February 2008 Archives

I am always fascinated by the results at Google Trends, Google's own tracker of relative search activity. Entering in our top three candidates at the moment, we see that Barack Obama would win the primary in Googlestan hands down:

The letters on this graph correspond to news stories that came out the same day of the spike, much in the same way that Wall St. analysts attempt to ascribe troughs and valleys in stock prices to external news events. I'm not sure these spikes correspond to anything more than increased search activity caused by increased news coverage in general, and not to any specific news article, but the fact that the spikes occur on some very prominent days (Super Tuesday, for one) provides empirical evidence that the graphs are not a "random walk" but do in fact provide a mirror of the interest of some subset of the population.

What subset is, of course, an open question. I'd love to dig deeper, but Google frustratingly/wisely does not give us datapoints, or even the y-axis, so we can only look at these relative indicators of search activity and wonder. Recent data released by Hitwise suggests that Google users are more well-heeled than users of other search engines, an income group that has been a strength for Obama. Yet the same data also reveals that the groups that index highly for Google tend to be 55+, and definitely older than groups that index highly for Yahoo!, which suggests a pro-Clinton lean. Certainly, whatever the biases of the population of Google search users, Obama outperforms the real vote here in Googlestan (at least, by my guesstimation of the relative lift of these lines, anyway) and, in fact, did extraordinarily well in states that he actually won. Here are the top ten states for Obama search activity in February:

Does the fact that Obama "outsearches" Clinton in Texas and Ohio portend victory? Clearly we can't tell from this--consider the margin of search activity in Missouri and the actual margin of the Missouri Democratic Primary, which was one percentage point. Consider also that even when we rank the states in order of search activity for Clinton, the past 30 days would indicate that the Senator from New York didn't even come close in her home state, which she actually won quite handily:

So what conclusions can we draw from this? Is it a comment on the online population? Doubtful--since online access is nearly ubiquitous. Perhaps, given the inverse relationship between the "Search Performance" of Obama, Clinton and McCain it is merely a function of how much available information voters have about each candidate--in other words, an inverse function of how long each candidate has spent in the public eye. In any case, Google--in case you, well, Google this and read my question--how about giving us a y-axis for this chart!

Senator Clinton has enjoyed widespread support from voters living in union households since the beginning of the primary season in Iowa. In fact, even in states that were extremely close, such as Missouri, Clinton's support amongst White voters living in union households far exceeded even her advantage with White voters in general. In the exceptionally close race in Missouri, 57% of White voters selected Clinton, while 69% of Whites living in union households did the same. In New Mexico, another close Super Tuesday primary state, the gap was even more notable, since Clinton actually trailed Obama with White voters overall (43% to 54%) but beat him with White union voters 52% to 44%.

We took a look at the White union vote from Iowa through to Wisconsin (including MO and NM as representative of Super Tuesday, as they were extremely close in the total vote). Clinton's dominance with this voter group was initially split with Edwards, but Clinton took a clear lead in New Hampshire and did not relinquish it--until Wisconsin. Obama's slight margin of victory with this subset of voters--his first-- was perhaps the clearest signal that the Clinton campaign had suffered a serious setback in Wisconsin. After the primaries of March 4th, we'll revisit this question to see if Wisconsin was an outlier, or the canary in the coal mine for Clinton's core union support.

Since the National Election Pool, on whose behalf we conduct the Exit Polls, put the question of listening to 'conservative talk radio' onto their surveys of Republican voters last week in Virginia and Maryland, much discussion has ensued. Indeed, McCain got his worst percentages in both states among those who listen frequently to conservative talk radio.  Also, many talk radio listeners don't find McCain 'conservative enough' on the issues.

But another look inside the numbers shows that while McCain might not be the perfect candidate for the most frequent conservative-talk listeners, he might not be the disaster some people make him out to be. We also asked this question: "No matter how you voted today, how would you feel if John McCain wins the nomination: Very Satisfied, Somewhat Satisfied, Somewhat Dissatisfied, or Very Dissatisfied?" And while conservative talk listeners may have preferred other candidates, they are pretty strong in their satisfaction with McCain.
 
