Monday, July 27, 2009

A different way of looking at poll demographics

We all know that looking at the party breakdown of a state's voters isn't necessarily the best way to figure out how inclined it is to vote Democratic or Republican in a Presidential election. For instance Louisiana and West Virginia are Democratic states as far as party identification goes, but they're not likely to vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate any time soon. Virginia and Alabama are both pretty evenly divided on the party id front, but John McCain won a landslide victory in the latter while Barack Obama took a closer but still solid one in the former.

This chart shows the states we've polled in the last few months from most Democratic to least Democratic, along with the 2008 results:

State

Party ID

2008 Results

West Virginia

D+15

McCain +13

Illinois

D+15

Obama +25

Ohio

D+15

Obama +4

North Carolina

D+14

Obama +1

New Jersey

D+13

Obama +15

Wisconsin

D+10

Obama +14

Louisiana

D+8

McCain +19

Minnesota

D+7

Obama +10

Virginia

D+1

Obama +6

Alabama

R+3

McCain +21


As you can see, not a lot of correlation. So if party ID isn't the best barometer for telling how inclined a state is to vote Democratic or Republican for President, what is?

I think the percentage of voters in a state who identify as conservatives is a pretty good start. Looking at these ten states, there's not an entirely linear relationship between the proportion of voters who describe themselves as conservatives and how they voted last fall, but it certainly comes a lot closer than using the party id measure:

State

% of Conservatives

2008 Results

Louisiana

50

McCain +19

Alabama

49

McCain +21

West Virginia

43

McCain +13

North Carolina

39

Obama +1

Wisconsin

39

Obama +10

Virginia

38

Obama +6

Illinois

35

Obama +15

Minnesota

35

Obama +10

Ohio

34

Obama +4

New Jersey

28

Obama +13


Two closing thoughts:

-People frequently bash poll results they don't like by criticizing the party id breakdown, but it might actually be more relevant to take a closer look at the ideological breakdown.

-What other measures of a state's electorate do you think can better predict Presidential voting patterns than party id breakdowns?

2 comments:

Ranjit said...

Tom,

If this is true about conservatives, don't you think there will be a massive backlash in 2010 elections?

Anonymous said...

Re: Your closing thoughts.

That's what I was getting at in my comments on this post:
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/07/o-my.html

While I have issues with both, I have more issues with your Lib/Mod/Con breakdowns than your Party ID breakdown.

 
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