Only 5 presidential battlegrounds with partisan voter registration have released early/absentee voting figures by party identification. On average in those 5 states, Democrats maintain a combined edge, although individually the party has an edge in only 4 of 5 states. As of November 1, 2012, 43.6% of the early votes have been cast by Democrats, 36.8% by Republicans, and 19.6% by Independents. Since early voting field operations tend to target partisans and not Independent voters, it is expected that the number of Independents voting early will be considerably less than Democrats and Republicans.
Unfortunately, Ohio does not keep voter registration data by party identification. However, they do report early and absentee voting by county. The most vote-rich county for Obama in 2008 was Cuyahoga—where he garnered 458,422 of his 2,940,044 votes. As of Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 27,865 people had already voted in Cuyahoga County. By comparison, by this time in 2008, 30,850 people had voted, a very slight decrease of 2,985.
Read more in our newest analysis of the numbers: Rage Against the Machine: Independent Registration Soars Since 2008.
The number of registered Independents in the 8 presidential battleground states has increased by nearly 1 million since 2008. During the same time period, Democratic registration has fallen slightly and Republican registration has inched up. In total, since 2008 in these 8 states:
- Independent registration has increased 969,589, or 14.4%, and now stands at 7,697,565;
- Republican registration has increased by 158,037, or 1.3%, and now stands at 12,047,112; and,
- Democratic registration has decreased by 372,827, or 2.5%, and now stands at 14,723,535.
Democratic registration was down over 800,000 in our August voter registration report. Since then, Democrats have added 427,502 to the voter rolls just in these 8 states.
In 6 states—Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania—Independent registration has grown faster than either Democratic or Republican registration. In Iowa, Republicans gained while Democrats and, to a lesser extent, Independents fell. In New Hampshire, voter registration fell across the board, but Republicans shed the fewest voters.
And in 5 states—Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina—Independent registration increased by double digits, the largest a gain of 25.2% in Colorado and the smallest 19.5% in Nevada.
Read more in our newest analysis of the numbers: Rage Against the Machine: Independent Registration Soars Since 2008.
Men Matter: In 8 of the last 9 Presidential elections, the winner also won the male vote.
President Carter won men by 4 points in 1976, Pres. Reagan by 17 in 1980 and 24 in 1984, Pres. H.W. Bush by 16 in 1988, Pres. Clinton by 3 in 1992, Pres. W. Bush by 11 in both 2000 and 2004 and Pres. Obama by 1. The only outlier is President Clinton in 1996, who lost men by 1. The gender gap matters, but so do men.
Moderate Majority: Democrats Win Most Of Their Presidential Votes From The Middle
In every single Presidential election in the modern era, moderates have made up a majority of those voting for the Democratic candidate. The same is not true of Republicans; in fact, since 1984, conservatives have consistently been the largest source of their votes. Win or lose, moderates make up the base of Democratic Presidential coalitions.
View more graphics like this in our Politics of the Center 2012 Graphic Series.
Who Will Be Present at the Polls?
Anti-Obama voters are angry. They will turn out. Obama supporters are disappointed. Getting them to turn out will not be so easy.
Read more in the July 2012 Inside Politics Newsletter.
Who Are the Obama Independents?
This infographic illustrates who, exactly, are the “Obama Independents” that are so critical to the President’s re-election effort. You can read more about these important voters in our report, “2012 Showdown: Battle for the Obama Independents.”
The Daily Beast determined President’s earnings ranked from how much each candidate earned per dollar the average American taxpayer earned in the same year. Mitt Romney’s wealth is off the charts at over 400 times what the average American made in 2010, the most recent year for which the figure is available.
Read more in the July 2012 Inside Politics Newsletter.
There are two theories on how the outcome of an election is determined. One says it is decided by how smart a campaign is run; the other says it is determined by larger, external forces.
Right now, the two factors are pulling in opposite directions. Obama’s running the smarter campaign. But the forces are aligned with Romney. So where are we? A draw.
Read more in the July 2012 Inside Politics Newsletter.
By Bill Schneider
Are Jewish voters sticking with President Obama? The answer appears to be yes, according to a poll of Jewish voters taken in February and March by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). 62% of Jewish voters said they would like to see Obama re-elected. That’s down a bit from the 78% who voted for Obama in 2008. But it’s still a solid majority, and it’s in line with a Gallup poll taken in April 2008 that showed 61% of Jews for Obama at the same stage of the campaign. Republicans have not been able to get more than 40% of the Jewish vote since 1920 (see chart below).
The high point of Republican Jewish support? Surprisingly, that was in 1956, when President Eisenhower got 40% of the Jewish vote. The 1956 election happened one month after the U.S. opposed Israel during the Suez crisis and pressured Israel to withdraw from Egypt. In the 1950s, American Jews did not have nearly as strong a commitment to Israel as they did after the 1967 war.
Even today, very few Jews say Israel is the most important issue in their vote for President (just 4% in the PRRI poll). The economy, inequality and health care are far more important.
Jewish interests would predict much higher Republican support. Not just Israel but also economics—American Jews are relatively high-income earners. But Jews have always voted their values more than their interests. (So do a lot of evangelical Christians and gun owners.) And Jewish values remain quite liberal. In the PRRI poll, 44% of Jews described their views as liberal and only 18% as conservative. Some years ago, a Jewish commentator observed, “Jews have the wealth and status of Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” That is still true.
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This article was published in the April 2012 issue of the Inside Politics Newsletter. Images are available via Flickr and are free for re-use, with attribution/link.
In every presidential election since 1980, women have been predominant in the Democratic coalition. But during that span, the Democrats have only won 3 of 8 contests and three times they failed to win a majority of voters (1980,1984, and 1988.) This infographic from the April 2012 Inside Politics Newsletter illustrates this trend.
Free for re-use with attribution. Various sizes of this graphic are available via Flickr.
By Alex Roarty
Former President George W. Bush might be out of sight this campaign season, but he is certainly not out of mind, for either Mitt Romney or President Obama.
The nation’s 43rd president was a non-factor during the Republican presidential primary and he has been almost completely absent from the public eye since leaving office. But he still figured prominently in the last two elections: His deep unpopularity at the end of his second term laid a path for Obama to win the presidency in 2008. Two years later, Democrats tried in vain to link the GOP to Bush’s policies and instead suffered an historic landslide loss in the midterm elections.
That leaves Obama’s campaign strategists with a difficult decision: Do they invoke the former president this time around, arguing that Republicans want to return to policies that they say failed to work for eight years? Or, would the move make the president look as though he is more eager to assign blame than to propose solutions?
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