We all know that the Netroots is not a representative sample of the Democratic Party. Far from it. Yesterday I wrote Who Were Edwards’ Voters?, wherein I showed that Edwards’ voters in the early primary and caucus contests were whiter, richer, more pro-war, and more moderate-to-conservative than we would expect given the populist, poverty-focused, anti-corporate, anti-war message of his campaign. Looking at the exit polls gave me almost no signs that Edwards’ supporters will break to Obama. So it is interesting to see the results of the most recent Daily Kos poll:
dKos Reader Poll. 1/30/07 9:58 a.m. to 8:27 p.m. PT. 17,995 respondents.
2008 2007
Jan30 Jan24 Jan16 Jan07 Jan02 Dec19 Dec12 Nov Oct
Obama 76 41 41 39 27 27 30 27 16
H. Clinton 11 9 11 7 7 6 8 9 9
Other 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3
No F'ing Clue 6 2 2 2 2 2 4 4 5
-------Out of the race--------
Edwards - 42 38 43 48 41 39 33 31
Kucinich - 2 4 4 3 5 8 9 5
Dodd - - - - 4 11 2 7 21
Biden - - - - 1 2 2 2 1
Richardson - - - 1 1 1 1 1 2
Gravel* - - - - 0 0 0 0 0
How did Edwards’ 42% support break among Daily Kos readers? Obama got 35% 83% of them, Clinton 2% 5%, and there was an 8% uptick in undecided voters (probably because Kucinich also dropped out).
I think the disconnect between the Netroots and the party at large can be seen in these numbers from South Carolina:
When asked if they would be satisfied if Clinton won the nomination, 33% of Edwards’ supports said ‘no’. When asked if they would be satisfied if Obama won the nomination 47% said ‘no’.
Now, I don’t think South Carolina Democrats are any more representative of the national party than Daily Kos readers, but the disconnect is staggering. And I think it helps explain why some people simply refused to believe the numbers from the Exit Polls. We’re all living in the same country, but the difference between high and low information voters is simply staggering. I think the only thing that explains it is that the more people pay attention, the less they like Hillary Clinton and her campaign. But there may be other explanations that are escaping me right now.
As expected for an underdog candidate, Edwards voters were mostly voting “pro” Edwards, not anti somebody. And if they wanted John Edwards vision of change, there’s ample room to be not particularly excited by a darker hued Gary Hart.
But thanks for this post … I had not clue that the straw poll was on. This is the very first one where I get to vote NFC.
If we’re talking about the universe of Edwards voters among Daily Kos readers, a 83%-5% break for Obama strongly, strongly suggests an inherent anti-Clinton bias as a major motivating factor in the original Edwards support.
Likewise, the exit polls in South Carolina strongly suggest a racial bias in the Edwards voters against Obama.
but now it looks like I’m voting for “the boy.”
I put that in quotes, because I know Obama most certainly is no child–he’s a grown man. I say it as other older black women would describe affectionately any child of the community–related or not–who’s made good. Real good.
…I felt the same way about JFK, Jr. When I heard about his fatal accident, all I could do was say over and over, “Not that boy. Not that boy. Not that little boy.”
Getting back to Obama: You could say I am one of those Edwards supporters who are leaning his way. And I am not white or have middle-class money. I’ll be goddang if I ever vote Rethug.
Two things: The Dkos poll is self selected, not random. You can read Dkos but not participate in the poll. This means it has no inherent statistical significance.
Second, if the Dkos poll is not a random sample of the Dkos community it cannot stand in for the entirety of the liberal blogosphere. So I wouldn’t put much stock in that poll, much less compare it to the SC exit polls either, which again represent a distinct subset of voters.
There are many high information consumers who like Mrs. Clinton just as there are many low information consumers who dislike her. It’s one variable that should be measured to help understand voter preferences, but far from the only one.
you don’t think a N=17,000 poll is representative of the Daily Kos community? I do. And the polls are steady over time and reflected in MyDD polls, too.
