Fun with exit polls

February 6, 2008

We talked earlier about who won on Super Tuesday (Dems, Republicans), but let’s take a closer look at how they won.

There’s a mountain of exit polling data to comb through, and there’s going to be some variations based on regions, but in general, there are some interesting trends to consider.

On the Democratic side…

* Despite rumors to the contrary, Democratic voters are not bitterly divided between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — 72% of all Dems said they’d be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee, and 71% said they’d be happy with Obama.

* Clinton won women (52% to 45%), Obama won men (53% to 42%).

* “Identity” politics still matter: “Hillary Clinton carried white voters over Barack Obama, 52 to 43 percent. Obama carried black voters 82 to 16 percent. Clinton won Latinos 61 to 37 percent, and Clinton carried Asians 68 percent to 30 percent.”

* On the other hand, Obama drew even with Clinton among white males, a first this year. (Perhaps John Edwards’ departure helped Obama here?)

* Voters who said the economy is the top issue preferred Clinton. Those who said the war in Iraq is the top issue preferred Obama.

* Among Dems, Clinton enjoyed a five-point margin over Obama. Among independents, Obama enjoyed a 21-point margin over Clinton. On the other hand, Obama did better among self-identified liberals, but Clinton was stronger among self-identified moderates.

* The generation gap is alive and well — Obama scored big with younger voters, Clinton easily won the over 65 crowd.

…and on the Republican side.

* 80% of Romney voters described themselves as conservative; 75% of Huckabee voters described themselves as conservative; and 49% of McCain voters described themselves as conservative.

* Overall, among self-identified conservatives, Romney beat McCain, 42% to 30%. Among self-identified moderates, McCain beat Romney, 52% to 24%.

* Voters who cited the economy as the top issue preferred McCain over Romney by 9 points, which is counterintuitive, given the candidates’ backgrounds.

* Not surprisingly, McCain is still struggling with evangelical Christians: “In Tennessee, which Huckabee won, 73 percent of the primary voters described themselves as born-again Christians. McCain won 29 percent of these voters. In Missouri, 54 percent of voters described themselves this way; McCain won 24 percent.”

* “Voters who said they had a ‘negative opinion’ of President Bush’s administration flocked to McCain, who picked them up by wide margins in most states.”

On that last point, one of the top goals of the Dems, in the short and long term, is to connect McCain to Bush — like two peas in a pod.

* Among Dems, Clinton enjoyed a five-point margin over Obama. Among independents, Obama enjoyed a 21-point margin over Clinton…

* The generation gap is alive and well — Obama scored big with younger voters, Clinton easily won the over 65 crowd.

This really should be a wakeup call for some people, but I’m sure it won’t.

Getting the independents will be the key to beating the media darling “maverick” McCain, and getting younger voters signed up as Democrats is the key to winning for a generation.

As if there weren’t enough reasons to vote for Obama, there’s two more big ones.

  • All I know is that I had MSNBC on for an hour this morning and Joe Scarborough says Obama lost big because he didn’t win NY or NJ or CA like he was supposed to. Joe kept repeating it so it must be extra-true.

  • The beating McCain is taking from the hard-right crowd, if it continues, only makes him more acceptable to the independents and Democrats who dislike Clinton as much as Lush, et al, seem to hate McCain. A McCain/Huckabee ticket might bring in the evangelicals who really don’t march in lock-step fashion anymore. A Clinton/Obama ticket vs. McCain/Huckabee: now that would be interesting. Romney could go back to running the Olympics, or maybe restuffing his depleated coffers, something he’s probably better at than being a politician.

  • The stat about how Obama fared with Latinos and Asians makes me think that if Obama doesn’t get to be president sometime soon, America will never have an AA president. That’s more than a little sad.

  • It’s nice to know that the conservatives’ most acceptable ticket– a Huckabee/Romney mutant with McCain as VP –will never happen. I hope it remains a catch 22 for them through November.

    I’m also glad that it will be a tough fight for Obama. I’m behind him, but going toe to toe with Hillary will prepare him that much more for a match against McCain.

  • So how did the polls do last night? How did the results match up with the polling? It seems like everyone just forgets the polls after an election unless there is some big anomaly. I think the pollsters are very much on trial this year.

  • My pet peeve: the media reporting that Clinton “won” California, as if it were a football game. This misinformation is conveyed visually as well: maps showing California in Hillary’s colors. They each won some delegates, here and everywhere that you don’t have “winner take all”.

  • Michael # 4, when I look at the gender numbers, I feel the same way about HRC and a female President. Sebelius’ response to the SOTU was nice, but didn’t suggest she was ready to light up the national stage. Napolitano will be in a no-win on immigration policy. If it isn’t HRC, it will be a generation before the next major, chance-to-win female candidate.

