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Raw Data
RAW DATA....Via Steve Benen, Steve Waldman says that Obama has shrunk the God gap:
Obama got 43% of weekly church-goers vs. 55% for McCain. In 2004, Bush got 61% vs. 39% for Kerry. What this means is that Bush beat Kerry by roughly 27 million among weekly churchgoers, and McCain beat Obama by only 15 million — a stunning 12 million person shift.
Hold on a second. I made a pain in the ass of myself over this subject in 2004, and I'm going to do the same thing this year.
First things first. In 2004, Kerry lost to Bush nationwide by 2.4 percentage points. In 2008, Obama beat McCain by 6.3 percentage points. That's a swing of about 9 points nationwide, which means that any group that also swung by 9 points in Obama's favor was doing nothing except following the national trend.
So how about those churchgoers? They went from -22 for Kerry to -12 for Obama. That's a swing of ten points, almost identical to the nationwide swing in Obama's favor. Weekly churchgoers just didn't do anything unusual, which means there's no reason to think that Obama did anything special to appeal to them. More than likely, they voted for him in larger numbers this year for the same reason as everyone else: they were tired of Bush, tired of Republicans, and trusted Obama more in tough economic times. There's really no justification for a special narrative to explain those 12 million extra voters.
But as long as we're on the subject, which groups did Obama do especially well with? That is, which groups did he swing by margins substantially more than 9 points? Based on the 2004 and 2008 exit polls, here are the groups that swung in disproportionate numbers this year:
Income $200,000 or more (+34)
First-time voters (+33)
No high school (+27)
Latinos (+27)
18-29 year olds (+25)
Under $15,000 (+21)
Full-time workers (+19)
Urban (+19)
Non-gun owners (+18)
Non-religious (+16)
Parents with children under 18 (+16)
The swing in first-time voters (which overlaps heavily with 18-29 year olds) and Latinos was especially stunning. Also worth noting, just because they're such obvious swing groups, are Obama's large gains among moderates (+12) and the unmarried (+14).
And which groups did Obama do substantially worse with than his overall national trend? Here they are:
Gay/lesbian (-11)
Last minute voters (-8)
Union members (0)
"Other" religions (0)
Gun owners (+2)
White women (+4)
45-59 year olds (+4)
Gays and last-minute deciders are the only groups where Obama performed worse than Kerry. The other five are groups where he did better than Kerry, but not by as much as he did with the country as a whole.
I don't have any special narratives or analysis to offer for any of this. Maybe later. For now, it's just raw data for your noodling pleasure.
Good post. Thanks.
As a gay man, I've been an Obama supporter for most of the election -- but I started, way back in '07, with Hillary. And most of my gay friends never left her. One of them even planned to write her name in for the general until New York's voting machines confounded him. Obama has not exactly thrown the gay community a bone, and they've noticed. I do feel very much like I had to put my own well-being aside for the good of the country in voting for Obama, and the country, it seemed, took the opportunity to continue passing laws to demonize me. Thanks, America.
Apparently, the "making over $200,000" crowd never got the memo saying that Obama wanted to take away all their money and give it to welfare kings and queens.
Interesting, the over $200k support for Obama. Maybe they realize that good overall economic husbandry is more important and better for their long-term interests than is getting lower tax rates at the expense of the deficit and our standing in the World.
Chris, here's hoping for better times in the future.
Who the devil did gay folks vote for? Not McCain? Where'd those votes end up?
Great post, Kevin, & also fits well with one Ezra Klein posted today. Ezra showed a bunch of crunched numbers that showed that there was across the board support for his candidacy & that no one (or small numbers of) demographic put him over the top. I hadn't really thought about it that way, but I guess that is the best reason I supported him, as opposed to voting against the opposition like I had done in every other Presidential election.
It still seems hard to believe the election is finally over, & we all WON!
I think it's that the over $200,000 are also generally well-educated, so they're part of a group that was going to go heavily for Obama, and which also went so heavily for Kerry that they don't show up on this chart because there wasn't enough of a percentage to swing.
> Income $200,000 or more (+34)
Right. A significant majority of the over-200k segment went for Obama.
Only last week, one Kevin Drum didst assure the world that the rich support Republicans.
Wow. His main theme was to help the middle class, yet, on income parameters, primarily the very rich and very poor supported him.
Just to be clear -- Waldman doesn't appear to be talking about the number of religious voters, but rather the number of religious Americans, whose minds shifted. Which is weird, since exit polls only measure voters.
