Talk Elections

New Poll: North Carolina President by Survey USA on 2008-04-21 (https://uselectionatlas.org/POLLS/PRESIDENT/2008D/polls.php?action=indpoll&id=3720080421019)

Summary:

Obama:	50%
Clinton:	41%
Other:	4%
Undecided:	5%

Poll Source URL: Full Poll Details (http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=7e1ed059-9ef0-4a2c-a2a6-3cbef8ca9803)

I like how 15% of those who have already voted are "undecided" ... :P

Results for early voters (6% of the sample):

Obama: 47%
Clinton: 35%
Undecided: 15%
Other: 2%

Undecideds are Hillary voters who are too afraid to sound racist when asked. So 50-47 Clinton on early votes.

Haha, that's some of the most ridiculous poll analysis I've ever heard.

I was joking, but there's an underlying truth to that. Why else would Obama constantly overpoll in exit polls?

Um... he doesn't?

Were you joking? Seriously.

I thought we already established Obama overpolling in exit polls. People are simply more eager to tell someone they voted for Obama rather than Clinton.

Maybe the exit poll company is a joke. Most of the other polls have been right, with the exception of PPP. They should better stay out of PA in the future ... ;)

People who voted forgot who they voted for? I'm lost.

The early exit polls, yeah, but those are useless and unweighted. The adjusted exit polls aren't significantly off.

I'm not really sure, either. 15% undecided on who already voted?

In all fairness, they adjust it to whatever result they're seeing.

But that Obama overpolls in exit polls has nothing to with his performance in normal polls, which in the South tends to be under-performance.

Pollsters haven't been very good with handling southern blacks this year, and SUSA hasn't been one of the holier pollsters about that.

Is there really any other way to do it though? The nature of exit polling makes it kind of difficult to weigh the different polling sites you poll.

I wish I knew more about exit poll polling, but the way it changes makes me think they just do a hard "dumb" weight.  I hope I'm wrong.

I'm pretty sure that's what they do, yeah.

This poll also has Hispanics going 81-17 for Obama.  I know the sample size is really small, but if 3% of the population is correct, this could help Clinton narrow Obama's margin by about 1%.

I think that, before we read too much into this, I need to remind everyone of SUSA's (and everyone else's) stellar performance in Alabama.  The Deep South seems to be a big thorn in the pollsters' sides this year, and the peripheral South part that has blacks isn't great either.  We'll see.

It will be fun to see how it plays out. If Obama can keep the triad, triangle for him by good margins and win the Charlotte area he will pull off a good win, but I think Clinton can cut into some of his support if she works for it.

Theoretically, North Carolina should be like Virginia, except there are much, much fewer upscale whites and somehow I suspect the Republicans and Indys aren't going to do the total swing to Obama like happened in VA (times are different).  As Al would point out, fortunately for him, a decent amount of lower-income whites are Republicans, otherwise...

...he'd win by a smaller margin.

Obama's big areas in NC will be the Triangle, the small black eastern NC counties, and the Triad (I guess). Charlotte will probably be lean Clinton, but I could be wrong. Luckily for Hillary, most of the upper class folks I know in Winston-Salem are Republican and I doubt they switch over to vote in the Dem primary.

The Triad could be a swing area if Clinton get out and talk to people around here.

Well I know Winston Salem's district is a strong Republican one, so the Democrats in it will likely be for Clinton you would think. I don't know about Greensboro. If she does come and campaign here, it's possible the Triad could swing to her. She's good as getting undecideds, and NC seems to have a lot of them in all the polls out of the state.

Yea, shen has sent Bill twice to the Triad and she only came once. If she want to win NC she has to come and talk to us. Also I can she her cutting into the Obama in the SE part of the state around the coast. She has her work cut out for her. Do I think she can do it, no she will spend alot of time in IN trying to hold Obama off there.

The media has already declared NC an Obama state and put all the marbles on Indiana for Hillary. She has to win there. Winning NC, while being a bigger prize, wouldn't satisfy what the media has deemed she win. I do hope she deploys Bill here. I'd love to go see him speak.

He was at Elon today (Frezzy goes there).  If she pulls NC with 10% or less, you might as well say I will be voting for McCain in the fall.

I still think she needs to win NC in order for her to win the nomination. Getting it under 10% will make Obama look bad yet again, especially if she wins Indiana on top of that, but he'll still get the nomination. It's just how badly will he be damaged come convention time. She might ruin him to where he has no chance.

How does North Carolina compare to other Southern states in terms of % black population?

22% black. More than Virginia, less than Obama's other Southern states. But the racial divide is considerably less stark in North Carolina than in the Deep South, more similar to Virginia. Racist voting patterns are still somewhat stronger in NC than in VA, however, as the "Northernized" (for lack of a better term) urban and suburban white population is smaller.

