucus that night for about a third of the votes in the state as at-larges.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You vote, then get a ticket, and can go caucus that night for about a third of the votes in the state as at-larges.

OK, so that should be a plus for Obama...

Not to accuse Our Hero of sly tricks, but this sounds to me like a warning shot to the Party: trouble ahead--you super-delegates better start thinking now about how to avoid the incredibly damaging floor fight the Clintons will engineer to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations when this comes down to the Convention--and it will come down to the Convention.

One way to avoid Armageddon--probably the only way--is to somehow swing the uncommitted super-delegates (about 50% of the total) behind the leading candidate--and, Obama is saying, "That will be me. I'll be up 30 delegates, up in states, up in money, up in mo, and up in the polls over McCain. So start planning now--because I will take this down to the Convention and through any floor fight if necessary. You don't want that drama."

Accident or not--that's the message.

Has anyone seen a citing of the running total of voters for each candidate regardless of the delegate counts?

Has anyone seen a citing of the running total of voters for each candidate regardless of the delegate counts?

Just how close was it?

Looking at the sum total of votes cast on Super Tuesday, it was very, very close:

"Using CNN's reported results , and rounding to the nearest thousand (both when inputing the numbers into my speadsheet and in the totals) -- and noting that there still some votes still to be counted in New Mexico [..] -- I have [b]a preliminary total of 7.35 [million] votes yesterday for Hillary Clinton and 7.29 [million] for Barack Obama[/b]. Overall, a total vote margin of about 65K despite nearly 15 million total votes cast for one or the other. Ignoring all other stray votes, [b]that gives her 50.2 percent of the two-candidate vote share and him the balance, 49.8 percent[/b]. Stunning, really. And yet, he may win both more states and, by a marginal handful, more delegates. That's just how close it was."

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