Monday, January 18, 2010

A Look into the Final Internals in the MA Race-- Adjusted for Party ID

Everyone and their brother has been watching next Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts extremely closely. Common logic on the GOP side of the blogosphere thinks that Scott Brown might pull it off but the Dems are hoping to drag Martha Coakley over the finish line.

So let's take a look at the 2010 polls and party identification, as well as the 2008 Presidential race.

2008

In 2008, Barack Obama carried the state 61.8-36.0%. According to final polling data in the state before the election, Obama was winning 56-36%, a 20% margin. Between the final polling and the actual vote, 6% of the population swung into Obama's corner. While many of these voters likely leaned Obama anyway, McCain's polls equaled his statewide totals. Part of what may have caused the flux were younger, less informed voters, casting a ballot for Obama due to his perceived popularity.

The other statewide race was the Senate race between incumbent Senator John Kerry and virtual unknown Jeff Beatty. In this race, Kerry won 65.8-31.0%. The final polling numbers had Kerry ahead 65-30%, showing little sway between the voters. Likely, many of these voters were more familiar with Massachusetts politics and were not swayed due to Obama being at the top of the ballot.

2010

Now, let's talk about today. We've got this upcoming race with Scott Brown winning in most polls. However, we have to match it with Massachusetts party ids.

37% are Democrats
11% are Republicans
52% are independents

Rasmussen's polling has a sample including 52% of Democrats, 15% higher than the actual results. What is likely to happen is that if Brown's large advantage among Independents comes through here are the results:

According to an ARG poll, Brown leads 94-1% among Republicans, 58-37% among independents and is losing 71-20% among Democrats. To use JUST these numbers, and not accounting for fervor, we get the following results:

7.4% of the total electorate are Democrats for Brown.
26.3% are Dems for Coakley.
10.3% are Republicans for Brown.
0.01% are Republicans for Coakley
30.2% are Independents for Brown.
19.2% are Independents for Coakley.

Not counting in the undecideds, to add up the numbers, Brown leads with 47.9% and Coakley has 45.5%. These numbers don't factor in a third-party candidate, but I do believe that these will likely coincide with the actual results. With Obama 'firing up' the young and more ignorant voters, they are more likely to come out to vote against the perennial bogeyman 'Bush.'

But it still leaves Brown up by 2.4%.

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3 comments:

Personal Trainer London said...

Great list.That’s a very interesting post.I have gone through the details. I really appreciate it.Thanks for sharing.keep blogging.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for linking all that to one post. It saves some time in hunting down the stuff individually. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Anonymous said...

You must be looking at the older poll data for ARG, because they released a new poll today. Brown is doing much better in all party ID categories and there are too many Democrats and not enough Independents in that poll. Without adjusting for party ID brown is still up 7% overall in the poll. When adjusted it's probably 10%!