  • Ed, I hope then that you are similarly peeved about the media saying Obama “won” 13 states where Clinton also took delegates or, in particular, that Obama “won” Missouri, which is about as much a tie as one can get in a high-turnout election. I would hate to think your frustration with the media is not principled in search of neutrality but rather is based on which side the media chooses to favor.

  • What I’m curious about is the wide margins that MOST Dem races posted last night. Basically, the ones Hillary won, she won big and the ones Obama won, he won big.
    What’s that all about?

    One of the other anomolies were the Illinois and New York races. Obama won big big in Illinois but Hillary had a much smaller margin of victory in New York.

    I don’t know why any of the above is important, but I wish someone would make some sense out of the margins of victory.

  • Going toe-to-toe with Hillary, with the media in your corner, is an entirely different contest than going toe-to-toe against McCain, when they are not. The media functions in a good guy-bad guy world, they are going to pick one of these candidates to get the kid gloves, Teflon treatment, and I think Obama is an unknown quantity if he is the one who doesn’t get it.

    And if Obama thinks he is fully battle-tested for having weathered attacks in campaigning against Clinton, what he faces in a general election will make him look back and think what he faced against Clinton was more like a love fest.

  • phoebes – she won NY by 17, while not the 32 Obama won by in Illinois, it still was not exactly close.

    my guess is that the big spreads had a lot to do with targeting. the turnaround time was too short for anyone give equal time and resources to all 22 Super Tuesday states, and the proportionality rules make a draw a waste of money (except viewed defensively – to keep a draw to prevent the other side from mopping up). so you want to look at where you can get the biggest win – where does it appear you are ahead to start with? where does it appear your opponent is not going? i doubt Clinton put more than token resources on Kansas; i doubt Obama put more than token resources on Oklahoma. as a result, with the exception of states too big to be ignored (and even then you can take NY and Ill out to some degree because of the hometeam effect), one camp was clearly more committed to most of the states than the other. this “dividing them up” rather than competing in each resulted in rough balance in the aggregate but lopsided wins in most states individually.

    my best guess.

  • “72% of all Dems said they’d be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee, and 71% said they’d be happy with Obama.”

    Oh, please ask Reps this question.

    “Voters who said the economy is the top issue preferred Clinton. Those who said the war in Iraq is the top issue preferred Obama.”

    Remember, these are EXIT polls. The better wording would have been “those who said they voted for Clinton said their top issue was…” 10 to 1 says most of them couldn’t tell you anything about Clinton’s economic stimulus plan. But they couldn’t say Iraq and they wouldn’t say “because she’s a woman”.

    “Voters who said they had a ‘negative opinion’ of President Bush’s administration flocked to McCain, who picked them up by wide margins in most states.”

    I think we can find a few photos of Bush and McCain hugging during Bush’s 2004 campaign.

  • I saw something somewhere this morning (or maybe heard it on the radio while driving through the slushy mess that is Kansas City today) that’s not in here but I’d love CB to address:

    The fact McCain won with Republicans unsatisfied with the Iraq war. Is that true?

    If so, that has to be the dumbest block of voters in the history of mankind since McCain’s Iraq policy = Bush’s Iraq policy.

  • The odd thing about the Republican race is how counterintuitive so many results are. The anti-war Republicans are swinging to McCain. The economically concerned Reps and looking to McCain over “Mr. Business” Romney. Conservatives are running away in droves from the guy most likely to carry their ticket. The anti-Bush Repubs like John “Bush clone”McCain over the others.

    I know Republicans create their own realities, but their realities don’t make much sense and throws the CW on this race out the window.If McCain gets the party’s nod, will Republicans even come out to vote this fall?

  • Zeitgeist – good explanations. Thanks.

    We’re still waiting in NM for the returns. I worked the polls yesterday for a few hours. Because of where I was sitting, and the fact that the voters didn’t fold their ballots, I saw a lot of marked ballots. And it was crazy. Little old ladies voting for Obama, teens voting for Clinton. There seemed to be absolutely NO pattern except that they were all Democrats voting for their future.

    It was very interesting.

  • My parents are big McCain supporters even though they are against the Iraq war. They believe that he basically agrees with them on foreign policy, though I have no idea what he has said to give them that impression. I asked for links to his positions if they can find them, if I get anything maybe I can explain it better because I don’t have a clue either.

  • McCain=100 years in Iraq=weak American economy for the foreseeable future. Those are the dots we need to connect, folks, to peel off every independent who thinks McCain will change Bush’s policy in Iraq or improve the economy. Staying in Iraq renders every economic promise McCain makes a lie. Show the picture of him hugging Bush (where he really should be wearing a dog collar) and keep repeating the equation: McCain=Bush.

