We should be wary about putting too much stock in the New Hampshire exit polls, but the Edwards campaign needs to take a careful look at them. They tell a disturbing story, and indicate that Edwards’ voters are not the people you might think they are.
Much of the blogosphere is obsessed with ‘partisanship’ and thinks Edwards has it and Obama does not have it. Don’t tell it to the people of New Hampshire.
Opinion of Bush Administration
Overall
Positive: 6%
Negative: 92%Among those with a positive opinion of Bush (plus/minus baseline result in parentheses):
Clinton: 41% (+2)
Edwards: 23% (+6)
Obama: 29% (-7)Among those with a negative opinion of Bush:
Clinton: 39% (0)
Edwards: 17% (0)
Obama: 36% (0)
Anyone that has a positive opinion of Bush that is voting in the Democratic primary must be considered a moderate Democrat of the ‘swing’ variety. They’re not likely to be attracted to Edwards’ hyperpartisan rhetoric, his Bush-bashing, or his economic anti-corporate populism. They probably are voting for Edwards because he’s a white guy and his opponents are not. But let’s test Edwards economic message. You’d expect it to resonate best with the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, who do not own 401(k)’s. You’d also expect the free-trading Clintons to do poorly in this group.
Vote By Income
Less than $50,000/year:
Clinton: 47% (+8)
Edwards: 16% (-1)
Obama: 32% (-4)More than $50,000/year:
Clinton: 35% (-4)
Edwards: 17% (0)
Obama: 40% (+4)
If you dig into these numbers it gets worse:
Under $15,000/year:
Clinton: 49% (+10)
Edwards: 13% (-4)
Obama: 37% (+1)$15,000-$30,000/year:
Clinton: 50% (+11)
Edwards: 15% (-2)
Obama: 29% (-7)$30,000-$50,000 year:
Clinton: 44% (+5)
Edwards: 17% (0)
Obama: 32% (-4)
So Edwards does better among people that don’t hate Bush and worse among the truly poor. How is he doing among people that want an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq?
Clinton: 41% (+2)
Edwards: 15% (-2)
Obama: 34% (-2)
And among people that want to ‘keep troops in Iraq’?
Clinton: 24% (-15)
Edwards: 21% (+4)
Obama: 51% (+15)
These are three pillars of Edward’s campaign: he’s a partisan fighter, he’s going to stick up for the little guy, and he’s the most aggressive about ending the war. And he’s doing terribly among each constituency for these positions. My only explanation for this is that voters are not responding to his message, but to his gender and race.
My explanation? The media portray him as insignificant, or they ignore him. They have their narrative: Black man vs. White woman! Historical significance! Blah, blah, blah . . .
Much more compelling than reporting about the progressive populist message of Edwards, whom they dislike only slightly less than they dislike Hillary.
Many people who don’t have the time, or interest, to follow politics closely don’t even know that he is running. I spoke to someone recently who remembers and likes Edwards from the last race. She was delighted to find out that she could vote for him again.
Also, we keep getting told that Edwards doesn’t have a chance, so people are deciding between the other two.
the media portrays Edwards as the guy with the $400 haircut. The other America living below the poverty level can’t relate to him.
I think that did it. That one little news blurb essentially swiftboated Edwards right at the beginning. That, and the studious silent treatment in the press since then. But mostly it was the haircut.
yes but also we’re so entrenched: right-wing, left-wing Oh so tiresome.
that’s gives room and currency for a Bloomberg-Hagel ticket. right up the middle.
Despite denials, Bloomberg has not closed the door.
..”amid reports that Bloomberg has invested part of personal fortune to poll in all 50 states AND as the mayor’s pollster, Doug Schoen is suddenly giving a lot of interviews (just as his new book laying out a roadmap for an independent presidential candidacy is scheduled to come out) and saying Bloomberg will decide in March on whether to get in the race.”
Bloomberg is also not the kind of guy to buy into an “also-ran” scenario. By the time March comes around, the main players will have been selected and his only role would be as a spoiler as a pseudoRepublican. It’s not beyond his gut feeling, as a liberal humanitarian, to help take McCain down and give the mantle to Hillary. So it may depend on where Hillary is at that point.
That’s my take on Bloomberg, in any case.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
I wasn’t a fan of Edwards in 2004, and I’m still not a fan of him in 2008. And it’s not for lack of media coverage.
I also talked to a guy at work a few days ago about the candidates. When we got to Edwards, he just rolled his eyes and said, “Fortress.” He’s from NYC/Wall Street, and said none of his liberal friends are voting for Edwards for that reason alone.