At any rate, Bush's margin among religious voters was about 11 million, and McCain's was about 6.2 million (assuming 130 million final turnout). Religious voters made up 41% and 40% of the 2004 and 2008 electorate, respectively.
Well, +34 for the > $200k. They must have been voting Republicans pretty hard last time for such a swing to be even feasible. Lemme guess, it went 90-10 for Bush to 73-27 for McCain?
OTOH, how can you infer anything from "first time voters." The pool of voters has no intersection. Obama did not swing anyone in his favor, it's a whole new set of voters!
How did you get to -11 for gays and lesbians? The exit poll links show the Kerry/Bus/Nader split to be 77/23/0, and the Obama/McCain/Other split to be 70/27/3. That's a seven-point drop, not eleven.
Nat:
It's not just the Obama support, it's the difference with McCain. Obama had a seven point drop, and McCain had a four point gain leading to a seven point change.
I mean an eleven point change.
Ahm, you left out a very large group of voters where Obama did worse than Kerry: those 65+ years old. Seniors voted 2% less for Obama than Kerry, which is a lot with Obama picking up more of almost everybody else. And there are a lot of senior voters. I don't see the cross tabs, but the shift towards McCain was larger for white seniors, especially non-college white seniors.
You guys can ignore the gay and lesbian exit poll numbers here: the sample error for a group that is 1% of the population is much larger than 8% of that groups vote. There is no statistical value to putting these numbers out -- this is just crazy polling malpractice. 8% of 1% of the sample is less than 1/10,000, so a 8% shift in the gay and lesbian vote is one person in a sample of 10,000.
the gays hate taxes
it's the whole taxation with out representation thing
Stefan: 8% of 1% is 8 in 10,000.
According to the exit polls, 4% of voters in each election claimed to be gay/lesbian/bisexual. 8% of 4% is 32 in 10,000.
There were 17,000+ respondents in 2008 and 13,000+ respondents in 2004, which comes out to about 680 glb in 2008 and 520 in 2004. If these numbers are right, then a drop from 77% to 70% in the Dem number is significant to 99.6%. (See this page for a calculation).
What do you suppose they're going to do with barackobama.com? It would be a shame to mothball it after so many people kind of dug in there - do you suppose a President can keep a personal domain running for, like, non-'business' stuff? Like say, he wanted to highlight a nonpartisan thing like, for instance, Habitat for Humanity needs two hundred volunteers in Georgia or something like that?
Do you suppose the National Archivist is ready to deal with a President's Facebook page?
It's pretty clear what will happen to barackobama.com, at least if I listen to some of the more delusional supporters.
barackobama.com is where we will be able to interact with the new administration. Discuss what their policies should be. Report on smears in the press. Get the daily talking points.
'Cause "we" won!
Similarly, on NPR today, I found out that the new cabinet will use twitter a lot and other social networking tools.
Yeah, I find the gay #'s confounding. Still personal polling on my part did show that there were some older gay males who seemed to like McCain.
As a gay male, I liken a gay vote for a Repub to an Black vote for David Duke. Maybe some of the voters lost to Obama were lesbians whose womanhood was offended by the "treatment of Hillary". A concept I find equally puzzling.
In other news, the AZ Republic reports that:
http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2008/11/07/20081107biz-honeyw...
Phoenix-based Honeywell Aerospace plans to move 700 manufacturing jobs from Phoenix to Mexico and the Czech Republic. ... The announcement came two days after Barack Obama, who has promised to take a hard line with companies that move manufacturing jobs overseas, was elected the 44th U.S. president.
Will any self-claimed self-congratulatory liberal bloggers write about this?
Kevin, your pointing out long ago that Obama's 5% lead was farily steady all along is fascinating to me. Did you know that you'd end up so close at the end too or were you just pointing out the trend?
"Who the devil did gay folks vote for? Not McCain? Where'd those votes end up?"
Finding Obama and his camp too willing to throw us under the bus and too nasty to us Hillary supporters, I was intending to leave the presidential part of my ballot blank. Especially after the FISA broken promise. Since I live in a deep red state and my vote was merely symbolic, I refuse to vote for someone who has never done a damn thing to earn it, whether on gay rights issues or nongay issues.
Subsequently I changed my mind and decided to vote for him relishing the prospect of the Republican crash and burn. But then a couple days later homophobe Colin "DADT" Powell gave his endorsement and probably got a promise of a prominent post in O's administration (an entirely undeserved rehabilitation). And then I went back to not voting for the president.
