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More Fun With Polls

While I’m talking about polls today, the Pew survey from the end of last month has many interesting pieces of information.  On party ID, including leaning independents, the Democrats have a 14-point advantage, and the Democrats win every comparison between the two parties on questions of ethics and competence.  As the summary says: And the Democrats’ advantage […]

While I’m talking about polls today, the Pew survey from the end of last month has many interesting pieces of information.  On party ID, including leaning independents, the Democrats have a 14-point advantage, and the Democrats win every comparison between the two parties on questions of ethics and competence.  As the summary says:

And the Democrats’ advantage over the Republicans on party affiliation is not only substantially greater than it was four years ago, but is the highest recorded during the past two decades.  

The survey reveals extensive demoralisation in the GOP as well. 

In a Clinton/Giuliani match-up, Clinton wins 51-43%.  Broken down by region, Giuliani gets only 43% of the vote in the East.  Giuliani’s best region is, strangely enough, the West, where he manages to get 45%.  Giuliani loses every region, every age group (among 18-29 year olds, he gets trounced 59-40), and every education level.  Despite being the most liberal Republican on immigration on the national stage he only receives 38% support from Hispanics (perhaps we can lay the old chestnut of liberalising immigration policy for votes to rest now?).  Despite his nominal Catholicism, he loses the national Catholic vote by 6 points, though he does prevail among white Catholics.  He is underperforming among men (49%) relative to past GOP candidates, and he does far worse among women (37%) than Bush ever did, reducing the GOP share of women’s votes to Dole-esque levels.  So much for social liberalism broadening the party’s appeal.  Giuliani actually performs worse than Bush did among both urban and rural voters, and loses to Clinton among both urban and suburban voters.  Surely one of the rationales for Giuliani’s candidacy is that he would improve the GOP’s standing with urban voters, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.  As I’m sure has been noted elsewhere, Giuliani supporters are largely voting against Clinton rather than for Giuliani, and I don’t blame them.  Who could actually be for Giuliani anyway?  

Some of the results on the Democratic presidential race are also worth noting.  Clinton actually does better among voters who want immediate withdrawal from Iraq (50%) than she does among proponents of staying and supporters of gradual withdrawal.  Simultaneously, two of the most outspoken antiwar candidates of this cycle, Edwards and Richardson, actually lose support the more antiwar the voters are.  In other words, the more fiercely antiwar Democratic voters are, the more irrational their voting patterns become, in that they are supporting the objectively least antiwar candidate in the field at a greater rate than their less antiwar fellows.  And then they wonder why the Democratic Party is dominated by people who don’t take them seriously.

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