I just got an email from a friend in North Carolina this morning, who is not a fan of Edwards because he knows the guy from his work in progressive causes there.
Let’s please not blame the media for every candidates rise or fall. I agree that their coverage has been abominable in many respects. But a lot of people have learned to do their own digging, too.
Edwards centerpiece message (front-paged @ his place) deals with “two Americas”, the others talk in terms of one. His message is “fix it it’s broke”, theirs is “heal & hope”. I think it’s that simple.
Brooks last night on PBS gave a reasonable explanation of the faultiness of Edward’s populist message.
In sum: the entire nation is from Kansas not just people both in Kansas. Everyone is voting against his/her best interests. Of course, Brooks didn’t say that.
In recent polls (no links, sorry), roughly 80% of Americans polled have favorable attitudes toward corporations, and that appears to hold in spite of CEO theft scandals, superprofits, and the loss of jobs to China.
Sweden has a 89% unionization rate among government and private industry workers. America’s unionization rate seems to be going down from, what, 12%? WTF. Explain this!
I think that part of the problem is just that the unions have been derelect in educating the American public. I say that as a former union steward, an unpaid chief steward. Perhaps too much union money is going into union salaries and not enough into advertisements or education about union benefits.
Alternatively, the working American public is just electively stupid.
It’s my feeling that much of the current economic populism, such as it is, comes from non-traditional sources, i.e. not middle class, working, or poorer people. Relatively wealthier people may be the populists now. And “economic populism” is not very well defined or understood and the argument is not really being made by Democrats so any populism is probably related to the inevitable unhappiness that comes along with stagnant wages, increasing costs, and the overall deteriorating position of the average American working family. Plus libertarian economic populism seems to be making a better argument for the hearts and minds right now. Ron Paul has attracted many of the critics of the status quo economic system. My gut is he is getting the lions’ share of the disgruntled economic vote. Simply put, the democrats gave up this fight except for the purely political aspect of trying to maintain its union voting power. They have not joined the battle of ideas–in fact, they all defected and joined the other side.
Democrats face a huge battle to rejoin the fight and gain back the losses they have ceded to the corporatists over the years.
John Edwards is too little too late in an environment when the media and his fellow Democrats are not helping get out the economic message and have actively been siding with the other side for too long.
I think you’ve nailed it, SFHawkguy. And of course, the blame lies with the Clinton/DLC wing of the Democratic party. That Hillary will now benefit from this makes it all the more bitter.
Hillary will indeed benefit. In effect, she will be little different from the Republican side but the Republicans will portray her as a flaming socialist so she will seem like the economic populist and reap the rewards of a declining economy and worsening position of the average American. Our media will go along with this framing.
It’s a real shame and helps explain the reason I think a Hillary presidency will set progressives back for decades. Hillary will help ensure that the acceptable range of economic debate remains shifted to the right. Oh, she will throw a couple of bones, mostly rhetorical, to working people. Probably a tax rebate to middle class working families to stimulate the economy and some sort of hamhanded plan to continue the “ownership society” by helping people stay in homes they can’t afford. Oh, and she’ll provide some sort of weak health care reform. All of these will appear populist but really will do more to help corporations than actual working families.
I believe that you have hit many nails here on the head. When you have poor working people disparaging unions, you know that something is amiss, and that is possibly the result of a propagandized message from Corporate advocates like Hillary and Bill Clinton.
The DLC faction is just antiUnion and antiWorker. It is all about raising more election cash.
Boo-
All of this is interesting but means little to me. The demographics you’re digging down into are not informed voters. In fact, I am surprised that there are any people in NH who actually make less than 15K/yr and even speak English.
Nothing personal. Really. I just think you’re reading too deeply into these polls. Maybe I’m wrong. Who knows?
Randy-
that’s a grossly misinformed comment.
Poor people exist in great numbers from all races.
And our elections are decided by low information voters. The task is to get your message through to them. In this case, it looks like the bulk of the people voting for Edwards are for keeping our troops in Iraq, make more money than average, and are less attracted to partisanship than average. In other words, they are not attracted to anything Edwards is actually saying. They’re vote must be identity based.
Sorry if I offended you. But are we talking about a large number of actual people here? And are they statistically relevant? You might find better data about poor people from a poll in a state that actually has more of them. Maybe South Carolina. It just surprises me that NH even has anyone who makes that little. I was under the impression that NH was a much higher cost-of-living and therefore higher income Northeastern state.
Again, love ya Boo. You’re one of the smartest bloggers I know of. Just asking, is all.
Would you agree that people living in poverty have low incomes?
Link.