Far western North Carolina will be brutal for Obama, although not quite as bad as southwestern Virginia; more like eastern Tennessee. Obama will win white voters in some parts of the center of the state, where most of the population (and especially most of the Democrats) live.

There is talk again that Elizabeth Edwards is close to appearing with at a rally, and possibly endorsing Hillary Clinton before the NC primary. Who knows what John Edwards will do.

It won't change anything.

Your post, mostly, sums up what I already knew. :) I wanted exact percentages to play around with. But I should find them myself, I guess. :P

It's actually 21.4%, 2% more than VA.  Whichever, the result still screams itself to me.

in comparing NC to VA, I would think that VA is more Obama friendly:

1.  while black population is slightly smaller, the state historically is more Republican, so the % of black dem primary voters might actually be higher in VA.
2.  VA has a lot more liberal obama base in NOVA than NC has in the triangle.
3.  timing wise, I think Obama's perception today is weaker than it was back when VA voted.

as a result, I would expect Obama to win NC, but a 10 point win might be all he can pull out of it.  I'm still hoping he wins by 20, just doubting it.

liberal obama base will be in the triangle, Greensboro, and the City of Charlotte.

What are the rates of gun ownership at church attendance?

Dunno about Charlotte. Don't most people say it leans Clinton? The Triangle is ideal for him. Lots of transplants, liberals academia, white guilt, and college students.

Charlotte has transplants too, but I bet Clinton does better there. Obama will do well in the eastern NC black counties as well.

Now this, and what Sam said, is the kind of stuff I like. Not as bad demographically for Clinton as I thought then. Still, seems too bad to permit a win.

Next question: what percentage there are registered Democrats? Or, in other words, how many Jessecrats are still around to turn out and vote against the black man? I'm guessing that is what decides North Carolina, since Clinton is going to need a white turnout and an incredible margin among those whites in order to come close. Which is why that seems unlikely.

The city of Charlotte will go to Obama by 10% but once you get out of the city then it turns into Clintonland.

Virginia was an open primary so historical Republicanism didn't matter. North Carolina is semi-open with independents being allowed to vote and as Al has pointed out, the industrial areas of North Carolina are historically Republican, so that's another advantage for Obama.

I'm not entirely sure whetehr the first part is directed at me, but perhaps I should clarify that when talking about percentage of Democrats I'm not really after a comparison with Virginia, at least not primarily. I'm aware that Virginia was open and that North Carolina is only semi-open. But part of my point is that I THINK NC is one of those places where you have people who are registered Democrats but vote Republican (Oklahoma is probably the best example of this). The more there are of those, the better for Clinton. So I'm trying to get a gauge of that. I'm pretty sure there are far from enough, of course.

Well in 2004 I think bush got 15 or 16% of the Democratic vote.

In 2004, Bush got 16% of the Democratic vote in North Carolina.  That's virtually identical to Pennsylvania, and much less than the overall winner on that measure, Oklahoma (32%).

BRTD does have a point.  A lot of Democrats in 2004 lied and said they were Republicans while voting for Bush.  Party registration is different.  Compared to other Deep South states, North Carolina has fewer of those.  The type of voters who shifted toward the GOP in places like Oklahoma were already often traditional Republicans in North Carolina.  There was no party identification conversion to make.  That's not to say that NC doesn't have its DINO Dixiecrats, but I get the impression that they are less institutionalized.

There are still plenty, though, and they will go Clinton at impressive clips.  It won't make much more of a difference than in other states with these "DINOs" thougsh.

Well, I looked at the VA exit poll numbers and had some unscientific fun with them. I threw out the Republicans and "Others", did not adjust the black percentage (not that big a difference) made white independents a tie and bumped up Clinton's percentage of the white Democrat vote a bit. Still got Obama winning by 16%...if she wins white Democrats and white Independents by the same margins as in Pennsylvania it gets down to 12%. So it probably isn't winnable for her. I guess the question is whether she can avoid getting embarrased...

I was talking to elcorazon with that first part.

The biggest problem for Hillary is that all of the "DINOs" are in districts that also have lots of blacks. The whitest parts of the state is the historically Republican eastern part and the uber-GOP suburban districts. The only district with lots of conservative Democrats and not many blacks is NC-3 (due to racial gerrymandering, NC-1 took in all the blacks) and it only has 4 delegates, so all Obama needs to do there is hold Hillary below 62.5%, and with blacks probably making up still around a quarter of Democratic primary voters that shouldn't be too much of a problem for him.

And North Carolina is also a southern state where like Virginia, there actually are educated and affluent whites that vote Democratic. Take Union County, the base of NC-9 for instance. It's 70% Republican, but the other 30% is favorable to Obama. And thus Hillary probably won't be winning NC-9.