Boy Kevin, if you have kids (?), I feel sorry for them. If they come home with grades of A, B, and C after failing the same three classes the previous semester, do you fault them for the 'B" ? They're all increases worthy of remark.
And "jerry on," you realize Obama is not President yet?
Jeez Luke, you're a softy for a guy who rules hell.
Employees were notified Thursday of the cuts, which will begin in the second quarter of 2009 and continue for three years. Most of the job cuts are expected in the first year.
He may not be President today, but he'll be President when the cuts are made and the jobs are moved.
Now would be a very good time for him to call up the CEO of Honeywell and express to him his displeasure and remind him of the value of all the contracts Honeywell is getting from the US Government and its taxpayers.
Hey Luke, do you ever say "Jeez" or "Jesus?", maybe I should've just said "Damn."
How do you consider First Time Voters a swing group? Isn't by definition that a self-limiting group? A gay voter will be a gay voter no matter what election year, but all the First Time Voters in 2004 aren't anymore.
Now, I'm not expert, but maybe a lot of Gays and Lesbians saw the clip of Obama from that Right-wing Religious nut's program that was advertised all over California this week-end. You know, the one where Obama says he's against same-sex marriage. Could have annoyed a few people. Could have. It certainly annoyed me, but I voted two weeks ago and couldn't change my vote.
The Honeywell/Arizona post was very interesting.
How about a little change in the law, kinda of like this.
If a company, especially one with extensive military contracts, decides to outsource a certain percentage of its work force, let's tax the living s#@t out of them and cancel their contracts.
Any other ideas?
"Income $200,000 or more (+34)" -
Funny how those actually making the big bucks seem more willing to be taxed a little higher while the wannabees like Joe the Plumber, who will almost certainly never make that kind of money, are wasting their time worrying about paying a few thousand dollars more a year in taxes "when" they get to be millionaires.
"Only last week, one Kevin Drum didst assure the world that the rich support Republicans."
This is another example of the difficulty of determining whether right-wingers are dishonest, or just plain stupid. The rich do, historically, support Republicans. Thus, in 2004, 63% of them (making over $200,000) voted for George W. Bush. This has always been roughly correct.
George Bush has been such a terrible president, however, that, for maybe the first time, this group voted for a Democrat, and it took an incredible 34% swing in the group to do it. I guess they realized that Republican incompetence was a greater threat to their wealth than progressive taxation.
I can outwonk you here. That model works fine for groups that started out reasonably evenly split, but it breaks apart for any group that was already skewed.
If (I'm making the numbers up) union members went +92% for Kerry, then there's no possible way Obama could do 9% better than that, and under your model this would look like union members swung toward McCain, even if Obama pulled in (say) +95%.
The right way is to compare ratios - divide, not subtract. The ratio of Obama voters to McCain voters is the relevant thing, and the difference in ratio is the important value. Or so I assert. Obama:McCain is 1.134, while Kerry:Bush was .953. The difference in ratios is .181. (I'm neglecting the third-party vote here, which makes my numbers slightly off, but this is a comment on a blog post, not a white paper.) Compare the ratio differential the same way for each of those categories and I think you'd get a more accurate sense.
It still won't explain the gay/lesbian vote, though. Maybe Palin had a Judy Garland effect or something.
This "shift share" type analysis is not fully convincing.
Firstly, at the extreme, where a party already had 100% of the vote, it will not show up as a disproportionate swing, likewise where the party previously had a zero share, it understates the importance of the swing (essentially we have a denominator problem)
Secondly, it presupposes an average voter who doesn't exist. Any gain among the religous is a sign that his message caught on among the religous. The idea behind saying that he appealed to the religous can only be read in that context.
That it especially caught on among hispanics is also interesting, but a sign that his message appealed to that group.
The most important point is that appealing to hispanics, and blacks did not cost votes among whites and the religous.
This is the why you slice and dice the electorate.
And I'm going to make a pain in the ass of MYself and point out that we ought to be awesomely hesitant with narratives or analysis.
As anyone whose ever thought about these things for more than 15 minutes knows (about 2 percentile of the country that is) seemingly significant statistical data is often completely meaningless which is why it takes true experiments (with if/then aforethoughts in place) to really have a good estimation as to whether data is meaningful or not.