The two states with the highest per capita incomes are Connecticut and New Jersey (due to NYC commuters and relative lack of urban population). Have you ever been to Camden? Newark? Hartford?
New Hampshire is an affluent state where tens of thousands are living in poverty.
Thank you for that. I am shocked. I don’t know much about the eastern states. In fact, I’ve only been east of the Mississippi (and still in the US) a few of times in my life. Carry on. I’ll re-read it with fresh eyes.
Now, do you think the Edwards campaign isn’t doing this same analysis and modifying their message to fit? Or even Obama’s campaign? It would be really disturbing to see the poor voting for Clinton.
NH and Maine used to be great places to drop out, at least in the 60s. But contrary to your assertion, most of them were highly educated. One wonders if they didn’t drop back in the meantime and left, thus lowering the educational level of residents.
Whatever the case, liberal Democrats are not pleased with NH today, for whatever reason.
Interesting analysis. It’s hard to say why his message isn’t resonating. And it’s hard to say if it’s the message that isn’t resonating OR if his message is resonating but the voters are accepting the message but rejecting the messenger. I often think that’s what many Obama supporters are doing – buying into the message Edwards is sending but attributing Obama with the ability to make it a reality.
Edwards puts the hard reality out there. He says we need to change it. He says he will change it. But for people in a lower economic bracket -they know the hard reality and they know change is needed and they’ve had a whole lot of people say they are going to change it but nothing changes. Apparently they don’t buy the argument that being a fighter is enought to make change. And maybe that’s because of their own experience. Maybe they think you need something else that they don’t have.
To me, the message isn’t resonating because it’s Edwards who is saying it. In the mouth of someone else I might find it more believable. I know many, MANY think he is wholly sincere. But in my gut, I just don’t buy it, and evidently the folks in Iowa who had the most time with him, didn’t buy it either.
When I read the first line about not putting too much faith in exit polls, I thought you were writing about Matthews’ admission that Obama was polling 8% better than Clinton on MSNBC’s unadjusted exit poll and that there should have been a blowout, just like all the preprimary polls said (other unadjusted exit polls have not been released). So it goes.
I find it curious how everyone here who’d complained about the machines stealing the election in 2004 can blithely read the tea leaves at the bottom of the New Hampshire cup and presume they can go down to the track and make a reasonable bet. So it goes.
It’s old news that the media will attack and marginalize true progressives. My girlfriend took a test on the internet to find out which candidate best matched her beliefs, and she came up with Kucinich. But she and the rest of America have to get past the tongue stud and the flying saucers before they get to the issues.
When you talk about what resonates in the MSM echo chamber you are pretty much being an echo. So it goes.
Why are people not voting for Edwards?
BECAUSE THEY READ HIM AS FALSE!!!
Because he acted as a trial lawyer for so long that he can’t say a “true” word in a true manner even if he himself believes it.
Sorry, Charlie.
StarKist don’t take professional liars.
Not unless they are better at it than John-Boy.
It’s one thing to sway 12 jurors.
Jurors that were at least partially vetted by the lawyer in question.
Jurors that mostly just want to get the fuck OUT of there and whose asses are not particularly in a sling if they vote wrong.
Jurors who are listening to TWO liars acting as well-paid mouthpieces for their clients. Two liars who are a LONG way below the class of liar that one must be to succeed in national politics.
Edwards is out of his depth.
He resembles an actor who had a little success in regional productions but is now trying to act with the BIG boys and girls.
Fit only for a walk-on male ingenue role but too stupid to realize it.
Sorry, folks.
He is an accident.
Chosen by an equally untalented actor to be his co-star in a production that closed during previews. Beaten by a Disney-like production of “The Lyin’ King”.
Fuggedaboudit.
He’s outta here.
AG
Because he acted as a trial lawyer for so long that he can’t say a “true” word in a true manner even if he himself believes it.
This is a right-wing talking point. Trial lawyers are the folks who help people who have been injured through the negligence, apathy, and sometimes malice of corporations, remember?
…And they deserve every penny of their contingency fees. For a refresher course, see the movie “Erin Brockovich.” It really is a good movie and a true story about real people who didn’t even know they were being screwed by a major corporation that was fully aware of what they were doing to the people.
Yes, they are.
And they are also the ones who fight AGAINST people who have been injured through the negligence, apathy, and sometimes malice of corporations.
They are mercenaries, eodell. They fight for the highest bidder. Sometimes they actually make moral decisions about what side they choose to represent, but then they are forced to use EXACTLY the same tactics as do their opponents anyway. They must do so if they are to win. That’s the way the game is set up.
