Garden State Politics

Posted by admin on October 4th, 2009 in Uncategorized

Something struck me as I looked at the Daily Kos poll – why are white people so sure of their vote, but minorities are not? Then I read the demographics:

Whites: 457 (76)
Blacks: 73 (12)
Hispanics: 45 (8)
Other: 25 (4)
The numbers in parentheses are the percentages of the samples. Those are roughly the percentages seen in the last election (though it does over-sample whites). But 73 black people are not enough of a sub-group to make sweeping statements like:

While just one percent of white voters are undecided (and they break for Christie at a 55-35 clip, 25 percent of African Americans, 12 percent of Hispanics, and 13 percent of ‘other’ remain undecided. All three of those categories are solid Corzine demographic.

And if you think it’s dicey to predict the behavior of all black voters from 73 people, try predicting all Hispanic voters based on only 45.

Then I noticed another problem with the demographics:
Democrats: 157 (26)
Republicans: 79 (13)
Independents: 364 (61)
As before, the number in parentheses is the percentage. Now, I know Republicans are scarce, but only 13% of the voting population? According to the same CNN poll cited above, Republicans should be around 28% of the voting pool. And, by the way, so should independent voters. 44% of the pool should be Democrats.

According to the Division of Election’s breakdown, unaffiliated voters account for 45.6% of registered voters. Democrats account for 33.9%, and Republicans pull in 20.4%. Now, I’m sure DKos used a “likely voter” model instead of “registered voters,” but what model comes up with that partisan spread? In a year when Republicans are excited about winning and Democrats are not?

This is a great example of why sub-group information is a dangerous thing to extrapolate from a poll. The overall Margin of Error for the poll is around 4%. But with only 73 blacks polled, the Margin of Error is almost eleven-and-a-half percent. With only 45 Hispanics, it rises to 14.61 percent.

Understand that this poll has Jon Corzine’s favorability rating at -16 and they are looking for him to pull it out of the hat. And that is actually up five points from a month earlier. Forgive me if I don’t put my money on that bet.