I’m telling you any poll which is self selected cannot be statistically valid. It may or may not represent the DKos community. However, it likely represents best the community of people who like to participate in straw polls there.
I don’t see it that way. I think if I put up a poll here asking people their gender that I will get an accurate poll that gets more accurate the bigger the sample. At 17,000, I bet that Daily Kos is much more accurate than most polls you see.
That’s why you’re not a statistician Boo. Of course neither am I, but I have picked up the occasional tidbit from my Dad and brother who both have PhD’s in Stat. My Father’s particular point of emphasis was sampling. He would tell you that any sample, no matter how large can be distorted if it isn’t randomly selected. All we know about the peeple who participated in that poll is that they have registered at Dkos and they chose to participate in the poll. That’s it. He would be reluctant to assign any further validity to the poll than that.
It may be a valid indicator of the entire population at Dkos, but it could just as easily be influenced by a host of other variables that would make it a flawed representation of community opinion. Maybe Hillary supporters are reluctant to participate, eg., or perhaps Obama supporters are more likely to participate. We don’t know. I would guess the biggest underrepresented group are those who haven’t made a decision yet (or whose candidates have dropped out), because they have the least incentive to participate in a straw poll at this point.
I know its makes for an interesting conversation to compare these Dkos polls with the SC one but unless the methodology of the poll takers is consistent it tells us very little. Fun to speculate about, I suppose.
again, I disagree, not because I’m not a statistician (nor even because father wasn’t one). There might be some distortion in the poll over what we’d get with a true random sample, but it’s random enough (selected by whomever happened to log-on while the poll was active) and huge enough to tell us that 83-5% split is real.
And that’s all that matters, not whether the real number has more undecideds or whatever.
My gut feeling has always been that if DKos were liberal they leaned moderate. So, if I’m right, most of the people who log on would likely lean moderate themselves. At any rate, the only thing we know is that their poll (if set up in the correct way) reflects DKOS attitudes.
So, I think I’m a bit with Steven on this.
And certainly one I’m hearing now:
From what I’m hearing in my part of LA is that Latinos are getting a little annoyed. Earlier this month, the Clinton’s painted Latinos as racist voters, “Latinos don’t want to vote for a black person.” I know my friends were pissed considering they are all related to “a black person” no matter if they’re from Peru, Honduras, Mexico or Cuba. The Dominicans and Belizeans I know were outraged. Nice turnoff.
Still, there wasn’t any traction. After all, the media just said, “Okay. We don’t know Latinos, we haven’t anointed a Latino spokesperson, so let’s repeat it like it’s true.”
Then Gregory Rodriguez wrote his Time and LA Times articles this week and well, lately the shit has hit the fan. Latinos in my area who were supporting Clinton are now not. Over the hill, the number of Clinton yard/window signs has dwindled to 5. There was a street with 37 houses on it. All of them had Clinton signs at the beginning of the year. I drove by two days ago, and one house has a sign.
So, yeah I think as the field got smaller and the noises from the candidates get amplified it helps. I spoke some people earlier today who are doing Obama GOTV in East Los Angeles (the city, not the area) and they said that they’ve been using the Clinton’s campaigns words (regarding Latinos) against them and it makes people see them in a new light.
unfortunately for Clinton and her aadvisers, they’re clueless on the ethnicity make-up of Latinos. Clueless.
kids’ mouths fell open when I told them that the first Californios were Spanish-speaking mulattoes living in what is now San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
So some of those caballeros Zorro was defending in Alta California were big time Afro-Mexican landowners.
Here’s one of them:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/pico.html
You know what? We don’t have to be fighting each other for the crumbs Billary are throwing out to us all. Thanks a whole lot for this Gregory Rodriguez article. I’m spreading this around.
I recommended two essays recently over at my blog that touch on Afro/Latino histories and the intertwining that has occurred over the centuries. Highly recommend them:
Thanks very much for the links Manny, both great and I also read all the comments which were almost better than the article itself.
my pleasure, ink. they both tore that NYTimes article to shreds
And well they should as it was such a incredibly stupid fact free piece of crap..embarrassingly stupid.
