By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:43:27 +0000

Stephanie – Not every pollster reports the cross tabulations showing, for instance, the breakdown of support for Obama and McCain according to party identification of the voter, but some do. If you look at these, you find that there is very little crossover voting, so far, among Democrats and Republicans. So, it may be that both candidates are trying to draw across party lines, but for the most part they are meeting with limited success. For example, here are the partisan breakdowns for the latest Gallup tracking poll:
Obama McCain
Liberal Democrats 93% 5%
Moderate Democrats 83% 12%
Conservative Democrats 66% 24%
Independents 27% 32%
liberal/moderate Repub 10% 85%
conservative Republicans 3% 95%

So you can see that there is very little cross-party support among the ideological extremes; most of the voters who are up for grabs occupy the center – the conservative Democrats, pure independents, and liberal to moderate Republicans.

In the latest CBS/NYTimes poll, the breakdown is as follows:

Obama leads among Democrats 88-6, McCain among Republicans 88-7, and Independents break for McCain 55-22.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:16:03 +0000

What I would be interested to know is whether any of these methods that account for percentages of registered democrats or republicans, and how their responses are weighted in the polls, have been adjusted to suit the particularities of this election. In their efforts to cross and even defy party lines, both McCain and Obama are drawing voters from non-traditional groups. Are there other polls, for example, that are keeping track of how many democrats are supporting McCain or, more interestingly, how many republicans are supporting Obama? Results from this kind of poll seem likely to influence the weighting procedure that you describe.

Comments on: How many Democrats? How many Republicans?

By: Matthew Dickinson

By: Stephanie