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Fun with numbers

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Illinois
Polls

* Be careful when you read stuff like this report from the Associated Press on Illinois’ exit polling data…

When it comes to the idea of raising income taxes, about half felt that families making over $250,000 a year could afford to pay a little more. About four in 10 wanted to see tax rates frozen for everyone, while few backed the idea of an across-the-board tax hike.

If you look at the actual numbers, you’ll see this result is based on just 196 respondents. So, you cannot really trust that result. 1,009 people were polled Tuesday, so the high-number results were likely quite accurate. But stuff like this isn’t…

Efforts to dismantle a 16-year ban on same-sex marriage in Illinois may be gaining support. Two years after the state legalized civil unions, more than half of voters said the state should legally recognize same-sex marriages. No issues involving same-sex marriage or civil unions were on the ballot.

Illegal immigrants wanting a chance to apply for permanent residency appear to have Illinois in their corner. More than 70% of voters say illegal immigrants working in the U.S. should be given a chance to apply for legal status.

196 respondents for the gay marriage question and just 188 respondents for the immigration question.

* This question had 377 respondents, so it’s probably worth a look…

* Let’s compare those results to 2008…

Definite slippage among Catholics, so the bishops should be somewhat happy. But Obama also slipped among white voters overall this year, so that may explain at least part of the Catholic result.

Discuss.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 9:38 am

Comments

Might want to fix the typo in the header…

Comment by Anonymous Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 9:48 am
I did, thanks. Although considering the results, “fin” has a certain panache to it. lol

Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 9:50 am
I’m struck by the results of how the gay rights issues played out. The respondents in the Illinois exit poll may not be large enough to be statistically significant but perhaps the stronger data point is the performance of the issue nationwide where Maine, Maryland and Washington state voted to legalize gay marriage while Minnesota defeated an amendment to outlaw it. It’s remarkable to me that in 2004 a key feature of the Rove playbook to re-elect the President was to have marriage amendments on the ballot to drive turnout among evangelicals. This year with the marriage amendment on the ballot an apparently very out of touch George Will referenced this particular ballot initiative while predicting Minnesota would go for Romney (Obama won by because of evangelical turnout. In just 8 years gay marriage has become a mobilizing force in exactly the opposite direction, this is unbelievably interesting to me and maybe more surprising than seeing the Senate Dems take 40 seats.

The must watch video spawned from all this comes courtesy of the campaign manager/executive director of Minnesota United for All Families. If you’ve ever worked on a campaign, Democrat or Republican, winning or losing you know this speech. It’s the one that happens at the end of election night and in this case it’s just shy of 2 in the morning and he’s telling his troops that they don’t expect to know the results until the next day. It has the very relatable “we’re having a conference call early tomorrow” moment followed by the completely exhausted staff groan that you know well. Then at about the 3 minute mark the communications director tells him that the AP just called the race and the whole place goes bananas. Fun to watch.

Comment by The Captain Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 10:12 am
Considering the Bishops told their parisoners that they would go to hell if they voted for “certain” candidates it doesn’t surprise me that Obama lost some of the Catholic vote.

Comment by Demoralized Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 10:22 am
That should be “parishiners.”

Comment by Demoralized Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 10:24 am
@Demoralized: no it should be “parishoners.”

Comment by Brendan Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 10:51 am
*parishioner* Shoot, now that doesn’t look right, either, lol.

Comment by yinn Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 11:14 am
For Catholics who regularly attend church, Romney won by 20 points.

Comment by Anon Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 11:24 am
Anon,

Which might indicate to the good Bishops what they might want to work on (getting the BiTP quotient up).

Comment by cermak_rd Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 11:46 am
I’ve been saying this for years and I’ll say again now: THERE IS NO CATHOLIC VOTE. Look at national exit polling for the last several presidential elections. The Catholic vote almost exactly mirrors the overall national vote (Obama won among Catholics 50-48 this year.)

It’s not 1950 anymore. Catholics are not a group of blue-collar, nothern industrial city-dwellers. They are an ethnically, economically, and regionally diverse population.

And yes, Catholics who attend church regularly vote more conservatively — just like protestants who are regular church goers.

Comment by Tony Friday, Nov 9, 12 @ 12:16 pm