Saturday Morning Data Dump, 10/18 – Obama Winning Every Demographic Except One

phrigndumass

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Fri Oct-17-08 11:29 PM
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Saturday Morning Data Dump, 10/18 – Obama Winning Every Demographic Except One

Edited on Fri Oct-17-08 11:31 PM by phrigndumass

(See last week’s Data Dump)

This is a weekly (or whenever the mood strikes me) summary of the gender, age and ethnicity crosstabs from the polls. The chart above tallies the crosstabs from the state polls, while the graphs below are derived from a daily average of the national poll crosstabs. When combined, these give us a good idea of the national picture, or the popular vote, and how it could change with projected increases in voter turnout for certain demographic groups, such as young voters, minority voters and female voters.

The overall Popular Vote total from the state polls shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by 5.6%, or 50.4% to 44.9% (see the blue widget at the top of this post). But when we look at the state poll crosstabs for gender, the popular vote changes to a lead of 6.4% for Obama (up from 3.8% last week). The state poll crosstabs for age show a lead of 5.8% for Obama (up from 3.8% last week), and the state poll crosstabs for ethnicity put Obama’s lead at 6.7% (up from 4.2% last week) nationwide.

As the National Poll Widget below shows, Obama’s nationwide lead is +7.7% on average, or 2.1 points above what the state polls show for the popular vote (Obama +5.6%, see blue widget above). The national poll lead of Obama +7.7% is most similar to the lead Obama is seeing in the state poll crosstabs for ethnicity (Obama +6.7%, see blue widget above). In an ideal statistical world, these results would all be the same.

What can we surmise from all this? Let’s look at what we know to be true. Some of the states (a decreasing number) haven’t been polled for a couple weeks, but the country as a whole has been polled every day by multiple sources. We may conclude that the state results aren’t as up-to-date as they could be, and the topline result from the state polls would tend to reflect the national polls if each state were polled every day. After all, the whole is the sum of all the parts.

As for the difference between the topline crosstabs and the ethnicity crosstabs for the state polls, we may also conclude that pollsters either aren’t projecting a higher turnout rate for minority voters this year, or they aren’t weighting their polls properly to reflect a projected increase in the turnout rate among minority voters. The same could be said for younger voters this year.

GENDER CROSSTABS

The men’s vote finally comes around this week. A majority of men nationwide are now supporting Barack Obama for President. We saw this demographic tightening last week, and now Obama is leading by an average of just slightly less than 1% among men.

ETHNICITY CROSSTABS

(Note: I rescaled all the graphs in this section this week to the same scale, 0% to 100%.)

The only demographic where Obama is currently trailing is among white voters. He trails McCain by only 7% nationwide, though. Obama is well outperforming both Al Gore and John Kerry in this demographic. Meanwhile, Obama is currently winning 90% among African American voters and 60% among Latino voters nationwide.

AGE CROSSTABS

Last week Obama led in every age group below age 65. Senior voters have come around in the past week and are now supporting Obama over McCain by a very tiny 0.3% margin on average. Obama is now leading in every age group. However, the race is beginning to tighten a bit among voters age 30 to 39.