Talk Elections

Obama 58
Romney 35

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/MarylandPollingMemo.pdf (http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/MarylandPollingMemo.pdf)

The partisan composition is 58% D, 26% R, 16% I.

Lean Mitt.

So can someone please explain to me why this election will look like 2004 when all of the polls look like 2008?

Maryland is solid D at this point. Republicans haven't carried Maryland since the 1988 Presidential Election of George H.W. Bush. It was one of Bill Clinton's best states in both of his Presidential Election Wins. It was also one of Jimmy Carter's 6 states that he carried in the 1980 Presidential Election when he lost to Reagan.

That sample doesn't make a difference here, as Romney's ceiling probably is close to 35-37%.

Wow, what a heard of sheep.  Obama out for gay marriage and suddenly blacks support gay marriage in droves.  That's just not a healthy way to come to a decision on an issue

It's less healthy to have a bigoted position on the issue, so I suppose we'll let it pass.

A leader and popular figure of any given community having influence over that community's opinions on certain issues is hardly a surprise.

I'm actually surprised at the shift in support for same sex marriage among African Americans. I never thought his announcement would hurt his support in the black community but I didn't think it would so drastically change public opinion in his favor.

Of course, I think this a great thing because it unifies the Democratic base. Gay marriage has long been a wedge issue in our party but now it looks like all democrats are coming to the same conclusion on the issue.

Especially considering how ambivalent that community was on the issue.

Wrong.  Again look at the poll, it has two different questions, party registration and party id.  Party registration in MD is Dem +30, close to the +32 registration numbers in the poll.  Party id in the poll was D+24, basically the exact same as 2008.

Can someone please explain to me why this election will look like 2008 when all of the polls look like 1964?

Whatever, you're on, I want some. I've had a rough day.

35% to 37% is basically a floor, McCain wasn't really going to dip below it, because the panhandle and Eastern Shore vote so heavily Republican. There's a short distance between the floor and ceiling for Romney, he won't drop below it, but he won't get much above it either.

For Obama? I see an Obamaslide. 

"at this point"...?  Maryland's been a solid D for decades.  The recent demographic landslide that has hit the state cements that.  People forget that Maryland's the fourth blackest state in the country.  Maryland is 43% VAP minority the vast majority of which is blacks.  Interestingly the white population of Maryland has grown very conservative.  McCain won Maryland whites by 2% and I bet Bush won them by 6 or 7 in 2004

Is it me, or did you just compare people of a certain skin color to animals ? Wow.

And it's spelt herd.

I wouldn't say McCain winning whites by 2% in Maryland when he won whites by 12% nationwide = very conservative.

Now, the rural less educated whites in western MD and along the eastern shore would fit that bill, the suburban well educated whites, not so much....

I also find that surprising considering that the majority of white voters in the the Washington suburb's tilt heavily Democratic. I.e just look at the results in places like Rockville, Chevy Chase, and Columbia if you want to see an indication of that.

 I can't really say for Baltimore suburbs which share similar demographics, which is more split but the Democrat's have an edge amongst white voters there too.

Thanks.  Herd, not heard -- but if 20% (or whatever the # was) of NC Blacks overnight flip their position on gay marriage from no to yes for NO OTHER REASON than Barack Obama's flip on the issue then YES those 20% are the sheeple

It's pretty impressive McCain won Maryland whites despite how liberal the state is.  McCain didn't even win the white vote in Colorado.

Native Maryland whites tend to be conservative, hence the high uncommitted vote against Obama in the democrat primary outside of PG, Montgomery, Howard and the city.  The whites living in Montgomery/Howard county tend not to be native to the state.  Some of those Bethesda precincts are 80% white and voted 85% Obama.  Carroll/Harford are mega Republican and Baltimore/AA Co whites are pretty republican too

McCain actually probably did better among whites than the polls suggest

The heavily white precincts are shaded in green and they as a whole gave McCain 56.2% of the vote.
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Those same precincts probably vote 62% for Ehrlich in 2010

The Democrat's level of white support in Maryland is pretty spot on for the mid Atlantic. White support goes from the high 30s in VA to around 50% in NJ. So McCain's small victory over white voters there isn't that much of a surprise to me. What makes it solidly Dem is the huge number of black voters, around 30%.  Obama will win big there in 2012.

What really surprises people is the level of white support for Obama in the NE. Some of us tend to think all Northeasterners as monolithically Democratic, but that's not the case. The white vote is pretty split up there, even is states like New York. The minority voters make those states so solidly blue.

McCain won whites 50-49 in NJ, 49-47 in Md according to CNN exit polls.  McCain got 46 in NY/Conn, 45 in Del