Been thinking about this a lot this morning, with the Latino targeted polling over the last couple of weeks showing such a massive Clinton victory and a higher interest in voting, are national and some state polls under sampling Hispanic turnout?
for example we had the odd Florida poll with what was it 7% or so Hispanic and I also noticed the Reuters tracking poll is only 7% African American with Clinton only getting 61% which doesnt seem to make much sense.
Well yes, if a Florida poll severely undersamples minorities like that, then its results will probably be very different than the actual election result. In Florida, African Americans made up 13% of the electorate in 2008/2012. Hispanics made up 14% in 2008 and 17% in 2012. Further, the share of the electorate that is white college educated has been going up and white non-college going down, consistent with national trends.
I haven't seen that poll but if you oversample demographics favorable to Republicans then you'll get a skewed Republican result. Just like it being skewed for Democrats if they were to use a sample that was 20% African American and 30% Hispanic, and so on.
Further, the Hispanic share of the FL electorate is going to be more than in 2012, again, consistent with historical trends.. So that needs to be taken into account, in addition to accurately polling that demographic - which means not only using landline-using English-speaking Hispanic respondents.
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Projected electorate demographics of Florida (2012):
Non-college whites: 33.7%
College-educated whites: 32.7.%
African American: 12.9%
Hispanic: 16.8%
Asian: 4%
Projected electorate demographics of Florida (2016):
Non-college whites: 30% (-3.7)
College-educated whites: 33.9% (+1.2)
African American: 13.4% (+0.5)
Hispanic: 18.3% (+1.5)
Asian: 4.4% (+0.4)
So the makeup of the electorate matters substantially and people should account for changes in the electorate.
Yes, like Virginia says, if Florida polls are under sampling minorities, then the poll results will probably be very different than the actual election results.
That said, perhaps Dem strategists are (or should be) a bit concerned about Trump’s 19-percentage-point margin of victory over hispanic home grown candidate Marco Rubio during the GOP primary. Trump gathered up votes from dormant Republicans casting first time ballots, and he managed to grow the ranks of the Republican Party of Florida by the tens of thousands. Again, he managed to do this while running against a home state senator. Trump's victory was solid: Rubio lost every county except Miami-Dade. Will Hillary Clinton have a better chance of winning Florida than Rubio? Will she manage to do better with hispanics than a hispanic? We'll see, but I have to say, I have my doubts...
Amusing to see that trump supporters still need to quote and rely on Republican primary results, to give themselves some assurance or (desperate) hope of possible victory.
It's like a "security blanket" that a 4-year old continues to cling-to, and refuses to release.
