Monday, September 21, 2009

Regional breakdown of Republican approval


via Andrew Sullivan. The actual poll is a Research2000 poll last week of 2400 Americans.

Edit: I incorrectly originally listed the sample size as 2600 Americans. The correct number is 2400 Americans.
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5 comments:

heckler said...

Its interesting to see how weak public support for the Republican party has gotten, where their highest percentage is barely 50%, and that is in the South where they have ruled for the last 50+ years. What is even more interesting to think about in my opinion is that the weakening of the Republican party cannot be correlated with the strengthening of the Democrat Party. As recent polls show, Obama's approval rating is barely above 50%, implying people have not changed parties, instead they may have given up on the government in general. People do not want to deal with these two parties anymore. I would like to see the poll numbers for Democrats by region.

September 21, 2009 at 3:22 PM
Andre said...

good responses by other bloggers...

"Something doesn't jive. How D's approval rating be in the 50-60% range on other polls, yet KOS puts it at 3/4ths of the country nearing 90% favorable."

"I'd be curious to see the internals of each set of polls. The Kos poll is broken out regionally -- are the other ones? Because Obama's numbers are so low in the South, it's entirely possible for them to drag the rest of the numbers down with them to the 50 percent mark."

"You also need to check if the polls are going for 50/50 Democrat/Republican. Since Republican identification is down to something like 30 percent of voters, giving them 50 percent of the poll would be massively overcounting them."

Posted by: Mnemosyne on September 18, 2009 at 4:05 PM | PERMALINK
"You can't make sense of this data unless you look at the corresponding Dem graph. There's nothing that says a voter can't disapprove of both parties. And, if you go to the link, you'll see that a majority of voters in the Midwest, West, and South have an unfavorable view of the Democrats, too. So what you've got is a Democratic party strong in the Northeast, a Republican party strong in the South, and a West and Midwest that don't like either one very much"

Posted by: Bloix on September 18, 2009 at 4:07 PM | PERMALINK

September 21, 2009 at 3:49 PM
jbeslity11 said...

This "poll" is way too broad! All of this information is unverified. When and how exactly was data accumulated and from whom was it gathered? It represents far too much information, jammed together and interpreted in way to arrive at support for a predetermined result.

September 21, 2009 at 4:18 PM
evan said...

Andre, I think your first quoted guy misread the graph...it isn't that nearly 80% of the country is pro-Dem, it's that in 3 parts of the country, 80% of the country is anti-Republican. This poll shows Democratic approval at 41% favorable/50% unfavorable.

To address another point, the full crosstabs are here for anyone interested in looking at them.

Dem favorability/unfavorability/no opinion is at 62/26/12 in the Northeast, 20/70/10 in the South, 46/47/7 in the Midwest, and 44/48/8 in the West. Not nearly as drastic as the Republican numbers--but not good news if you're a Democratic pollster.

The poll was 31% Democrats, 22% Republican, 25% Independent, and 5% "other."

And James, I don't know what you're talking about. How is this poll 'too broad?' It asked a number of very simple questions which are very easy to poll on, like Democratic and Republican approval, Obama's approval, and right direction/wrong direction.

You can't just dismiss all the polls with results you don't like. If you followed the links, you could find out all of the information you wanted. The data was gathered from people in the following states:

Northeast:
DC, ME, VT, NY, MD, PA, CT, DE, MA, NH, RI, WV, NJ

South:
FL, NC, SC, AL, MS, GA, VA, TN, KY, LA, AR, TX

Midwest:
IL, MN, MI, OH, WI, IA, MO, KS, IN, ND, SD, OK, NE

West:
NM, CA, OR, WA, AK, HI, MT, ID, UT, NV, AZ, WY, CO

There were over 2300 respondents, leading to a margin of error of 2%. This means that the pollster can say with 95% certainty that the actual public opinion on an issue falls within 2% of their reported range, when dealing with the broad issues that everyone was polled on. The margin of error increases in subsample populations, but no subsample in this chart numbered under 500 people--meaning that their margins of error probably hovered between 4 and 6%. There's some math involved in getting to those numbers, which I can explain if you want.

September 21, 2009 at 5:15 PM
jbeslity11 said...

Well, that makes a bit more sense. In any case, this was nothing ground-breaking. Frankly, Democrats are lining themselves up for the same fate if they can't get anything moving through Congress.

September 22, 2009 at 12:16 PM

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