Posted on 10/30/2008 12:31:08 PM PDT by TitansAFC
Campaign Spot reader Laurence notes an interesting wrinkle in the post below about Nevada. The guy doing the exit poll of those who have already voted, with 7,147 responses, puts Obama ahead, 50 percent to 48 percent.
If Republicans were a lot more of the early voters, McCain would be nervous. If Democrats were a lot more of the early voters, Obama should be nervous. And if they were split even, a 50-48 Obama lead is in the neighborhood of what we would expect.
In Clark County, "through Sunday, 55 percent of early voters were Democrats, 29 percent Republicans."
"In Washoe County, 51 percent of the early voters through Sunday were Democrats, while 33 percent were Republicans."
Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and its surrounding area, has 68.7 percent of the registered voters in the state. Washoe County, which includes Reno, has 18.6 percent of the registered voters in the state.
In Clark County, Democrats hold a 46.3 percent to 32.3 percent edge in voter registration. In Washoe County, the split is 39.2 percent Democrat, 38.7 percent Republican.
With those numbers, you would expect Obama to be ahead by a much wider margin. Unless that poll of the early voters was way off — and this pollster managed to reach roughly one out of every 43 early voters; think about that when you see a poll of 1,000 designed to represent a national voting pool of 120-130 million voters! — a considerable number of Democrats and independents/unaffiliateds in Nevada are voting for McCain.
No pollster has had McCain ahead in Nevada since the end of September. So why is McCain so dramatically overperforming among early voters who are disproportionately Democrats?
And Florida and CO looking pretty good as well.
The problem with this is, where are these numbers coming from? Are they accurate? Is this going to be reflected across the country?
I don’t trust anything to do with early voting.
I would like to believe that this is going to be a common theme in many states late on Nov 4 and into Nov 5 when examining the exit polls.
“No pollster has had McCain ahead in Nevada since the end of September. So why is McCain so dramatically overperforming among early voters who are disproportionately Democrats?”
PUMA?, Bradley?
IMO, Mainstream Democrats find Obama totally unacceptable.
The reason Obama is running back to Nevada and Colorado.
He’s going to lose both.
Nothing like a fear of Socialism to bring Americans out to vote.
Problem is GEN X and GEN Y don’t remember the LBJ or Carter years.
bttt
Exactly. I am not sure too much faith can be placed into exit polling. People can say whatever they want to.
If these numbers are real, they suggest two things:
1) A smallish (~10%) of Dems are crossing over (likely PUMAs, since NV isn’t a big “my grandaddy wuz a Democrat” state)
2) McCain is performing very well among Independents.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
What about Independents and how did they break?
Perhaps the nonstop tv ads had blowback? Any chance the same thing will happen in Wisconsin?
bump for optimism
why would exit voters want to anounce honestly who they voted for on their SECRET BALLOT?
I hold pollsters just above journalists in contempt.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
[I]No pollster has had McCain ahead in Nevada since the end of September. So why is McCain so dramatically overperforming among early voters who are disproportionately Democrats?[/I]
Oversampling of Democrats from cities. State polls are almost never reweighed, and they tend to be done by unprofessional outfits.
This means there are too many democrats in the survey and they represent democrats more likely to support Obama than the general electorate.
Its sad. Pollsters should be readjusting their models to adjust for this bias. Instead they are readjusting them THE OTHER way for the so-called “youth vote.”
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