Scott Keeter, director of survey research, explains why pollsters switch from registered voters to likely voters in their samples as Election Day nears, and how the Pew Research Center determines who is likely to vote.
Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, answers questions about the 2012 presidential campaign so far and some of the trends that will shape this year’s congressional elections.
Following voting trends, white Protestants voted overwhelmingly Republican and religiously unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly supported Democrats. But Catholic voters swung to the GOP, and Republicans made gains in all three groups.
Republicans continue to hold a solid lead in preferences for Tuesday’s midterm elections among likely voters — enough so as to suggest they will win control of the House. The GOP owes its lead to strong backing from independents and record-levels of engagement among its partisans.
An older and much more conservative electorate than in 2006 and 2008 propelled the Republican Party to a broad victory in the 2010 midterm elections. But the vote was more repudiation than endorsement. Views of the Republican Party are no more positive than those of the Democratic Party.
There will almost certainly be far more nonvoters than voters this year. Nonvoters are younger, less educated and more financially stressed than likely voters. They are also significantly less Republican and more likely to approve of Obama’s job performance.
The midterms were a quarter of the newshole last week, and have been the third most covered story of the year, behind only the economy and the Gulf oil spill.