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.
Despite such challenges as a growing wireless-only population, possible racially-related response bias and greater-than-usual difficulties in forecasting turnout, polllsters’ methods were evidently adequate to the task.
Several factors deserve exploration, but one should not ignore the possibility of the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.
For Democratic candidates, the decisive factors in Iowa and New Hampshire are personal and tactical; for GOP contestants, however, the ultimate outcome may be decided by the relative strength of newly combative ideological elements.
Tuesday night’s Democratic debate was widely anticipated for its groundbreaking format. Candidates took on a host of issues asked by citizens via YouTube videos; what follows is an analysis of the format and major themes of the debate as compared with public opinion data.
The strong showing of Democrat Barack Obama in early trial heat polls for the 2008 presidential election raises anew the question of whether the American public is ready to support an African American candidate for president. Recent polling points to two significant shifts on this question.