Question 2: Barack Obama was trounced by Clinton in MA by 196,000 votes, yet second-place Dem Obama still beat first-place Repub Romney. In fact, with 511,887 votes, more people voted for second-place Obama in MA than all republican votes combined. And this is not just a Massachusetts trend – in California, second-place Obama almost doubled Repub winner McCain’s votes exceding McCain by 742,318 votes.
Similar trends are seen in red states. The Iowa Caucuses showed a lopsided Dem turn out. In SC, GA, and AL, Clinton, the Dem second-place finisher gets about the same amount of votes as the Repub first-place finisher. Of those three states, only Alabama had a higher Republican turnout, exceeding Dems by 22,000.
In his home state of Arizona, McCain garnered 22,000 more votes than Dem winner Clinton. But in Illinois, winner Obama exceeded McCain’s vote total by 800,000 and Dem runner up Hillary exceeded McCain’s votes by more than 200,000. In NY Hillary exceeded McCain’s totals by 700,000 and runner-up Barack more than doubled front runner McCain exceeding his totals by 387,000.
UPDATE: Time magazine’s Swampland blog had some interesting numbers:
For grand totals, vastly more Democrats than Republicans voted yesterday;
Democratic votes for Clinton and Obama: 14,622,822 (63.6%)
Republican votes for McCain, Romney and Huckabee: 8,370,022 (36.4%)
Remember that in the last two presidential elections were approximately 50/50 splits, Dem vs. Repub. Now take a look at the Dem voting numbers in all primary states. The trend is clear that the people are voting Democrat in droves and the right-oriented voters are lethargic and apathetic. The Dems are slaughtering the Republicans in nation-wide voter turnout totals. Does this trend foreshadow solid Dem victory in November, or are Republican oriented voters just sitting out the primaries waiting for the general?
Question 3: We heard so much about exit polls. In these poles places like MA and Ca were “50/50” for Clinton and Obama, but actual voting showed that to be inaccurate. Yet much of the content of the primary coverage last night was analyzing exit polls and demographics, which race, gender, income, etc voted for which candidate. So, keeping in mind that the final exit poll vote tally was off, what credence should we give these demo numbers?
On the exit polls…certainly in California there was a good bit of early mail in voting so while exit polls maybe showed it close, a lot of folks had voted Clinton early. That could have made a difference. But don’t get why the Mass exit polls were so far off.
The term “exit polls” gets thrown around a lot, but there are really two different things people talk about:
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p>1. Raw, or slightly weighted, exit polls released at 5 PM (before polls close) showing the live status of the race.
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p>AND
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p>2. Finished, finalized, weighted exit polls released after the voting is complete and all the exit polls have been tabulated.
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p>The two are similar, related, but not the same. Certain types of people vote in the morning, afternoon, and night. Polls released at 5 PM generally don’t include the 5-8 PM voters, and thus might be off from the actual results.
I believe they adjust the exit poll numbers based on actual results, and re-weight all that crosstab information accordingly.
These are good questions to which only speculative answers can be given until the necessary polling research is done.
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p>I’d be surprised if there was a tight overlap between gubernatorial voters in 2006 and primary voters in 2008. I bet many of the former stayed home and many of the latter didn’t vote in 2006. The curious will eventually be able to verify this: you can go to city hall with ten dollars in hand and request voter lists from previous elections. Then get it into a database, apply a nested SQL query, and out comes your answer.
Some hypotheses about the larger Democratic turnouts:
… I’d love to see the results.
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p>One fact and one conjecture about Massachusetts: (1) The Obama campaign pulled out of MA strategically, sacrificing it to win CT. Had they split their forces, they would have barely lost both states. I think the campaign rightly chose to win one than to marginally lose both. See my critique of the media coverage (particularly Dan Payne’s) here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/a…
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p>(2) This result also, IMHO, exposes Deval Patrick’s underlying weakness and inability to convert his movement into a governing coalition with the power to buck the old machinery. Largely, I’m afraid, due to his rookie mistakes as well as the not-surprising ingenuity of the Establishment. See my analysis here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/a…
I jumped to your site and reading your comments there. I believe conventional campaign wisdom is that GOTV efforts can at most win one 5% more of the vote.
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p>Then there’s the earlier part, the “ground war” as opposed to the “air war”. (Not sure I like this metaphor.) Primary campaigns do seem to spend a significant effort knocking on Granite and Hawkeye doors — enough effort to persuade a significant proportion of voters. As some campaigns won’t even last until Super Tuesday, they probably don’t put a lot of time into knocking on doors in California or Connecticut.