  • Any word on turnout? Was this like the previous contests where the Dems had roughly double the number of voters turning out?

    I keep thinking this is the untold story of this primary season. Dem voters are really motivated this year, and, IIRC, propensity for voting in the primary is strongly correlated with propensity to vote in the general. This gives me hope given the persistence of national polls showing McCain to be very competetive against either Clinton or Obama.

  • dalloway–
    Great ideas! I’d also include ads where he says over and over again about how little he knows about the economy.

    And it’s going to have to be campaign ads that do it, because the media loves them some McNotreallyamaverick and will never, ever expose him for the moderate fraud he is.

    What’s strange, when I spoke with some die-hard righties with whom I work, is that one of their biggest peeves against McWouldblowagoatforavote isn’t him going against Bush’s tax cuts or even immigration, but … campaign finance reform.

    They’ve tried saying that it’s a liberal position because … well, having a law making full disclosure of donations and limiting amounts is only something dirty fucking hippies want. Or something.

    That’s not to say the law is great — it has issues. It just seems like an odd thing to get upset about, especially since McGetoffmylawn has been reliably pro-forced pregnancy, supports Iraq blindly, and is in the top 10% of all conservative lawmakers when it comes to sticking with the party.

    Like has been posted here many times by many people: No … I don’t understand conservatives, either.

  • Any word on turnout? Was this like the previous contests where the Dems had roughly double the number of voters turning out?

    On the Kansas side of State Line Road here in KC, the Dem caucuses were a freaking mess — one place had set up for about 60 folks. More than 2,000 showed up.

    The fire marshal lost his ever loving mind, the police had to be called in to direct traffic, and they wound up having the thing outside. While it was sleeting and snowing.

    More info about the messes here.

  • Mark D wrote: “The fact McCain won with Republicans unsatisfied with the Iraq war. Is that true?”

    Yep, they do vote for him.

    There’s this thought that goes through my head when LIEberman or McCan’t talk about “we can’t leave until we’ve won”. Are they saying that only they can tell when we’ve won? If so, let McCan’t as Pres and LIEberman as SecDef tell us we’ve won and we can leave. Victory with honor and then is it our fault that Iraq fails into a civil war or is invaded by Turkey and Iran?

    The disdain for the 60% plus of Americans who think the surge makes things better but they STILL want the U.S. out of Iraq is amazing.

    And yep, they are really stupid people. They ought to be voting for Ron Paul.

  • Petorado wrote: “The economically concerned Reps and looking to McCain over “Mr. Business” Romney.”

    Mitt Romney looks like the capitalist who’s been shipping American jobs overseas and laying off American workers.

    It doesn’t surprise me that McCain gets the concerned about the economy votes.

  • Thanks Mark D for the local color. Sounds like a real mess.

    Anyone else have any othe local color or news related to the larger national scene?

  • Edo–
    I hear it was (I live on the Missouri side).

    But you know what? IT’S FREAKIN’ AWESOME!!

    The fact record crowds are showing up all over the country to vote for the Dems is a thing to behold. The fact so many younger voters are doing so give me hope for the future (as someone else said, this could set up a progressive majority for a generation, maybe longer).

    All in all, the excitement is something I’ve never seen before. And I likey.

    I will note, however, that I voted about 6 pm and the place was empty. I asked how turnout was, and they said not too bad. I do, however, live in an area with quite few Bible thumpers, and there’s a sizable Mormon population here in Independence (well, at least in comparison), so those two things and the weather may have factored into it.

  • I know there were at least several hundred college students showing up to one polling place at the Univ. of Minnesota last night, twenty minutes before they started. More were piling in from outside. A big chunk of them were talking about Obama or had some sort of Obama sticker or pin on them.

    It’s hard to underestimate how hard the Obama supporters on campus have been pushing the caucuses, since the few discussions I’ve had with the recruiters and the people who go around registering others for votes all had Obama gear on them, yet were urging people to vote more than actively pushing Obama.

    I mean, yeah if you’re a walking Obama advertisement you don’t have to say much, but it was still odd in a good way. The other thing is that most of the people in the crowd was excited to be there, which is something else unusual in my experience with college voters, myself included.

  • A post I read too early this morning pointed out that Obama did best in Red States and Clinton did best in Blue States. I noticed that the numbers Obama got in Georgia were small in comparison to those the Republicans got. It doesn’t appear that the black vote will swing the South.

    I need to see numbers given all candidates, not “winners”, in order to make sense of it all.

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