What’s the “mix” by party affiliation?
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By diving deeper into the widely varying polls, the obvious became evident to me.
By and large, the polls get about the same same answers by ‘type’ of voter … e.g. about 90% of voters throw their support behind their party’s candidate.
So, the variance in ‘headline’ numbers is almost entirely attributable to party-affiliation ‘mix’ – the proportion of voters from each party that are expected to turnout to vote.
Polls assuming that many more Dems will vote than GOPs say that Hillary is up by 4 or 5 points; polls that say there will be about an equal number of Dems & GOP turning out narrow the difference or give the edge to Trump.
Given that this will be a turnout election, I dove a bit deeper into voting trends, just to get some historical context for this election.
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For openers, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center…
In 2012, there were about 219 million citizens eligible to vote … 57.5% (126 million) of them did vote.
Note that 1960 was the high-water mark (64.8%), not 2008 (62.5%).
And, note that 2012 was down about 5 percentage points from 2008.
This year, most pundits are predicting that about 130 million will vote.
Clinton is trying to stir enthusiasm to hold together the Obama coalition; Trump is counting on an increase in the number of working-class voters.
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Now, lets’s look at the partisan mix – the factor that will determine this year’s election….
The Homa Files 