Much has been written and said about the ability of Barack Obama to “attract Independents”, and how that translates into good news for his electability in November. But no one ever mentions that there is a huge difference between “Independents” and “Moderates”. Independents, as defined by the exits polls, are all over the map in terms of ideology, and include not just people who are “moderates” (that is, those who think that Democrats are too liberal and Republicans too conservative), but also “third” parties (Greens, Libertarians), individuals who are disaffected from the political system, and those on the ideological fringes who think the Democrats and Republicans are too “centrist.”
And while Obama has done very well among “Independents”, Hillary has done better among the “moderates” who will be the deciding force in the election.
An examination of exit polls from eight key primary states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Tennessee) show that
1) On average, “Independent” voters were 50% more likely to vote for Obama than Hillary.
2) On average, “Moderate” voters were 12% more likely to vote for Hillary than Obama
3) In 7 of the 8 states, far more voters self-identified as “Moderate” (average 40% range 34-49%) than “Independent” (average 18%, range 11-22%). (New Hampshire was excluded, because while its percentage of moderates –36% - was within the ‘normal’ range, its percentage of ‘independents – 44% — was a clear outlier.).
In other words, in terms of electability, the media’s emphasis on “Independents” and failure to examine the “moderate” vote which determines elections in swing states, is simply one more example of the media’s ‘cherry-picking’ of data to favor Obama.
Front page
Links on the polls?
Interesting data, though.
I don’t know about the electability permathread. Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future. Especially when much of the polling and most of the coverage is pure noise.
When we went with our heads for Kerry on “electability” instead of our hearts, things didn’t work out so well. I guess I’m inclined to think that people should vote for the person based on their evaluation of the candidate.
That said:
Obama’s lead over McCain could evaporate in weeks after the Republicans throw $250 million at it. Hillary has already had everything thrown at her (except for what our famously free press is making up now, of course).
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
links please.
it’s just good etiquette we try to enforce around here.
that said, what lambert said. you’d think one wouldn’t have to explain that “independents are not exclusively moderates” to people, but i guess we do.
and as i was just posting on another thread, obama is at the top of the curve right now, and can go higher still. which will only make the fall that much more delectable to the SCLM
currently giving him all this free face time.
da white folk loved OJ and Vick once, too, my brother. some of us still remember the heady days of HRC the Inevitable and Dean the Good Doctor who will save us all. and of course, “kerry can’t lose.” how many times did i hear that one?
Re: links
Like I said, it was my own analysis. The data itself was taken from CNN’s site…
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/
and took forever to compile, because exit poll pages on which the “party” and “ideology” data is found are on the third or fourth page of data, and cannot be directly linked to.
The purpose was not to say that Hillary was stronger among moderates (given the limitations of the data, I don’t consider 12% more likely to be all that significant), but to say that “independents” doesn’t translate into “moderate”.
(It should also be noted that I tried to control for total vote percentages — Hillary comes out much better among moderates if you just look at the total moderate percentages of the two candidates —- the conclusions I drew were based on comparing Hillary’s moderate vote percentage to her total vote percentage, etc. )
Kerry Can't Lose
Ugh!
Just for that Democratic primary voters should be forbidden from ever uttering the words “I voted for [him/her] because they were electable.”
Note to Dems,
1) Almost all candidates are electable in the strict sense, there isn’t anyone running who is so outside the mainstream that he/she wouldn’t be electable.
2) Whether or not the candidate is elected depends on a lot of things that will happen in the future, more commonly called a “campaign” and since those things are in the future, you can’t know them.
As far as I’m concerned “electability” is a concept created by the media to get democrats (you’ll notice almost no Republican is unelectable, not even the ones who clearly are like Rudy Guiliani) to listen to their opinions and avoid any policy discussion. It’s bad for democrats because it encourages them to base their vote on something they don’t know, while totally ignoring what they do (or can) know - a politician’s history, political rhetoric, policies.
If Obama loses in November, a whole lot of people who voted for him because he was electable will be saying “I can’t believe we ran a black guy who only had two years experience in the Senate, had never beaten a major GOP candidate, and was such a blank slate that the GOP got to define him.”
If Clinton loses in November, people will be saying “I can’t believe we ran a woman who is so polarizing and was the one person who could unite the Republican party.”
And then in the next primary, they will vote based on electability all over again.
paul: here's me showing you Big Love for your hard work
and total respect for your major Talents. sorry, i just assume you knew that. rather, the request for links is for those critics who come here and say “it’s not real, it wasn’t in the SCLM
.” most of the time i don’t care for that ’argument,’ but once in a while we get a newbie with an open mind but little familiarity with the blogosphere. so long as there is a “real” source somewhere in the post, it’s helpful in keeping those latter people reading us. and yes, the irony of that just kills me.
thanks again for the analysis.