As the nearby graph shows, fully 67% of frequent talk listeners in Maryland said they would be satisfied to some degree with McCain winning the nomination.  While this is a tad lower than the 77% overall who said they would be satisfied, it is still an overwhelming majority.

In Virginia, an even higher 74% of frequent talk listeners will be satisfied by McCain, only a spot less than the 77% overall there expressing satisfaction.
 
So when you listen to talk radio, and hear callers who say they would 'never vote for McCain', understand that they seem to represent only a small minority of even the frequent talk listeners.

The Superdelegate Transparency Project Portal is a wiki that purports to have all the answers. Feel free to examine, contribute and/or correct where you can.

Much has been made over the past few weeks of the possible influence of conservative talk radio upon the race to decide the 2008 Republican Presidential Nominee. While John McCain now appears to be the candidate, there has been a considerable backlash against McCain from several notable conservative radio talk show hosts. Have Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others had any impact upon the hearts and minds of Republican voters? With the help of the National Election Pool, Edison decided to find out--and the results may surprise you.

Read "Does Talk Radio Make A Difference" here.

Obama, McCain Sweep

On Tuesday, January 29th, Edison Media Research successfully conducted exit polls at precincts all across Maryland and Virginia, surveying nearly 4000 respondents at Republican and Democratic primaries in both states to identify voter demographics, important issues and candidate preference. John McCain was the winner in both Republican primaries, while Barack Obama won the Democratic contests by wide margins.

Exit Polling data for both contests included voter opinions on the economy, the U.S. war in Iraq, and immigration. In addition, we asked questions ranging from which candidates stood the best chance of winning in the general election, to which voters were frequent listeners to conservative talk radio. In all primaries, critical real-time information was fed to the major news networks and the Associated Press, enabling these organizations to make timely, accurate calls throughout the evening and to provide their audiences with important post-election analysis.

Maryland Primary Results

Virginia Primary Results

Maryland/Virginia Exit Poll Data

For more analysis and results from the primaries, please visit our member sites:

CNN | CBS | MSNBC | ABC | FOX

On Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney won the Utah Republican Primary with an overwhelming 90% of the vote. Based upon the high Mormon composition of the state, it is a given that Mormons overwhelmingly voted for Romney, and in fact 94% of Mormons did so (John McCain and Ron Paul split the remaining 6%). It is tempting, then, to view Utah's Mormon voters as a monolithic bloc, and indeed on first blush this appears to hold true. Certainly on "values" issues we see incredible homogeneity--91% of Utah's Mormon voters believe Abortion should be illegal; 90% attend church at least weekly; only 5% described themselves as "liberal."

Digging deeper, however, we find some clear divisions amongst Mormon voters on several key issues. On the immigration issue, 33% of Utah's Mormon voters believe there should be a chance to apply for citizenship, while 34% believe illegal immigrants should be deported. The divisions on this issue cut across age, gender and income--in fact, the best predictor of this was political philosophy: 50% of the "deporters" described themselves as "very conservative," compared to only 25% of the folks who chose a path to citizenship.

Also, while nearly two-thirds of Utah's Mormon voters were positive about the Bush administration, 35% were either "dissatisfied" or "angry." These voters overwhelmingly chose the economy as the top issue facing voters this year (67%) though economically they profile very similarly to those voters who were satisfied with the Bush administration. Lost in that concern for the economy, however (which many voters shared) was a sharp disagreement over the Iraq war: 90% of Utah's Mormon voters who approve of the Bush administration also approve of the Iraq war. This contrasts very sharply with the nearly 50% of "dissatisfied" Mormon voters who do not approve of the war. These anti-war Mormon voters were three times as likely to identify themselves as "Independents" than as "Republicans."

