Inflated Clinton Poll Theory: Great New Pew Crosstabs
by Chris Bowers, Thu Apr 26, 2007 at 12:16:48 PM EDT
Pew has just dropped an amazing and important crosstab set on the Democratic nomination campaign. It frustrated me tremendously that they still include Gore in the questioning, but it is still worth a look anyway.Looking at these crosstabs, it occurs to me that there is an important structural flaw in the inflated Clinton poll theory that I have been overlooking. Although Pew does not offer crosstabs to prove this, I still believe that Obama probably does much better relative to Clinton among voters who are paying very close, or somewhat close, attention to the campaign than among voters who are not paying much attention at all. However, closed primaries in several large February 5th states might cancel out that advantage, since Obama performs relatively better among Democratic-leaning independents who won't be able to vote in closed primaries than he does among self-identified Democrats (in this case, I am assuming self-identified Democrats are more likely to be registered Democrats than are Democratic-leaning independents). Now, I don't know how many February 5th and earlier states this rule applies to, but I do know it applies to Pennsylvania where I live. I think it applies to New York as well, but that doesn't really matter one way or the other, because Clinton will almost certainly win New York. Overall, it might apply to enough states to counteract all, or at least half, of the advantage Obama currently holds high-information voters who are heavily tuned into the campaign. This probably means that Clinton is still ahead even among the universe of likely caucus-goers and primary voters in the Democratic nomination process. It does not, however, change my opinion that the theory needs to be tested.
Leaving that aside, there are some other very interesting cross-tabs here. First, it is useful to note that Clinton's advantage over Obama among liberal and moderates is negligible, but her edge among conservatives is enormous. Second, Obama holds a gaping lead among seculars--and even Edwards is tied with Clinton among seculars--but Clinton holds the edge among all other religious demographics. Many of the other patterns we have seen are also replicated here: younger voters, wealthier voters, highly educated voters, and male voters all skew toward Obama much more heavily than do other demographics. There clearly seems to be a cultural and class based divide between Clinton and Obama supporters, at least right now. It reminds me of something I wrote over four months ago, even before any crosstabs came out revealing this divide:
I think Obama, simply in terms of his demeanor and his biography, strongly appeals to politicos from a new generation and a new socioeconomic class because he strikes them in some sort of gut, intuitive level as being from that class. Multi-ethnic, post-Vietnam, highly educated, raised in a major urban center--these are many of the cosmopolitan, self-creating, forward looking aspects of life for many younger professionals. As much as we may or may not like Bill Clinton, coming from a little town in Arkansas is not a story many Americans can relate to anymore, because we just didn't grow up that way. Even John Edwards's story of growing up in a mill town when the mill closed seems very, very rustic for a northeasterner such as myself, since our mills closed down sixty years ago to move to places like North Carolina. These rustic visions of America simply are not where people are at these days, especially news junkies and activists within the Democratic Party and the bluer parts of America. Those people instead look to places like Harlem, where Bill Clinton now keeps his offices. People moving into the gentrifying areas of Harlem probably like Barack Obama quite a bit, and probably feel some sort of gut-level, identity-based connection with him that they can't even quite put their finger on at this point.An important question is not just whether either Obama or Clinton's numbers are inflated, but whether either of their supporters are leading indicators for future trends in the campaign. It is possible that they each currently hold advantages in cultural groups that do not communicate with one another very often, and so neither group will influence the other. But it certainly is interesting, and I wish a lot more polling outfits would release crosstabs this like so we can monitor this socioeconomic divide within the Democratic rank and file.
Tags: Barack Obama, Democrats, Demographics, Hillary Clinton, inflated Clinton poll theory, partisan self-identification, polls, President 2008, Primary Elections (all tags)
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