To give an example, if a hundred schools have been holding mock elections for 25 years, the odds are that one of them will have correctly predicted the election every time. even if the mock election was done by coin toss. Similarly here, out of the large number of "demographics" out there, it's practically statistically REQUIRED that a few of them don't land on heads PRECISELY 50/100 times.
So while I'm as entertained by narratives as the next guy, I'm more exited by intellectual caution.
mnuez
As we've already seen, the divide between Obama's African-American base (which is often highly religious, socially conservative, and - yes - rather homophobic) and the GLBT rights community (which is mostly white-dominated, and understandably running out of patience) is a not-insubstatial one.
Dems had better figure out a way to deal with this eventually, or it could come back to bite them in the future as the GOP, looking to cobble together a new winning coalition, finally kiss of a racist vote that has no political future and start using the culture-war stuff to appeal to black churchgoers in a big way.
Here is Karl Rove writing in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, online.wsj.com: "for the third election in a row the exit polls were trash. The raw numbers forecast an 18-point Obama win, news organizations who underwrote the poll arbitrarily dialed it down to a 10-point Obama edge, and the actual margin was six."
The news organizations dialed it down because it was bloody obvious that McCain supporters were being systematically underselected in the exit poll.
Assuming that Karl Rove is correct with that 18% number, you should read ALL the exit poll data quoted above by Kevin Drum with a lot of reserve, doubt, and circumspection.
I haven't been able to find this year's raw exit poll data myself, nor anybody on the Net talking about the quality of it. But it's certainly true that the exit poll in 2004 was a mess, a piece of trash. Hence, even in the unlikely event that Karl Rove has been misinformed about how bad this year's poll is, Kevin Drum is still doing a very hazardous and unreliable exercise because he invokes 2004 exit poll data.
Also, we've got no reason to believe the way the 2008 exit poll is trash is the same as the way the 2004 exit poll is trash.
Oh, please. After all the hysteria about religious voters being the irreducible bedrock of the Republican Party, you're dismissing the fact that they swung a bit in Obama's direction? All one has to have done is hang around this site to be convinced that religious voters were [so to speak] irredemably lost to the Dems. Now it turns out not to be so--that religious voters turn out to actually be responsive to persuasion--and you pretend it's no big deal. In fact, though, it utterly disproves the standard left hypothesis about them, which is that they should *not have moved at all.* That's the news here--and I'm frankly amazed that you're so blind to it.
Finding Obama and his camp too willing to throw us under the bus and too nasty to us Hillary supporters, I was intending to leave the presidential part of my ballot blank.
Of the 8 lesbians I know, 5 of them felt identically to this. Strangely enough, although most of my gay acquaintences originally aupported Clinton, they all migrated over to the Obama camp.
Methinks it is a gender issue. At the risk of oversimplifying (and being offensive), lesbians were extreme one issue (gender) voters in the primary, and when their preferred candidate lost, they were simply unwilling to move their support to the winning candidate.
Horsefeathers. I'm an out lesbian, and I always supported Obama, never Clinton. Claiming that lesbians are gender-extreme voters is no more rational than saying the same thing about women in general.
However, the fact that Obama was against gay marriage, a fact that was exploited merrily by the Yes-on-8 campaign, rather takes the gilt off the flower. On Election day, we were getting Yes-on-8 robocalls with Obama's own words to that effect.
Somehow "opposed to gay marriage but Opposed to Prop8" didnt have the same ring, and out here in CA, a lot of the GLBT community feel pretty let down.
Claiming that lesbians are gender-extreme voters is no more rational than saying the same thing about women in general.
I understand where you are coming from (and I'm painfully aware that this is awfully close to "you're a lesbian, what's your favorite Indigo Girls album?!?"), but I think you are oversimplifying nearly as much as I am. My experience has been that lesbians generally have a heightened consciousness with respect to gender issues, and this makes "them" (in general, as a group, with many exceptions) prone to voting on those issues. Now, it's almost certainly true that they are no more extreme one issue voters than straight women with similar gender consciousness, but (again in my experience) the percentage of straight women with such views is significantly smaller than the percentage of similarly-situated lesbians.
I could be completely wrong here, though. I might just have an odd set of friends.
I and all my queer friends (which is, um, most of them) supported Obama. Yes, we were disappointed that he's not with us on marriage equality, but given that he agrees with us on everything else... Why wouldn't we vote for the most promising progressive politician of our lifetimes?
Everyone should remember
that God is in Charge and I
am a white senior citizen and
yes I voted for Obama.
