Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Preliminary Florida Crosstabs

I take the results from the MSNBC page here. Yea, they are acting like pricks, but numbers are numbers, and they have them in the easiest to access format. These are simply some fast numbers. I will do more analysis after the dust settles and I can study trends in more depth.

The news tonight is that Hillary has won a sweeping victory in a state that more closely resembles the national average demography than any of the other states so far in the primary season. Even more than the number of votes, the make up of the voting public is important, because it is a window into how the nation as a whole may look at the candidates. Florida is alos not next door to any of the big three, has been closed to campaigning, and has no reason to hustle votes because of the threatened DNClock-out. Therefore, we're seeing a pretty interesting and non-skewed sample of the American mind.

The second story here is Obama fatigue. FLorida voters who decided in the last few days (since South Carolina) broke heavily for Hillary. Something in Golden Boy Barry's message is turning people off. My guess is that the media Clinton-Hate-In that has been going on for the last week has also had an effect on voters who are calling bullshit on the more egregious exaggerations and misrepresentations.

Race

The BIG story here is that Clinton's percentage of Black voters has gone up again. She received more Black votes in Florida than all the votes she received from all voters in Iowa or Nevada.

16% - IA
Not reported - NH
30% - MI (Obama not on ballot)
14% - NV
19% - SC
27% - FL

Obama did his worst among Black voters in Florida so far this year, dropping to 70% of that vote.

Party Affiliation

Clinton cleans up with 53% of Democrats. She also wins the most Independents, and a quarter of the Republican vote. Obama is back to low 30s for party support, and shockingly only gets 28% of the Independents. His numbers and HRC's numbers are reversed on this, which indicates that Independents abandoned Barry in Florida. This is very, very big.

Age

Hillary won all age groups, even the young vote. Her percentage of the elderly vote, 58%, is actually less than in Michigan or Nevada, but still more than double Obama's. The age distribution in Florida is comparable to what occured in Michigan, except for HRC winning the youngest age bracket. Obama significantly underpreformed among older voters this time around. One of those elderly female hispanic voters in Florida was my mother-in-law, who is a rock-solid Hillary supporter.

Sex

The big story here is that HRC performed extremely well with male voters, comparable to the margins she achieved in Nevada and Michigan. Her numbers among female voters was slightly better than Nevada, though not quite as good as Michigan. Obama's numbers with men are the same as his polling in Iowa, so the extra Edwards voters went to HRC. Thsi was his worst showing among female voters at 29%

That's it for now. I'm off to have a celebration dinner. Next up, Super Tuesday!

Anglachel

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are great numbers Anglachel. Hopefully they stay this way. I saw Clinton on CNN and MSNBC and she stuck to the issues which always works for her. Her speech in Florida was great and she will be rewarded later for standing up for the 800,000+ Floridians who voted for her today.
I was also bit surprised that Hillary won so much of the youth and independent vote. Maybe that was affected by the fact that Clinton has bigger name recognition and there was no campaigning but I don't think it affected the numbers that much. And after South Carolina it is very good to see that Clinton can still increase her support among black voters. This is a positive sign going into Super Tuesday.

Anonymous said...

I also have to add that I am AMAZED at one of my friends who is an Obama supporter and he has written several posts on his blog about how Florida is completely irrelevant, "meaningless", and "shouldn't be talked about anymore". In his post tonight, he says that HRC won because of early votes. It's also interesting that both of your analysis of the same numbers are so different. I can't wait for this primary to end because there is too much tension between Obama and Hillary supporters. I've never seen anything like this within the Democratic Party.

Anonymous said...

Anglachel, I popped by here tonight hoping you'd have some number analysis and you didn't disappoint. Thank you for taking the time to do this. It really gives me a sense of what is happening in this race. Your analysis is always a hundred times better than the talking hemorrhoids.

I was pretty positive Hillary was going to win this one big. But I am pleasantly surprised to see her improving in many categories. Just what we need going into Super Tuesday!