As with my previous post on the SurveyUSA numbers, they've now come out with numbers for the general election here in California.
For each GOP candidate, in the margin column I've bolded the race that would give us the best margin of victory. I've also made graphs comparing the margins of victory, cuz I know how you guys just love graphs. It's always nice to have a visual comparison. :-)
California:
| GENERAL | ELECTION | MATCH-UPS |
| Democrat | Republican | Margin |
| Clinton 57% | Giuliani 37% | Win by 20% |
| Obama 48% | Giuliani 44% | Win by 4% |
| Edwards 46% | Giuliani 44% | Win by 2% |
| Clinton 60% | Thompson 34% | Win by 26% |
| Obama 53% | Thompson 37% | Win by 16% |
| Edwards 53% | Thompson 32% | Win by 21% |
| Clinton 63% | Romney 30% | Win by 33% |
| Obama 51% | Romney 36% | Win by 15% |
| Edwards 58% | Romney 27% | Win by 31% |
California's a wacky state. This is the ONLY state out of every single one surveyed by SurveyUSA so far that shows Hillary doing the best against all three GOP candidates. What can I say, we like celebrity (see: Arnold Schwarzenegger), and the Clintons are celebrities in California. We're wacky that way. And oh, the leads Hillary has. Why? Look at the cross-tabs, she cleans up on the Independent vote, consistently getting over 50% of them to vote for her. Meanwhile, Obama loses it each time to the GOP nominee, never even breaking the 40% mark. Edwards is a mixed bag; he loses the Independent vote to Rudy, but wins it against Thompson (barely) and Romney (by a lot).
Edwards actually gets the most crossover support from Republicans when matched against Rudy, so why is his margin the smallest there? Because Hillary keeps the Democrats in line, with few crossing over. A whopping 24% of Democrats would vote for Rudy over Obama or Edwards at this stage. I don't care, this is absolutely unacceptable. Who the hell are these Democrats?? Argh.
Now, if you consider Romney to be little more than "generic Republican" at this point in California, what accounts for Hillary and Edwards' 30%+ leads, when Obama only leads by 15%? The Democrats. Only 9% would cross over and vote for Romney when our nominee is either Hillary or Edwards. But with Obama, 18% of Democrats would rather vote for Romney (i.e., generic Republican). This is disconcerting, to say the least. Again, who the hell are these Democrats??? Also, both Hillary and Edwards win the Independents by double digits over Romney, while Obama actually loses their vote to Romney, 43%-36%.
What may be even more interesting is the age breakdown. Given that we always hear about how Obama energizes young people, these numbers come as a bit of a shock. Hillary wins the 18-34 age range over Rudy by a whopping 32%, while Rudy actually wins them over Obama (and Edwards too). All of our candidates win the youth vote over Thompson. But when it comes to Romney, another surprise comes. Hillary wins over young people by a ridiculous 72%-23% margin. Edwards wins them over by a not-as-ridiculous-but-still-ridiculous 61%-21% margin. But Obama can only get 44% of the youth vote to 43% for Romney. This defies all conventional wisdom about the race. Against the "generic Republican", Hillary and Edwards dominate the youth vote, but Obama barely scrapes by with an insignificant 1%.
7 comments:
two words: name identification. until theres an actual campaign going on in california, polls dont mean shit.
It's not name ID. As Gallup showed just last month, all of our top 3 have very high name ID, as does Rudy on the GOP side. These aren't meaningless excursions.
Oh snapz!
Doesn't Hillary beat all the Republicans by a greater margin than anyone in Virginia polling too?
Not that I'm a fan of polling, but I thought I saw that.
I went over the Virginia numbers here. She leads Rudy by 6, Edwards leads Rudy by 5. But against Thompson and Romney, Edwards again leads by the greatest margins.
Oh, I actually remembered that I saw different numbers in Newsweek. Which I guess goes to show the problem with polling...everyone has different numbers.
I really like SurveyUSA because they were shown to be the most accurate polling firm in 2004. Rasmussen came in #2. SurveyUSA won out because they had NO bad misses. So even when they didn't get the right winner, the amount they were off by was still within the margin of error.
I don't think it's a coincidence that both SurveyUSA and Rasmussen are IVR polls that don't use live operators on the other end. Some people are very private about who they'll vote for, and won't reveal their real choices to a live human on the other end of the line. But a pre-recording? Then they're more OK with that, and so you can see a more honest answer.
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