I feel like I've been blogging less as the election approaches, which I regret, but we do need to make some money at PPP and the weeks before the election in the state where you are located is the biggest time to do that. So I've been spending most of my time on client work.
Lots of new NC Presidential polls, enough to make your head spin:
-Rasmussen says Obama +9. One interesting thing in their poll is they've upped the black percentage to 36%, I assume based on the early voting trends. That's something we'll be thinking about between now and our final poll(s) as well.
-ARG has Obama up 52-41, pretty similar to their previous poll in the state.
-Zogby has Obama up 50-34. That's an interestingly high level of folks who haven't chosen either Clinton or Obama yet. They have Obama within ten points among white voters, which would certainly be a strong performance for him.
-Late yesterday a McClatchy/Research 2000 poll showed Obama up 51-44. This is totally insider pollster stuff but it's interesting McClatchy teamed up with Research 2000 because they had been doing polls with Mason Dixon the rest of the cycle. Interesting that it changed. I'm pretty sure this decision was made on high at McClatchy rather than Raleigh, given what happened the list time R2K did a poll for the News&Observer.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteA helpful summary of recent polls.
Is there any information about early voting trends, especially in the past week as the number of early polling sites has increased?
And, as Bill Clinton has campaigned in small towns across the state, have the sites of his events been chosen for proximity to the early N.C. polling sites (as in South Texas)?
Thanks!
Here's a question-
ReplyDeleteWhy would early voting really give us a great idea how voting on election day would turnout?
Obama clearly has better organization and more eager voters.
If i'm not mistaken, he won early voting in Texas.... and he didn't win the primary.
The point I'm trying to make is that just because early voting is 36% African-American, it doesn't mean that voting on election day will exhibit the same demographic breakdown.
Granted, maybe Rasmussen knows this, and early voting is more like 45% African-American... and they are controlling for the fact that it will be less so on election day.
36% black vote is too high. Rassmussen consistently underpolls Clinton by 5% and I mean CONSISTENTLY, like every time.
ReplyDeleteThis has to be deliberate. One way is to overpoll blacks. Zogby does it by overpolling regions such as SF in California.
Zogby is probably overpolling the NW of Indiana right now. Whether or not it will change before Tues?? Likely as his reputation, whatever is left of it is on the line. I think of Zogby as Obama propaganda, not a polling firm.
Blacks will not make up 38% of the vote, which is what some polling companies are weighting it for. Absurd. 22% of the population in an open primary with a great deal of public interest. The Obama campaign has concentrated on getting this community as well as college students to vote early.
33% black turnout is generous. I think it will be more like 30%.
As of My 5th, the Clinton's will have made 71 campaign stops in NC to Obama's 12. Blacks will not be making up 38% of the vote on election day and obama will not be outperforming polls.
ReplyDeleteHarry Joe - Obama lost the early voting in TX by 2%, thanks in part to Hispanics in South Texas who went directly to the early voting stations after Bill Clinton's speeches.
ReplyDeleteThe NC State Board of Elections just updated the early voting data in NC sorted by county, party affiliation, race and gender, at:
http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/
The relevant file is the third one on the ftp site. Among the trends:
1. There were almost 400,000 early voters in the NC Democratic primary (20-25% of the expected total)
2. Early voting by African-Americans is a whopping 40%
3. White women represent 33% of the early voters
Brian Schaffner, a professor with the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, has crunched the NC early voting numbers. His analysis is at:
http://ccpsblog.blogspot.com/
Anonymous, the NC primary is only partly open. Independents can cross over and vote either way, but Repubs and Dems cannot.
If Independents vote in very large numbers on Tuesday in the Dem primary, the 40% number for AAs will not hold up. Otherwise, it's looking very good for Obama.