MaxedOutMama
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Pew says Osama flopped
"The poll, taken over a four-day period, found the recent video tape from Osama bin Laden had no clear impact on voter preferences. Interviews conducted after the tape was released on Oct. 29 generally resembled the polling conducted on the two previous days."
The results of Pew Research's latest survey can be found here. Polling was done the 27th - 30th and the sample size was 1,925 likely voters, 2,408 registered voters. Bush has a 3 point lead overall. Pew thinks remaining undecideds will break slightly for Bush, and is projecting higher turnout than the last two elections. Their guess as to the final result was 51% Bush, 48% Kerry. The likely voter result was 48% Bush, 45% Kerry.
The detailed demographics can be found here. Bush gets 7% of black voters and 47% of Hispanics, 18% of non-whites overall. Bush gets 51% of voters under 30 (thus giving a lie to the myth of the young and angry); this is his strongest age bracket. Bush gets 50% of the voters aged from 30 - 64 versus Kerry's 45%. Bush's lowest support occurs among the 65+ age bracket which he loses 44% to 46%. (I guess the social security allegations did work).
Pew does have more detailed age breakdowns, but the sample sizes are too low to be valid so I didn't include them. You can see that for yourself by the wild swings among the age brackets. Still, it looks as if the Democrats may be dying off. Reagan's legacy lives after him.
Pew has the party ID among likely voters as 37% Rep, 35% Dem, 23% Ind. That contrasts to registered voters which Pew had as 33% Rep, 35% Dem, 26% Ind. (Note that this number alone suggests why different surveys are getting consistently different numbers - if you adjust by party ID based on the last elections, you would have different results in this survey.)
Bush gets 52% of men versus Kerry's 43%. Bush loses women 44% to Kerry's 48%. (Note that I was not called.) The sampling for church attendance shows a beautiful progression - the more you go to church the more likely you are to vote for Bush. Bush only gets 31% of those who attend church seldom or never and he gets 43% of those who attend several times a year; Bush gets at least 51% of those who attend church more than several times a year. (Finally an explanation as to why Democratic Underground foams at the mouth about christians and other unsavory religious types with a belief in God, most especially Southern Baptists.)
The very bad news for Kerry, though, is that those who attended church several times a year or less only add up to 734 people, versus the 1153 who said they went more than that. Someone's lying, in fact, because based on these numbers alone Bush would be more than 3% points ahead of Kerry.
Urban voters decide 34% for Bush, 59% for Kerry.
Suburban voters go 52% for Bush, 42% for Kerry.
Rural voters break 56% for Bush, 37% for Kerry.
It looks like the electoral map in 2004 will be very close to the map in 2000. Note that the very strong urban/rural split is another possible source of error in polling. If you don't get a sample representative of the actual percentage of urban/rural voters, your final results will be skewed.
Pew says in their discussion:
"As in previous polls, Bush's supporters are much more enthusiastic than those backing Kerry. In fact, Bush registers a higher percentage of strong supporters in the final weekend of the campaign than any candidate since former President Ronald Reagan in 1984."
