… As Romney turned his eye to the presidency in the mid-2000s, he became more conservative. Journalists and pundits noted the shift at the time, but much of the electorate apparently did not. As John Sides recently showed with an elegant graphic, that’s finally changing: the public’s perception of Romney […] Read more »
Obama Voters Shake GOP Vision of Electorate
It’s easy to understand why some Republicans and pollsters dismissed the idea that the Obama coalition from 2008 would be fired up and ready to go in 2012. Not possible. Not with the unemployment rate at 14.3 percent among blacks, 10 percent among Hispanics, and 11.8 percent among adults under […] Read more »
House Results: The GOP Bends But Doesn’t Break
While Republicans are a bit shell-shocked about the presidential and Senate results, House Republicans have reason for smugness. They kept control of their chamber after their sweeping 2010 gains and will likely keep their losses only in the single digits. Sill, the outcome is something of a letdown for GOP […] Read more »
Gallup(ing) Away from the Herd
… Now that the exit polls are public, we can assess Gallup’s expectations about a Republican partisan advantage, the lynchpin of Gallup’s lonely prediction that Romney would win the popular vote. … We know that Gallup did not force their likely voter sample to fit a pre-determined distribution of partisan […] Read more »
Shifting Voter Support, 2008 to 2012
Which voters’ Presidential preferences changed from 2008 to 2012? That straightforward question is central to making sense of yesterday’s election outcome—and yet it is a deceptively hard question. For example, consider the results from this year’s exit polls. They indicate that Hispanic voters backed President Obama by a margin of […] Read more »
Obama wins 75% of Latino vote, marks historic Latino influence in presidential election
… Latino support for President Obama was huge, with a record-breaking 75% of Latino voters nationwide (see below) casting their ballot for the President- the previous high for Latino voters was the 72% for Bill Clinton in 1996. Romney’s share of 23% was nowhere near the 38% his team identified […] Read more »