We'll never know, of course, how well Rudy Giuliani might have performed on Super Tuesday had he campaigned aggressively from Iowa onwards, but we do have some sense of the residual support Giuliani had on Super Tuesday, and even more interestingly, where some of those supporters may have gone. In a cross-survey analysis of the 15 Republican races we covered on Super Tuesday, Giuliani received 2% of the vote. We asked two questions across all the primaries we covered on Super Tuesday that specifically named the former New York City Mayor: which candidate is best qualified to be Commander-in-Chief, and which candidate is best qualified to manage the economy. Though 2% cross-survey voted for Giuliani, 7% named him for the former qualification, and 6% for the latter. Amongst the voters who named Giuliani for these two questions, the actual vote distribution is quite interesting:

Actual Vote of Respondents Selecting Giuliani as "Best Choice to Manage Economy (6% Of Sample)"

Actual Vote of Respondents Selecting Giuliani as "Best Choice for Commander-in-Chief (7% Of Sample)"

Overall, Romney was judged to be the best choice to manage the economy (39% cross-sample, compared to 32% for McCain), but those who thought Giuliani would best manage the economy broke much more for McCain, perhaps as a result of his endorsement of McCain's candidacy. Yet, on the "Commander-in-Chief" question, of those who thought Giuliani would make the best CinC, slightly more actually tended to vote for Romney than McCain. What makes this more notable is the fact that the 39% of Giuliani voters who disapprove of the U.S. war in Iraq much more closely resembles the profile of McCain voters (37% disapproval of the Iraq war) than the profile of Romney voters (only 22% disapproval).

Incidentally (and not necessarily related), while McCain had the highest percentage of Veterans amongst his voters (23% of those who voted for McCain cross-survey have served in the military). Giuliani had the lowest Veteran composition--only 14% of his voters indicated they had served.

Now that Super Tuesday is in the books, I'll briefly revisit my question from a few days ago, as we have a better idea where the Edwards voters migrated. In a cross-survey analysis of all the Democratic contests on Super Tuesday, Edwards managed to garner 3% of the vote. Certainly, that is one answer--some of his supporters simply chose to vote for him again. The rest, as my earlier post may have hinted at, were not so monolithic.

As we saw in South Carolina, there are at least two camps of Edwards voters, and they behaved that way on Super Tuesday. Nine percent of the cross-survey sample indicated that Edwards was the best choice to serve as "Commander-in-Chief," and 23% of that 9% did indeed vote for Edwards. However, 44% of the those who felt Edwards would be the best CinC actually voted for Obama, while 29% actually voted for Clinton.

The other relevant cross-survey question here was "which candidate would best unite the party?" Here, 8% of the cross-survey electorate chose Edwards, with 24% of those voting for their man. This issue turned out quite differently than the prior datapoint, however, as 43% of those who felt Edwards would best unite the party actually voted for Clinton, while 29% voted for Obama--exactly the opposite of how the CinC question broke.

If we assume that some overlap of the 9% from the first question and the 8% from the second question form the base of Edwards' support prior to the suspension of his campaign, we still cannot say for sure which candidate they definitively support nationwide. What this means, of course, is that the Edwards supporters are their own dogs, and they see different issues differently. It will likely actually take Edwards' endorsement to move the needle one way or the other before the convention.

On February 5th, 2008, Edison Media Research successfully conducted exit polls for 16 Democratic and 15 Republican primaries all across the United States, on what has become known as "Super Tuesday." Edison's national network of interviewers collected data outside hundreds of precincts in crucial states ranging from Massachusetts to California. In one day Edison collected, processed and analyzed data from almost 30,000 respondents, enabling our clients and subscribers real-time access to crucial information about voter demographics, important issues and candidate preference.

Edison Executive Vice President Joe Lenski noted "I am extraordinarily proud of the accomplishments of the Edison team. Pulling off nearly 30,000 interviews in 16 states, with the grueling schedule we have faced during this primary season, is a significant accomplishment, and our staff did a wonderful job. Thanks to their dedication and skill, our clients and subscribers were able to access accurate, critical data all night long on one of the most challenging election days in history." The Super Tuesday exit poll is believed to be the second-largest single-day survey research project ever conducted, exceeded only by Edison's national exit poll of the 2004 general election. Edison analysts predict that the 2008 Presidential Election this fall will, in fact, become the largest one-day survey project ever conducted, with Edison interviewers covering well over a thousand precincts across America.