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p>Is there evidence that the Obama or Clinton campaigns were able to knock on a lot of doors for Feb 5? If not, maybe the TV presence had more impact than you’re suggesting.
Ad (2): Boy I wish progressive politicians were better at tapping into the eagerness of building a movement that transcends election campaigns.
One element missing from your (excellent) analysis is the unenrolled/independent vote and how they broke. I think many unenrolled/independent voters went D because they harbor extreme distaste for George Bush for any number of reasons. Can be as simple as Iraq or that under Georgie the GOP is no longer the party of small government.
and have zero esteem, hope, faith in the system in general.
Romney is wishy washy and has no foundation. He is a John Kerry with an R.
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p>Huckabee is simply a religious nut and a hayseed. Personally I think the guy is a sneak and untrustworthy.
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p>McCain. McCain is complex. John McCain likes to rub noses in dog shit. Republicans and democrats. He thrives on being obtuse and throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of either party. He is an emotional time bomb and does not conduct himself as a statesman rather than a angry guest at a party who after a few drinks starts picking fights with everyone.
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p>McCain and his wife have had significant legal issues in their past. As significant as the Clinton’s.
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p>So in the final analysis there is essentially a Republican Party without a qualifying nominee. At least a worthy nominee. They all stink.
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p>I have voted in presidential elections since 1966. I have never seen such a poor field of candidates. This does not bode well for our elective process. I have not nor will I ever vote “party”. I vote the candidate. This is a piss poor crowd. None of the are presidential timber.
there is still the possibility of michael blumberg. oh wait, he used to be a dem and is outright nice to gays. scratch that…
But is he presidential timber? That’s the question.
you’ve got me on pins and needles. needles – pine – get it? haha!
We’re among the 450,000 that didn’t bother voting, because it was so gleefully invigorating to just let go, and, we figured Huck had no chance here anyway. (hmm, would he have won with our vote? The Mitt voters must’ve all come out, they didn’t want him to lose to McCain like in NH, and the McCain voters had good reason to think they could win, it was only Huck voters that had no reason to vote, since there are so few “southern evangelicals” here).
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p>I can see why liberal women were not about to let their first real hope for a woman president go down in the primaries, and the big-name Obama endorsements scared them, and moonbats felt the same way about their “hope for change” and didn’t want to lose to the old guard, so they all had to get out and vote too. Plus, moonbats just love voting and holding signs, as long as it doesn’t conflict with Project Runway and they get to go to the local Drinking Liberally afterwards.
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p>I do think more Rs will vote in November, for whoever. And unless there is a Clinton/Obama ticket, the Dems will disenchant about half of their voters.
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p>Re exit polls, I think lots of dems are sensitive to how the results will be spun, so they spun them themselves. Women don’t want people to think that Clinton’s support was mostly women, so they’ll try to skew the exit poll to make it seem like they voted for the man too. And moonbats don’t want to seem anti-woman, so they lie too. With three similar white males, that guilt doesn’t happen on the other side, though it would be good if “southern evangelicals” would learn that trick (though they can’t hide the southern part).
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is the “moonbats felt the same way about their “hope for change” and didn’t want to lose to the old guard” line. Old Guard? Ted Kennedy and John Kerry ARE the old guard. Phil Johnston is the old guard. The old guard split itself in this race.
Clinton is the old guard, they were afraid of losing to her. I don’t think Obama supporters really were all that excited by the endorsements, other than hoping they’d win over some undecideds for Obama, and then be forgotten about. Heck, Obama himself came close to dissing them all on stage at his rally in Boston, if you ask me.
Please. You have to be kidding. The excitement of getting those endorsements had a Dionysian glow to it. Did you miss the parties? The fanfare? The trumpets? The pictures?
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p>The Obama crowd was plenty excited and it was quite evident here at BMG. And if you really think Obama was nearly “dissing them” – then shame on him. Ya dance with the ones that brought ya. Then again – this was the same guy that snubbed the mayor of SFO, while pocketing his donations. So maybe, that doesn’t surprise me.
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p>Anyway, your opinions are fine – just don’t try to tell me the sun is blue, ok?
Far too often overlooked in both polling and analysis is that Unenrolleds can choose either ballot, so they may gravitate towards the more compelling race, not necessarily their preferred candidate or preferred party.
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p>I’ll give you an example (purely anecdotal, but an example nonethless): my brother is a registered Unenrolled who almost always goes Republican. Tuesday, he figured that Romney would win the state handily, but that he could make a difference in the Democratic primary, so he pulled a Democratic ballot for the first time in years. Come November, he will vote for McCain.
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p>That’s why poll numbers in “open-primary” states are so volatile.