Bobbie from NC.
David in Nashville has it right. Kevin, your headline suggests you are going to discuss the shift in the 'religious right'. This group, guided by Karl Rove's massive organization in 2000 and 2004, rallied around the single issue of pro-life and voted in lockstep for Bush. This still large segment of the population has fractured in the past 4 years over a variety of issues (such as the environment), and these new interests, plus a disgust with Bush and the economy, made many in the so-called 'religious right' eagerly turn to Obama. Since they gave us the disastrous Bush presidency, the social conservatives deserve our scrutiny. PLEASE FIND THE STORY HERE.
"Who the devil did gay folks vote for? Not McCain? Where'd those votes end up?"
In some cases, with the McKinney/Clemente ticket (Greens). I voted for Obama, but I know other GLBT folks in safely blue states who couldn't pass up the opportunity to vote for two women of color with a better GLBT rights platform.
Thank God, you are one of the smart ones in this country that put their selfish lives aside and put country first to support Obama. Like McCain's slogan "Country First" (which did means another war) Obama's supporters will definitely be blessed because, we did not behave like in those days when Moses was suppose to deliver the Isralites from the wicked Egyptians , but was rather accused falsely by the same people he was to rescue. Great Job. Keep the Hope for a forward America going. It is going to be a better place.
Well, as a gay voter I can say that my partner and I live in Free Europe (Spain) where we have total & equal human & civil rights, thanks to our great Socialist president Zapatero and his government. But we still vote in our Seattle district and we voted for Nader/Gonzalez because they stood for full equality for gays & lesbians - where Obama/Biden were just willing to let us sit in the back of the bus, which is a lot better than McCain/Palin who didn't even want us on the bus.
That said, if the polls had been close in Washington State we would have voted for Obama whose overall platform is much better than the 4 more years of the alternative. But we agree almost 100% with Nader's platform for a real progressive, just world and ending US militaristic aggression all over the world and a single payer healthcare system like in every European country (what a blessing!). Obama wants to increase the military and we are very uneasy with that. Is he really for change? And how much? Nader has a proven record of fighting for justice and a better world.
We are cautiously hopeful for an end to the awful Conservative failed policies on the economy, society, foreign domination and the environment.
PS: I would like to add, as a person who used to be religious and who still believes in the teachings of Jesus, that I always vote for those whose goals most closely conform to those teachings - feed the poor, clothe the naked, love your enemy & your neighbor as yourself, be peacemakers, don't be judgemental, turn the other cheek, be tolerant, forgive 7 times 70 and let he/she who is without sin cast the first stone - and Jesus very loudly and clearly condemned the rich. These are real Christian values not the faux "Christian" values of the religious right or the Republican Party whose stated goals & actions are directly opposite to the teachings of the one they claim to follow. "They shall no you by your fruits (what you do)" & "They shall know you are my disciples by your love". Just look at the Old Testament "Christians" like GW Bush, Palin, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Focus on the Family, James Dobson ad nauseaum and it is clear they do not follow Jesus' teachings like an Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu who is a living testament to true Christian values & a compaigner for human rights, including gay & lesbian equality.
If these rightwingers were true Christians they wouldn't be always trying to put the Old Testament Ten Commandments on the wall of every public bldg, but The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. But I don't believe Jesus would be even for that since he acknowleged the separation between God & the State.
This queer voted for McKinney/Clemente.
The Gay 'Community' is one confused, divided community, that's why they lost the amendments they did not organize to promote (not here in FL, I saw nothing... I voted against because, first I dont care, second the more rights to anyone the better, and third its good for the economy), hence you lose, you are not united.
Divided, closeted, republican, don't complain if you keep losing.
Stefan and Alex, I'll leave the number sliding to you guys; but I want to point out that the percentage of gays to general population is much higher than 1%, or 4%.
Fairly reliable surveys put the number between 8 and 10 percent, roughly double Alex's number.
Also, this is one of those areas in which those surveyed outside of polling places may very well under-report their orientation. I certainly would do so if I were gay, living in a smallish community, and didn't want everyone in the world to know -- polling pollsters do have their own actual personal identities, and presumably have friends to gossip with.
I realize this is a closet attitude; but there are lots of gays still in the dark about their gayness -- in whatever sense of the word dark.
Hell, where I live, I have to be a closet-liberal, to most people. That's one reason AK is "such" a Republican state: liberals are targets, here.