Pew's Interesting Findings

Jeff Alworth

Let's say you're a 29-year-old, college-educated man (not hard for many of you to imagine).  Who do you support in the election?  If you're an average member of your cohort, you're an Obama man.  On the other hand, if you're the average middle-aged, high-school educated woman (black or white), you're probably tilting Hillary.  So reveal the findings of the latest Pew poll, which is richer in detail than other polling you may have seen and worth a look.

Democratic Factions
There's one especially fascinating finding about "liberalness," but let's leave that slice of peach pie for later and turn instead to the meat and potatoes--the Democratic field and their early supporters.  According to this poll (1,188 Democratic-leaning registered voters), Hillary is out in front with 34%, followed by Obama (24%), Edwards (18%) and Gore (14%).*  As to the breakdown of support, Pew summarizes:

Obama runs about even with, or leads, Clinton among several segments of the partisan base, including liberals, men, younger voters, and the highly educated. Obama also has strong regional support from Democrats in the Midwest, and is tied with Clinton in the West. Clinton's largest advantages come among conservatives, older voters, and those in the lowest income and education categories.

John Edwards runs six points behind Obama among all Democratic voters, but draws far closer among certain key constituencies. In particular, Democrats age 65 and over are slightly more likely to say they back Edwards than Obama at this stage in the race. And Edwards runs nearly even with Obama among white Democrats.

Looking through the numbers, I see a couple of potentially volatile constituencies.  Clinton leads Obama by ten points overall, but has substantially greater support among a number of key constituencies.  She leads by a whopping 27% among self-described conservatives, a number that is probably reliably stable.  In addition, older women (over fifty years old) support her by a 20-point margin and older voters (over 65) by 23%.  And Northeasterners favor her by 14%.  All of these are advantages she can be expected to maintain. 

However, other early advantages seem more vulnerable.  Respondents with a high school degree or less favored Clinton by 25%, and voters earning under $30,000 by 26%.  She is also favored in the South by 21% of voters.  Among other contenders, Edwards seems poised to make some inroads in these areas. Obama may also be eying Southern voters--as the election goes on, Hillary's lead among blacks, now 10% over Obama, is especially vulnerable.  Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, Hillary leads among all religious Christians--by 14% among white Evangelicals and 12% among black Evangelicals, by 7% among white mainline Christians, and by 16% among Catholics.  These are surprising advantages for a candidate little associated with religiosity.  As Obama and Edwards become more well-known, it seems reasonable to expect Clinton's lead to fall in line with her overall support.

Finally, Pew also asked voters to characterize candidates' images ("strongest leader," "most inspiring," etc.), which I find unpersuasive this early in the campaign.  However, one finding did seem like good news for Clinton.  When asked which candidate was most likely to make the changes the country needed, 37% (the largest by a 15-point margin) named her.  As an establishment candidate regularly excoriated in the blogosphere for timidity, this is a good sign.

Voter Views of Ideology
Okay, now for the pie.  Pew asked voters to rate the candidates on ideology, from conservative to liberal, on a six-point scale.  The results are a wonderful testament to the success of Fox News and the vast right-wing conspiracy.  George Bush, rated most conservative by respondents, averaged a 2.5 (.5 points to the right of center).  Hillary Clinton, the most liberal, was rated a 4.4--1.4 points to the left of center.  So according to Americans, Hillary is roughly three times further out on the liberal limb as Bush is out on the conservative side.  [Correction: midway point on a 1-6 scale is 3.5, so the difference between Bush and Hillary is not worth mentioning--.9 to 1.  Thanks to John Calhoun.]  The culprit?  Rabid conservatives:

But Republican voters, on average, rate Clinton as 5.0, compared with Democratic voters who score Clinton as a 4.2. Fully 58% of Republican voters give Sen. Clinton the most liberal score possible - a six on the six-point scale - compared with just 22% of Democratic voters.

Republican voters view all four leading Democratic presidential candidates - as well as other leading Democrats, such as Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi - as far more liberal than do Democratic or independent voters. By contrast, Republicans, Democrats and independents give virtually identical ideological ratings to all of the Republicans tested, including George W. Bush.

This doesn't have a lot to say about what will happen in November, but I don't recall a finding that more clearly highlights the nature of "polarization" in American politics than this. There doesn't appear to be any; most voters have a well-adjusted sense of political reality, and then there are conservatives, who see bogeymen in every name followed by a "D."

Among Democratic voters, the swing among candidates is modest, from a rating of 3.9 for Edwards to 4.2 for Hillary. (Strangely, they asked about Bill Clinton, too, the only inactive politician.  He was rated as the most liberal politician in the poll.**)  On average, Democrats rated themselves as a 4.0.

Early results, and far from diffinitive.  But for poll geeks like me, mighty interesting.

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*Sharp-eyed readers will note that Gore isn't actually in the race while a number of other Dems who are--Richardson, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich, and Gravel--weren't included in the poll.  The numbers are therefore skewed, as supporters of the unmentioned candidates had to respond with their preferences of secondary candidates.

**It would have been a good idea on this question to add a few famous historical politicians--Lincoln, Reagan, FDR--as a way of grounding the responses.  It's clear that Republicans answered not in terms of liberalism/conservatism, but partisanism.  I suspect that conflation was prevalent to a greater or lesser extent among all respondent groups.

By Jeff Alworth April 27, 2007