Bush/Cheney '04: The rich won this election ...

After yesterday, I would not put much faith in exit poll data from this election.

Exit polls are a joke and have been for 20 years...

Wait for the raw data like they did this time.

Runamuck, there will be no "raw data" by income. Or race. Or any of that.

They dont register your income at the polling booth, you may have noticed.

CoastalRat - actually, this exit poll was pretty much on the spot, wouldnt you say?

Bush 50, Kerry 49 - very close to the actual results.

In fact, the exit polls by state, too - you'd be hard fetched to find one that had it wrong beyond what a poll's statistical margin of error would be.

The problem here was more that, if your margin of error is, say, +/- 3%, that'll still get you a bunch of races wrong when the margins of victory are just 2% or 3% as well.

The data remain roughly right - but that 2% you're statistically be likely to be off will still have you call the wrong winner.

That's irrelevant here though. Add or subtract (say) 3% to any of these numbers by income group, and the result is still exceedingly clear.

Exit polls (as opposed to regular polls) are still the best way we have to get an image of how voters break down by subgroup.

I somehow doubt you will hesitate long to point out that "Bush made significant inroads among Latinos", for example.

But that, too, is based on the same exit polls.

The rich won this election?

Haven't they always?

I don't see anything to doubt in those stats. This is America. Everyone wants to be rich and a healthy portion of those who aren't still consider their views as if they were… because they plan to be. It's encouraging that even in these tough times the middle didn't cave in to the gimme gimme gimme crowd.

I think it was more the fear factor and the creepy christian block vote.
You can fool some of the people all of the time.

>sigh<

I am moving out of this country..
I dont want Bush's next game of "army" to kill my family.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Just for argument's sake, let's say anyone who makes over 50,000 is rich. If this is the case, then you are absolutely correct. If you do the math, extrapolating these percentages out to 120 million votes, President Bush was elected by 23.5 million people making less than $50K and 36.4 million people making $50K or more.

Just for kicks, let's use Senator Kerry's definition of rich - anyone who makes over $200K. In this case, President Bush was elected by 57.7 million non-rich people and 2.2 million rich people. Hmmm - looks like he was elected by mostly non-rich people.

But, perhaps you don't like that definition of rich. So, let's call everyone who makes $75K rich. In this case, President Bush was elected by 38.7 Million NON-rich people and 21.3 Million rich people.

Which definition of rich do you prefer? In any case, President Bush was elected by mostly non-rich folks. But then, why let a few facts get in the way.

fddf

Nihm -- Just for argument's sake, let's say anyone who makes over 50,000 is rich. If this is the case, then you are absolutely correct. If you do the math, extrapolating these percentages out to 120 million votes, President Bush was elected by 23.5 million people making less than $50K and 36.4 million people making $50K or more.

Just for kicks, let's use Senator Kerry's definition of rich - anyone who makes over $200K. In this case, President Bush was elected by 57.7 million non-rich people and 2.2 million rich people. Hmmm - looks like he was elected by mostly non-rich people.

But, perhaps you don't like that definition of rich. So, let's call everyone who makes $75K rich. In this case, President Bush was elected by 38.7 Million NON-rich people and 21.3 Million rich people.

Which definition of rich do you prefer? In any case, President Bush was elected by mostly non-rich folks. But then, why let a few facts get in the way.

I never had a doubt that the rich won this election.

By Kerrys own definition, $200,000 is rich. Only the top 1 or 2 percent as Kerry claims. That would be about 3 to 6 million rich people that voted for Bush. Where did the other 50 million people come from?

nimh wrote:

CoastalRat - actually, this exit poll was pretty much on the spot, wouldnt you say?

Actually, no. I've heard several news commentators today lament on how off the mark most of the exit polls were, making this election a true 'cliff-hanger.' Exit polls have gotten to be a huge joke. Many people intentionally lie to the pollsters, rather than simply telling them, "It's none of your business how I voted."

<smiles>

You make some good points Idaho, thanks for your post.

It's true - a lot of non-rich people voted Bush too. And if you use Kerry's definition of rich (which indeed is not mine), an overwhelming majority of Bush's voters was non-rich.

But my point wasn't so much that Bush had more rich than poor voters - but that if it weren't for the rich, he wouldn't have won the election.

Because although you are right that Bush drew a lot of votes from the 'bottom half' of the income scale as well, Kerry drew more.

In fact, if it wasn't for those earning over 150,000 $, Kerry would have won the elections. (I just calculated it to make sure ;-))

Welcome to A2K!

So, if Mr. Kerry had won, you would say the poor had won. I could stand just a wee bit of his kind of poverty, myself.

For a "huge joke" they sure have the numbers extremely close ...

