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February 09, 2008

Parsing the Washington Primary Polls

Looking at the crosstabs of the February 5th poll we find that while Obama easily outperformed every other candidate and McCain was the strongest GOP candidate, Hillary Clinton actually performed best among Democrats in the general election heats. Obama's margin of victory came from both Independents and a handful of Republicans, although he too performed extremely well among Democrats. Hillary Clinton lost handily among Independents in each match-up while Barak Obama won handily among Independents in each general election match-up.

Another poll, this time a primary election poll focused on the GOP candidates, taken Thursday and Friday narrows things a bit. This poll was taken prior to Romney's announcement so he is included. With Romney in the mix McCain narrowly won among Republicans:

24% Huckabee
32% McCain
31% Romney
6% Paul
8% Undecided

With Washington's convoluted caucus/primary system the numbers on who intends to participate are very revealing. For the Caucus tonight only 32% of all registered voters intend to participate while a full 63% explicitly indicated that they would not. But for the primary on the 19th of this month the numbers are very different with the overwhelming majority (89%) indicating that they intend to participate.

It seems the voters of Washington aren't very fond of the caucus system.

The newest poll was released this morning and excludes everyone but Dems and GOPers. It includes unusually extensive caveats and appears to have been gleaned from data collected for the previous poll (Feb. 7 & 8). It also excludes Romney. Which gets interesting because we can see where the Romney backers go and who benefits the most from Romney having backed out.

Among Republicans alone:

25% Huckabee
54% McCain
11% Paul
10% Undecided

Among Democrats alone:

45% Clinton
50% Obama
6% Undecided

Discuss.

Posted by Kevin at February 9, 2008 11:14 AM