Sunday, October 26, 2008

New Voters in Focus

We've been breaking out our swing state polls for the last week by whether people voted in 2004 or not and a few key trends are emerging:

-Overwhelming support for Barack Obama. This is not particularly surprising but the extent of it is still a little remarkable. He's up 55-24 with them in Ohio, 61-24 in Virginia, 68-24 in Indiana, and 64-26 in Florida.

-An unusual level of undecideds. 21% of new voters are undecided in Ohio. It's 15% in Virginia, 10% in Florida, and 8% in Indiana. All of those figures reflect higher undecideds than in the population at large. Are those folks really going to vote if they haven't before and don't have their minds made up? I'm not sure what the deal is there.

-Lots of independents, few Republicans. In Indiana 46% are independents, 38% Democrats, and just 16% Republicans. In Virginia it's 49% Democrats, 41% independents, and 10% Republicans. Ohio is 54% Democrats, 28% independents, and 18% Republicans. Florida is 45% Democrats, 35% independents, 20% Republicans.

-Minority voters are coming out. Blacks and Hispanics combine for 27% of the overall vote in Florida but 53% of the newcomers. In Ohio 23% of new voters are black compared to 12% of the electorate. In Virginia it's 30% for newbies compared to 20% total. The difference is less significant in Indiana- 12% of new voters compared to 10% in general.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have a list of states that going to be polled over the final week?

Sreenu said...

I think they are polling most of the Western and Eastern states in contention over the coming week.
The Western bunch will be out late in the week and the Eastern bunch will be out the day before the election.

They will have a NC poll out tomorrow as usual.

Tom Jensen said...

If all goes well we will release polls in Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan, West Virginia, Oregon, and Minnesota on Friday then North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Montana, Nevada, Virginia, Missouri, and Indiana the day before the election.

 
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