Eventually they lie SO MANY TIMES THAT IT BECOMES ALL LIES WHEN IT COMES OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS.
And that is the bind in which Mr. Edwards lives.
He is a professional liar by trade, and he is so good at it…so well and so thoroughly trained…that he can no longer sound truthful.
And there it is. People are reading it in his very speech patterns.
In the way he stands, the way he dresses, the way he does his hair and moves his hands.
He’s toast, eodell.
Sorry.
AG
You confuse advocate with liar. Newsflash, every profession sells its services to the highest bidder. Do you make these statements for the attention they bring you? (Rambling, somewhat relevant reply to follow.)
We can be confident that the aforementioned rambling, somewhat relevant reply will probably not, say, attribute a lack of artistic integrity to studio musicians. Which would be absurd, of course, but logically consistent.
When it comes to trial lawyers you are a bigot – intolerant and prejudiced. You take a group of people who have one thing in common (their profession), lump them together as though they are homogeneous and judge them based on your pre-formed beliefs to which you are blindly and obstinately attached.
The same person who would not dream of categorizing people according to race, sees nothing wrong with lumping lawyers into one group and then libeling them.
Trial lawyers are not professional liars, they are advocates, as boran2 says above.
in my experience, this is a far better definition of politicians than of lawyers:
as b2 notes below, you’ve conflated advocacy with insincerity and avarice, neither of which l see in edwards’ positions or history.
lTMF’sA
I’m so frustrated at the lack of depth in these stories.
If you look at the raw data, NOT the summary, you see that in fact some areas counted by Diebold went heavily for Obama, and some areas counted by hand went heavily for Clinton.
The more salient fact is that in the areas where the Clinton political machine roots are deepest, i.e., Manchester and Nashua, Clinton did far better than in the smaller areas, the college towns, where Obama’s support was phenomenal.
Naturally, the bigger the district, the more likely votes were counted by computer.
Now you guys know there is no bigger advocate of getting rid of DREs, of insisting on paper records, and not just paper, but AUDITS of those paper records so we don’t have to guess – we can KNOW with confidence “what happened.”
But the summary reports here do not tell the full story. See my personal blog and the comment within for an example of a couple of counties (selected from multiple examples) where Obama won in a Diebold count and Clinton lost in a hand count.
Here’s the relevant part:
Hand counting was done in the smaller districts where Obama was doing well. Diebold counting was done in the places where the Clinton machine was working in force. So it’s possible there’s another reason for that swing.
And here are two examples, among many, that prove my point. Hillary won big in some handcounts, like this one:
Boscawen – 738 votes
VOTE COUNT METHOD: Hand Counted Paper Ballots
Obama won in some Diebold counted districts as well, like this one:
Alton – 979 votes
VOTE COUNT METHOD: Diebold Accuvote optical scan ; contractor: LHS Associates/John Silvestro
We’re too quick to jump to assumptions based on partial data. The raw data does not suggest fraud, to me, and believe me, I was very suspicious when the results came in.
The upper-middle class whites (mostly Jewish and/or LGBT) that live in my old neighborhood didn’t like him for reasons of fakery and feeling overlooked. That was in 2004.
He’s been running for president pretty much for 4 years now and nothing has caught on. Why? Many people I speak to think that all of Edwards doings the last 4 years have been just to make him electable. Many of them, like me, have a bad feeling about how much Mrs. Edwards is directing the campaign. I can go into a whole post on Mama Edwards and her little boy Johnny.
A snapshot
My new neighborhood is decidedly lower on the economic scale, and is mostly Latino and Asian. While the circles I move in everyone either has a college degree or attended college, the census data doesn’t bear that out. The owner/workers are all sitting on our neighborhood council. They were involved in politics at their high school and colleges. The people (workers and customers) at my local coffee shop are Obama supporters (this was interesting as I heard they held something of a mini-caucus with customers to determine which candidate was going to get the support). Everyone gives Edwards an eyeroll because his campaign message seems to be “I’m the White Knight that will save your minorities”. And again, the appreciation for Mrs. Edwards among this group is even lower. No one thinks that Edwards will even try to live up to his rhetoric. I also find that there’s some regional bigotry involved in some of their thinking.
Meanwhile, I’m still Black and I still have family that is firmly Democratic, though even that could possibly erode (there’s this weird pro-Huckabee strain that can come out if Clinton is the nominee). See, all of them look at Edwards as opportunistic and yeah, they’ve mentioned the White Knight thing too.
So maybe you are right…that there is a reaction that we finally have two candidates who are not White males and it’s pretty good.
Is anyone else through trying to make sense of polling data?