States Covered By Edison on Super Tuesday

For more analysis and results of our data from Super Tuesday, please visit our member sites:

CNN | CBS | MSNBC | ABC | FOX

The New York Times has posted a project online called the Polling Place Photo Project, billed as "a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this year’s primaries, caucuses and general election." I can't wait to see the photos roll in--this will be especially interesting for the primary I am most curious about on Super Tuesday (and one that we obviously won't be exit polling), the Democrats Abroad primary, which takes place in 33 countries all over the world tomorrow. So while I am locked in a phone-less, wifi-less, airless room tomorrow staring at Super Tuesday data, I can imagine I am in Stockholm, at Tullys Coffee (Götgatan 42, T-Medborgarplatsen) doing my bit for democracy.

(Tip of the hat to Daring Fireball for pointing me to this.)

There has been a lot of speculation about which camp Edwards' supporters will migrate to, and I thought it would be useful to take a look at the recent South Carolina data to see if there were any clues from the exit polls. We asked a number of questions of the voters regarding their opinions of the other candidates just to see if there were any polarities and also to provide data for just this sort of question--once hypothetical, now very real for the supporters of John Edwards. Here are some of the notable datapoints amongst South Carolina Primary participants who voted for Edwards:

[Note--for all the tables below, the sample consists solely of the 19% of South Carolina Primary Voters who selected John Edwards as their nominee]

Regardless of how you voted today, how would you feel if Hillary Clinton wins the election?

Regardless of how you voted today, how would you feel if Barack Obama wins the election?

No real clues there. Let's try a different tactic:

Regardless of how you voted today, which candidate stands the best chance of defeating the Republicans on Election Day?

Regardless of how you voted today, which candidate would make the best commander in chief?

Regardless of how you voted today, which candidate would be the best choice to unite the country?

So, we have a wash. Amongst South Carolina's Edwards supporters, there is a slight edge to Hillary for Commander in Chief, and a slight edge towards Obama as a uniter--but otherwise, your guess is as good as mine, and we don't guess in this particular blog. Keep in mind that the Edwards supporters in South Carolina tended to be white and predominately 45+, territory where Clinton was strongest in South Carolina, but clearly South Carolina's (disapointed) Edwards voters don't appear to lean one way or another based upon the evidence we see here.

"Pre-Super Tuesday Edition." For about the last 30 years, women have been more likely to identify themselves as "Democrat" than "Republican" and have in fact voted that way. After 9/11, however, there were a lot of small shifts in the electorate, and some previously Democratic clusters and psychographic groups leaned towards Bush (the so-called "Security Moms," as an example.) This led to a closing of that gap in 2004, with Bush losing the female vote to Kerry by only three percentage points.

From the character of the primaries and caucuses to date, the gap is returning. The first clue, obviously, was the fact that our 2006 Exit Polls showed that Democrats won the female vote nationwide by 12 points. Now, in 2008, there is even more evidence that the gap is back. Much has been made of Senator Obama's ability to pull younger voters and first-time voters, and Senator Clinton's strength with women. The two clusters are not mutually exclusive, however--a lot of those first time, young voters are, in fact, women, and this has led to an incredible gender split in the contests so far. Here is a graph of the % of females participating in Republican and Democratic primaries (in states that have had both):

The difference between the female compositions of the Republican Primaries and Democratic Primaries in these six contests averages 13 percentage points. Certainly, with turnout figures like we have seen to date, men are also showing up in droves for the Democratic contests. The female turnout, however, is off the charts--and we can thank both Clinton AND Obama for this phenomenon.

Two new takes on the issue, from the Wall Street Journal and the Pew Research Center, summarized by Pollster.com here.