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The New Electorate

Democracy Corps Obama Overperforming

Today Democracy Corps released a new targeting analysis of the Presidential race. The research looks at where the Obama campaign is outperforming Democrats from 2004 and 2006 and where he is under-performing.

The image above shows that voters under 30 are supporting Obama at higher levels than supported John Kerry or Democrats in 2006. This is definitely good news for the Democratic Party. As we have talked about a lot before, young voters are moving towards the Democratic Party in large numbers.

I am a little surprised by the difference between voters under 30 and white voters under 30. Their survey shows white young voters statistically tied, where with all young voters Obama has a huge lead.

There's some interesting stuff in this report, so check it out and leave your thoughts in the comments.

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August 4th, 2008 6:20pm
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A Whole New Ball Game

Submitted by Crowtche on Tue, 2008-08-05 09:30.

The Iraq War back when Kerry was running was still fairly new, and the economy wasn't nearly as bad. Now that everyone finally realizes that the Republicans have screwed it up, they're turning towards the Democrats for help. And then of course there's the issue of race. It doesn't matter to me, but you cannot say the same for everyone. I think to some people its appealing not having to choose between one white guy and another white guy, and that's being reflected heavily with the voters under 30 who weren't around during the Civil Rights Movement and have always known a mixed culture.

Sample size too small; methodology probs for White Under 30

Submitted by KevinH on Tue, 2008-08-05 11:10.

Just looked at the notes on the report; the report is compiled from two surveys, one of 2000 in June and one of 1000 in July. So we already see the first problem, aside from whether it makes methodological sense to combine two surveys in this way: despite being supposedly "post-primary season," the larger of the two samples comes closer to the primaries, where it's more likely that there's pro-Clinton/anti-Obama hard feelings that have mostly faded by July.

But the much bigger problem is this: the sample size for Under 30 is 600. Total. That's big enough for the overall Under 30 breakout (prob. MOE +/- 5%), but if you're breaking out Under 30 White out of that, it's way way too small. And again, this is a combined sample from both the June and June surveys.

So I would take that very disconcerting White Under 30 number with several grains of salt.

Good point on sample size.

Submitted by Kevin Bondelli on Tue, 2008-08-05 19:16.

You are right. The sample size and methodology are a little sketchy.

Kevin Bondelli