Friday, July 11, 2008

A Different Way of Looking at Polls

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

We spend a lot of time here talking about why different pollsters have such different takes on individual states. Yesterday, USA Today published an article analyzing the different types of voters they see this year. Here is their summary table:


If you read the article, you’ll see that poll respondents can be divided not only in terms of who someone will vote for, but also how likely they are to vote, and how enthused they are about their candidate (which also affects one’s propensity to actually get to the voting booth.)

Of note in the table is that there are a lot of undecided voters. Of most interest to me is the 18% who actually like both candidates. I can understand the idea of liking two people AS people, but I cannot get my hands around the idea that you could politically support two people with completely divergent views. Take birth control. Obama is pro-choice. McCain doesn’t seem to understand the issue.