More American Polling Info

Ok I know the U.S. mid-term election is ancient history and that there are a lot more important things going on in the world, such as the debate over O.J. Simpson's "confession" and Michael "Kramer" Richard's racist meltdown.

But I love polling information and when John McLaughlin, head of the polling firm McLaughlin & Associates,provided me with more detailed analysis of a poll I mentioned a few weeks ago I decided to reproduce it here.

Here it is:

The media exit polls had women voting Democrat for Congress 55-43. Men Democrat 50-47. They did national exit polling in their usual fashion with a national sample of 13,251 with extensive state by state weighting. (Some exits were significantly off. I know I saw them while working for CBS radio that day and night.)

However, our election night postelection survey by phone of 1,000 actual voters had a different result Among men Democrats won 56-43. (s=486).While among women it was closer Democrat 52-47. (s=514).

The difference was negligible by party and gender except among Independents. Among Rep men it was Republican 86-13; Rep women 89-10. Among Dem men it was Democrat 94-5; among Dem women 93-6.So party was more important than gender by far.

However, among the Independent men we had (s=89 small) Democrats won big 61-37; among Independent women (s=66 smaller) Democrats won closer 52-46.

Bottom line was not so much gender, but that Republicanss lost BIG among Independents - regardless of gender.This was the real story.

Both our poll and the media poll had the Democrat vote for Congress winning 54-45 which can be tracked through actual vote tallies.

The media polls do not break the vote out by party and gender. However, they ask their party id a little different and they got Democrats 38%, Republicans 36% and Independents 26%. (Our poll asks party "affiliation" and was 42% Democrats, 39% Republicans and 19% Independents/Don't know/refused.). So theirs seems less partisan and more independent. Our poll probably got sorted more voters into a party.)

However, we had Independents voting Democrat for Congress 57-41. They had Independents voting Democrat for Congress 57-39. They must have had a very different gender break within Independents.

Also the media polls probably have a gender bias where the majority of Democrats are women and the majority of Republicans are men. I can't tell because they didn'[t release that. In our poll both parties were slightly more female than male. Independents were more more male. I think this reflects 2 facts that I'm hearing about now in certain race analyses: first, some men who may have been thinking of themselves and voting as Republicans, now think of themselves as Independents and voted Democratic; second, some Republicans, probably men did not vote. This will require further analysis and study.

The real story is the collapse of Republican voting among Independents and the fact that Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the voting sample for the first time since 2000.