Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Democratic Unity

Who knows what the truth is about whether Hillary Clinton will concede or not tonight, but either way it's just a matter of time.

The big question of course is whether or not her supporters will get in line with Barack Obama. Looking at our poll from yesterday, those who would vote for Clinton in a match against John McCain are not necessarily going for Obama. Right now their votes break down as 58% for Obama, 19% undecided, 18% for McCain, and 5% for Bob Barr.

You have to think most of those undecideds are eventually going to end up supporting Obama. If he received the support of 80% of Clinton's supporters rather than the 58% he's polling at right now, he'd be leading McCain by a margin of about 46-43 in NC.

If Democrats can get on the same page in the state, Barack Obama will have a decent chance of taking North Carolina this fall.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tom, we can only pray they will. I have said since Jan 08 that I think Obama could and will take NC in the fall and every one called me an Obama hack, but I have done the math over and over again and each time it comes up will Obama and McCain neck to neck.

Anonymous said...

Tom, your latest poll assumes that Democrats will comprise 49% of the voters in November; Republicans 35%and Independents 16%. In 2004, exit polls indicated Democrats 39% -- Republicans 40% and Independents 21%. In 2000, the breakdown was 41% Democrats -- 39% Republicans and 20% Independents. Can you explain why PPP sees the jump in Democratic voters in '08?

Anonymous said...

sgheen, I can answer that quetion. If you go look at the state board of election site, it has the number of voters by each party. Last time I check(Don't hold this to me) the party make up was.

Demcratic Party- 45%
Republican Party- 33%
Independents/other- 22%

Tom Jensen said...

Several things:

-Pew has found a nine percent shift toward the Democrats in party self identification in North Carolina since 2004:

http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2008/03/north-carolina-much-more-democratic.html

-The 2004 exit poll found that 26% of the North Carolina electorate was black. It was actually only 18%. So I wouldn't take the exit poll as the gospel.

-For this latest poll, we did not weight for party. So we see the jump because that's how people are answering the polls.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Tom. But, I have several additional questions. The Pew survey is of "registered voters," not "likely voters." Perhaps I missed it, but is your poll of the general population, registered voters or likely voters? Second, you note that the 2004 exit polls reported 26% of all voters were Black, but that number was only 18%. Does that 18% represent the percent of Blacks registered or are you saying that the exit polls over reported the number of Blacks actually voting? If the latter, where does the 18% come from. Third, in the Pew poll to which you refer, self-identification was little changed for Democrats from 2000 to 2004 and Pew found 39% identified as Democrats in 2004. Yet, based on your poll and comments, you are finding 49% of your survey are Democrats. I clearly understand that is the "way" the questions were answered, but one question is whether PPP's poll will reflect the actual result in NC. Thank you.

 
Web Statistics