Exit Poll Results and Romney’s Way Forward
For those who don’t enjoy insufferable and tedious posts on exit poll data, please stop reading now, I do not want to alienate you.
For the gluttons, please know I did some serious exit poll compiling this morning. I went to the state-by-state exit polls for 14 of the Republican primary states from Super Tuesday and pulled selected data on party affiliation and ideology.
As I’ve been harping on these two characteristics since I started writing about the primaries and caucuses, I was not going to go through the 4 – 5 pages of data per state and find another criterion to support the narrative I wanted to write. For better or worse, I needed to stay with what I started.
Not finding an exit poll summary, I compiled data from the 14 different exit polls. I averaged the percentages for the four characteristics I examined. This is absolutely an okay methodology because the sample sizes for all 14 polls were roughly the same (600 – 800 or so). To get exact percentages, the correct formula would have been to add each response by question (numbers not reported but determinable) and divide the sum by all the responses by question (I have a day job and a family, I wasn’t going to do this).
After all my work was done, I did find a narrative on one of the news web sites that cited summarized results for the approximately 9,500 responses across the 14 polls. I assure you, my calculations were within a percentage point or so and my calculations do not change the gist of my post. I’m reporting my numbers, damn it!, I did all the work!
Looking at party affiliation, across 14 states, 74.5% of respondents identified themselves as Republicans. Sen. McCain won this group with 37.43% of the total. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed with 35.43% and 21.71%, respectively.
21.79% of respondents self-identified as Independents. Again, Sen. McCain won this group by 38.26 percent. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed with 26.86% and 18.93%, respectively.
Looking at the 64% of respondents who self-identified as Conservatives, Gov. Romney won this group with 39.57% of the vote. Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee trailed at 30.21% and 24.57%, respectively.
Finally, of the 27.07% of respondents who self-identified as Moderate, Sen. McCain won a whopping 51.36%. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed at 23.29% and 16.29%, respectively.
Please note that the data as summarized on the news site and by me contains data from Utah. Utah voted overwhelmingly for Gov. Romney, so much so that I needed to see what the numbers looked like without Utah. What the summarized numbers cannot tell you, but I can, is that by removing Utah from the data, Gov. Romney still won Conservatives with 35.54% of the vote (McCain trailed with just more than 32%).
Conversely, please also note that the 14 states included above consists only of the primary states. There were six other states that held caucuses on Tuesday and Gov. Romney WON THEM ALL (well, except West Virginia because of gamesmanship between Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee). It can be assumed that if such “exit poll” data was available for Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, Gov. Romeny’s numbers in all four instances noted above would have been much higher.
So what does it all mean?
Well, first, I still think non-Republicans are too big a part of Sen. McCain’s success but I’m not arrogant enough to say I know better than if the 74.5% of respondents who self-identified as Republicans truly are or not. Of those who see themselves this way, Sen. McCain has proved he can get their votes.
It also means on Saturday, Gov. Romney needs to energize the Conservatives in Kansas and Louisiana (it looks like Washington starts a caucus process but doesn't complete it on Saturday). If he does this he'll tell the big states remaining (Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) with a loud voice that he is the conservative candidate. Of course, hanging around costs money and it's easy for me to spend the Gov.'s money.
I still believe Gov. Romney would prevail at a brokered Republican convention.
And just an administrative note, of all the web sites I've been visiting to collect data, CNN.com's is the best.
For those who don’t enjoy insufferable and tedious posts on exit poll data, please stop reading now, I do not want to alienate you.
For the gluttons, please know I did some serious exit poll compiling this morning. I went to the state-by-state exit polls for 14 of the Republican primary states from Super Tuesday and pulled selected data on party affiliation and ideology.
As I’ve been harping on these two characteristics since I started writing about the primaries and caucuses, I was not going to go through the 4 – 5 pages of data per state and find another criterion to support the narrative I wanted to write. For better or worse, I needed to stay with what I started.
Not finding an exit poll summary, I compiled data from the 14 different exit polls. I averaged the percentages for the four characteristics I examined. This is absolutely an okay methodology because the sample sizes for all 14 polls were roughly the same (600 – 800 or so). To get exact percentages, the correct formula would have been to add each response by question (numbers not reported but determinable) and divide the sum by all the responses by question (I have a day job and a family, I wasn’t going to do this).
After all my work was done, I did find a narrative on one of the news web sites that cited summarized results for the approximately 9,500 responses across the 14 polls. I assure you, my calculations were within a percentage point or so and my calculations do not change the gist of my post. I’m reporting my numbers, damn it!, I did all the work!
Looking at party affiliation, across 14 states, 74.5% of respondents identified themselves as Republicans. Sen. McCain won this group with 37.43% of the total. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed with 35.43% and 21.71%, respectively.
21.79% of respondents self-identified as Independents. Again, Sen. McCain won this group by 38.26 percent. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed with 26.86% and 18.93%, respectively.
Looking at the 64% of respondents who self-identified as Conservatives, Gov. Romney won this group with 39.57% of the vote. Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee trailed at 30.21% and 24.57%, respectively.
Finally, of the 27.07% of respondents who self-identified as Moderate, Sen. McCain won a whopping 51.36%. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed at 23.29% and 16.29%, respectively.
Please note that the data as summarized on the news site and by me contains data from Utah. Utah voted overwhelmingly for Gov. Romney, so much so that I needed to see what the numbers looked like without Utah. What the summarized numbers cannot tell you, but I can, is that by removing Utah from the data, Gov. Romney still won Conservatives with 35.54% of the vote (McCain trailed with just more than 32%).
Conversely, please also note that the 14 states included above consists only of the primary states. There were six other states that held caucuses on Tuesday and Gov. Romney WON THEM ALL (well, except West Virginia because of gamesmanship between Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee). It can be assumed that if such “exit poll” data was available for Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, Gov. Romeny’s numbers in all four instances noted above would have been much higher.
So what does it all mean?
Well, first, I still think non-Republicans are too big a part of Sen. McCain’s success but I’m not arrogant enough to say I know better than if the 74.5% of respondents who self-identified as Republicans truly are or not. Of those who see themselves this way, Sen. McCain has proved he can get their votes.
It also means on Saturday, Gov. Romney needs to energize the Conservatives in Kansas and Louisiana (it looks like Washington starts a caucus process but doesn't complete it on Saturday). If he does this he'll tell the big states remaining (Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) with a loud voice that he is the conservative candidate. Of course, hanging around costs money and it's easy for me to spend the Gov.'s money.
I still believe Gov. Romney would prevail at a brokered Republican convention.
And just an administrative note, of all the web sites I've been visiting to collect data, CNN.com's is the best.
posted by Zack at 6:00 PM
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