Those were great essays. Thanks for linking to them.
HI blksista, great link and yes it really is a crying fucking shame how little factual history we learn in school. Maybe if we were honestly taught our real and shared history of this country we wouldn’t feel the need to make various groups outcasts as if they did nothing to help create what has become America. How can we feel connected to one another when we aren’t taught how interconnected we all are?
That’s one dilemma Hillary shares with Rudy Giuliani:
The better you know them, the more you dislike them.
Such unrepresentative findings are better understood as an antiHillary or antiBillary vote than a proObama one. The left wing have had the Clintons and Clintonism up to here. Where? You know what I mean. Voting for Hillary has become like voting for another kind of Republican.
Now we learn via Ezra Klein that Obama is the most liberal senator.
And to cheer progressives here’s a top dog progressive blogger Christopher Hayes, The Nation
The Choice
…“obama is the most liberal senator”…
spare me, look at his overall rating…anything can, and will be, spun.
lTMF’sA
We need to keep track of all this Billary disinformation coming up the pike. Not all of us are bullsh*t detectors. Some of this stuff could indeed mess with the wrong minds.
I don’t know, CSPAN this morning a caller spouted that he was just so disgusted at his Rep party that at first he had thought of not voting but now he’d decided he was gonna punish them idiots by voting for that black guy.
Polling does have its challenges.
While you were spending too much time on Daily Kos, this appeared:
Is this for real?
Saw that…certainly is interesting, given that Volcker was the last Fed chairman appointed by a Democrat (almost 30 years ago, if you think about it).
Wall Street Journal lists Volcker as a Democrat.
WSJ Volcker: I Endorse Obama
Mr. Volcker, a Democrat, was appointed to the Fed chairmanship by Jimmy Carter in 1979 and replaced – with Alan Greenspan – by Ronald Reagan just a couple of months before the 1987 stock market crash. He is widely respected among central bankers, Wall Street
Put if up as a diary anyway. The timing was still interesting because while the Fed is cutting like crazy, last year we had the highest inflation rate, 4.1%, in 17 years. THat would hit the poorest of Americans and the elderly on fixed income the most.
What does Bernake care about? That is the troublesome question.
I’m a bit disappointed in Bernanke…I actually thought he would be a pretty good Fed chairman, but I’m concerned he’s going to drop rates all the way down again and thus create the same problem Greenspan did earlier this decade.
Yes, he’ll drop rates all the way to the bottom of the barrel but this will have no beneficial effect. So we’ll end up with all the draw backs of extremely low interest rates—cash slushing all around driving prices up, no growth, no jobs, nothing, lower dollar, just a lot of cash for whoever can get their hands on it, however they can. And when he’s forced to raise interest rates to keep the lid on the steamer things will only get worse. The whole strategy is to minimize the problems as much as possible until the end of the current repugnant era.
Repugnant era, indeed. Or is this a last gasp attempt to reverse the downturn before the Nov elections?
Well it’s on Bloomberg. Interesting how many heavy weights are knocking at Obama’s door.
because it’s now a two-horse race for the Dem nomination.
How many want a re-run of the Clinton years. Especially when not a classic.
They see that Obama has eroded the Clinton’s lead, national
poll, down to just 4 points:
look at the graph. definite trends up for Obama
“How many want a re-run of the Clinton years.”
Not seeing any hands up from this part of the country. How is it out there or whereever you are?
very interesting, in white, rural northern Vermont it’s a hermetically sealed Republican country – (yes we’ve made exceptions electing Dean for gov and Leahy and Sanders to the U. S. Senate, more recently Welch to Congress) but in this rural area all die-hard Republicans, …. It’s Obama – the under 50s age group. More astounding, most have never see up close a member of the visible minority.
That’s odd. I recall visiting Vermont once and I do believe a saw at least “one” Black person somewhere. Or was that Maine or New Hampsire. Still, I’m surprised to learn about the right wing slant of the state, just because they seem to elect few Republican representatives.
Is maple syrup Democratic or Republican?