What ever happened to my Democratic Party? Why doesn’t the donkey love me anymore?  Read more 

ABSTRACT: Based on available exit polling from states that held primary elections, while Obama dominates the “Independent” voter, Hillary Clinton actually does slightly better among “Moderate” voters— and this is even more true in crucial swing states. The data suggests that a more comprehensive review of all such “electability” factors is required.

Data tables and an explanation of the methodology employed can be found here. [scroll down]. Major thanks to Lambert for all his help with this piece!

Note: This study is based on exit polling data from primary states. With regard to Michigan, all “uncommitted” voters are treated as if they had voted for Barack Obama. “Swing states” consist of those states not identified as either “Safely Democratic” or “Safely Republican” as of 2/20/08 by Rasmussen Reports for which data is available (NH, AR, DE, FL, MI, MO, NJ, NM, WI, VA). ¹ There is an appendix that includes information regarding states that held primaries but for which exit polling data is not available (WA, DC), and data from caucus states where exit polling data is available (IA, NV).

INTRODUCTION
The media, and the Obama campaign, have endlessly hyped Barack Obama’s appeal to “Independent” voters. A search of Google News at 8:00 AM EST on February 23 for “’Barack Obama’, ’independent voters’” turns up 2490 hits for the last month, for “’Hillary Clinton’, ’independent voters’” the number of hits is 1299. But almost no attention has been paid to the crucial “Moderate” voter demographic. A “’Barack Obama’, ’moderate voters’” Google News search finds just 54 hits during the same month-long period, “’Hillary Clinton’, ’moderate voters” also turns up 54 hits.

Yet exit polling data reveals that the “Moderate” demographic is much larger than “Independents”. And there is no correlation between the voting patterns of “Independents” and “Moderates”. And “Moderate” voter are the key constituency that will be crucial in swing states in November.  Read more