| So while I've been a longtime skeptic of Obama's chances to win Montana come November, I wanted to look a bit deeper into the R2K numbers from Daily Kos on the race. That poll showed McCain winning the state by 13.
In fact, it even showed McCain winning the youth vote in Montana by 5.
So I went to some national polling to look at how the white youth vote is going elsewhere to try to get a handle on whether it would make sense for Montana youth to be going McCain (the under 30 vote in Montana is probably about 90% white, a bit more diverse than the state as a whole, but not much).
So I checked out Rock the Vote's latest polling. They have white youth going Obama 48-36. Democracy Corps has slightly older numbers that show white youth going Obama by the wider margin of 46-45.
Both of the polling firms in question are Democratic firms, but they are very respected Democratic firms. How to account for such disparity? While subsamples have higher margins of error, so that could be part of it.
But keeping in mind that the Montana youth vote is 90% white, is it likely that youth in Montana are really going more for McCain than white youth nationally? I'd doubt it. Especially since Montana's white population tends to be more big-D Democratic than whites nationally (I think this is typical of homogenous white states).
Now that homogeneity could also mean that we're seeing a racial effect here. This isn't a Bradley effect, mind you, it's people being openly racialized in their voting.
All that said, I think this subsample throws some questions on the 13 point margin.
Bottom line in my book:
- I don't think Obama is really down 13 in Montana.
- I also still think McCain ultimately wins Montana.
- Take all of this with a grain of salt because subsamples are just that -- subsamples.
|