If you check the link I gave to the actual final exit poll data, you'll find that it mirrors the actual election results in detail.

No, it's mostly two other problems that came into play.

One: the commentators you reference yesterday were using preliminary exit poll data that was being updated as the day progressed. The preliminary data, leaked out to folks like us by Slate and Drudge, was further off from the actual results than the final exit poll data. Which is only normal: we are talking about incomplete, 'raw' data.

Two: commentators often don't know how to use a poll - no offence. The preliminary exit poll data, for example, had Kerry 51, Bush 49 in both Florida and Ohio, in a later 'edition' revised to Kerry 50, Bush 49. Some commentators will have taken this as meaning that Kerry was winning those states, and then later, when it turned out to be Bush 51 Kerry 49, blamed the exit polls for having "wrongly called FL and OH for Kerry" and being "useless" for predicting the winner.

But that's simply not how it works. A poll has a margin of error. For each candidate the MoE of a regular poll is often up to 3%. So if a poll says Kerry 51 Bush 49, it means that Kerry could have gotten something between 48-54%, and Bush 46-52%. Just to give an example. (I think I got that right.)

So yes, exit polls - and preliminary exit poll data all the more so - are a bad instrument to predict a winner in close races with. That's not what they're made for, as fbaezer pointed out elsewhere: they're made "to study the demographics and the reasons of voters".

As it is though, even the raw, preliminary data wasn't all that far off - in some 3/4 of states they had both candidates within 2% of what the actual result turned out to be. And the final exit poll data I am quoting in this thread is from overall totals that have the actual election results down to a point, so no reason for dismissal of the numbers here.

Anyway, I had a looong discussion with Fox about all this today already, and tried to summarize the whole thing in 10 points in this post, and fbaezer explained some more in the next. Lemme know what you think.

"But my point wasn't so much that Bush had more rich than poor voters - but that if it weren't for the rich, he wouldn't have won the election."

That's true, but it's also true that without the 'poor' vote, Bush also wouldn't have won the election, by a wider margin than without the rich vote (Yeah, I know that's a convoluted sentence). Play around with the numbers all you want - it still amounts to a nearly even split from all walks of life. Bush would have lost had ANY of those segments of the population failed to vote for him - the "rich" vote had the least impact of any segment.

It's also a different logic.

You're reasoning, if you take out the poor Bush voters, he wouldnt have had enough votes left for an elections win. Thats true of course - if you take out any random sample of one guy's voters from the equation in a close race he's gonna lose.

What I'm saying is if you take out all voters worth over 150,000$ - both Bush and Kerry voters - Bush loses his majority.

Doesnt make any difference in terms of his legitimacy of course - rich people deserve their vote just as much as poor people ;-).

But the statistic remains: among all voters earning up to 150,000 a year - Republicans, Democrats and Independents together - Kerry was on balance the preferred choice. It's only because of the strong tilt towards Bush in the over-150,000 category that the overall balance tilted to Bush.

Next time anyone on this board is going to go on about those "liberal elites" and how it's the Republicans who represent "the common folk", I'm gonna remind them of that. The poll shows: the richer, the more likely to have voted Bush.

Putting aside the fact that there are not enough "wealthy" people in this country to elect a president, what if there were, and they did?

Are the votes of the "poor" somehow more sacred than the votes of the "wealthy?"

That the "poor" vote Democratic in no way proves that charges of Liberal elitism are inane.

The "poor" vote for candidates who promise to use the taxes paid by the "wealthy" to benefit them.

An elitist who is out of touch with the common person is perfectly capable of recognizing this dynamic and exploiting it.

The condescending notion that the "poor" somehow represent the noble savages of our society is classic Liberal fare.

Generally speaking, the "wealthy" are better educated that the "poor." Usually, "better educated" is a sterling characteristic to the Left, but, apparently, not when it comes to voters.

That someone is "poor" doesn't necessarily mean that they are poorly educated, irresponsible or lacking a proper work ethic.

That someone is "wealthy" doesn't necessarily mean that they are well educated, hard working and responsible.

However, far more often than not, these characteristics go hand in hand with the socio-economic status. In America at least.

There is no caste or class system here that deprives hard working people of the opportunity to succeed and prosper, and an income of $200,000 a year is hardly likely to lead to a dynasty, where children advance irrespective of their personal virtues.

If someone chooses to lead a very modest lifestyle, that qualifies them for "poor," rather than investing their energies in a materialistic, ultra-competitive existence, God bless them. Their rewards in life may very well be far richer than any obtained by Wall Street Masters of the Universe. However, its a bit inconsistent (to say the least) for them to then look for some measure of enforced largess from those stupid enough to have sold their souls for wealth.