Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

3

[poll] Independent women, presidential preferences & Ohio’s unaffiliated voters


New poll out from Gallup this morning that you can read here.  Along with independent men, these are the voters that will seal the deal one way or another.

From the poll info:

All in all, the segments of independent women who are strongest in their support of Obama — and thus who were presumably most sympathetic to Biden in Thursday’s debate — include:

  • those with no religious identification

  • those aged 18 to 34

  • those with college educations

  • those who seldom or never attend church

The segments of independent women who are most likely to support McCain and thus may have been sympathetic to Palin Thursday night include:

  • those who attend church weekly

  • those who are married

  • those aged 55 or older

Finally, the following groups of independent women are most closely divided in their candidate preferences, and — it could be assumed — were the most likely to be swayed one way or the other by the debate (and indeed the events of the final few weeks of the campaign):

    • Catholics

    • those who do not have a college degree

    • those with no children under 18

    • the middle aged, 35 to 54

    • those making between $12,000 and $60,000 a year in household income

    • those mid-range in religiosity, attending church almost every week or monthly

And if you really like parsing demographics:

Assuming that independent female registered voters are a key “swing” group in the campaign, it is useful to delve further into the ways in which they subdivide in terms of candidate preferences. Gallup’s large sample of September interviews allows for a careful analysis of the vote patterns of demographic subgroups within the larger group of independent women. The accompanying table displays candidate choices among a number of these different subgroups of independent women.

This 2006 AP article states that there were 4 million independent voters that year, when Ted Strickland was running for governor.  One of the reasons the numbers is so high (the population of Ohio is 11 million) is because in Ohio, you do not declare your party when you register.  Instead, your party affiliation is determined by the ballot you pull in a primary.  Pull a Dem ballot – you’re a Dem.  Pull a GOP ballot and you’re a Republican.  Didn’t vote in the primary but voted in the general? You’re unaffiliated or…independent.  If you register but don’t vote at all, you’re non-affiliated.

Pollster has a nice article about this here.  An excerpt:

As of 2006, Ohio had 7.6 million registered voters, but only 2.4 million voted in the primary election (of either party) in 2004. Slightly more, 2.5 million, voted in the Ohio primary in 2000, and the turnouts in off-year primaries are lower.

As such, the majority of Ohio’s registered voters do not participate in primaries and are, therefore, registered as “non-partisan” but yet still fully eligible to participate in Tuesday’s primary. The current voter file maintained by Voter Contact Services (a political list vendor) includes 7.9 million registered voters of whom 20% are “registered Democrats,” 19% are registered Republicans and 60% are non-affiliated.

Keep in mind that “party registration” in Ohio is very different from the self-reported “party identification” that most surveys measure. While 60% are unaffiliated on the voter lists, a recent SurveyUSA poll of registered voters finds only 23% identifying as “independent” (while 44% identify as Democrats and 29% as Republicans).

In any case, a few million unaffiliated or independent voters is a lot of swing.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:32 am October 3rd, 2008 in Barack Obama, Elections, Ohio, Politics, Poll, Voting, WH2008 

Comments

Leave a Reply




"));