Archive: Polls
The Impact of Wright
Public polling has revealed several potentially troubling trends for Barack Obama's campaign over the last few days, from the evaporation of his lead over Hillary Clinton in Gallup's daily tracking poll to a resurgent Clinton outperforming Obama against John McCain in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll, but perhaps none more so...
By Jennifer Agiesta | April 29, 2008; 06:00 AM ET | Comments (49)
MLB Fans on Steroids, Favorite Players
As Major League Baseball's first post-Mitchell Report season gets underway, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds seven in 10 fans believe at least a quarter of the game's players use steroids to improve their performance. That's up twenty percentage points from July 2002 and includes a third who...
By Jennifer Agiesta | March 31, 2008; 12:16 PM ET | Comments (6)
BTN: Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney ended his presidential bid today, unable to expand his appeal beyond his party's most conservative voters. But he exits the race a more popular figure among all Republicans than when he entered, boding well for his political future. He is the first candidate to drop out having won...
By Jon Cohen | February 7, 2008; 02:27 PM ET | Comments (6)
Independents? In Florida?
Independents helped lift John McCain to victory in Florida. Really. As widely (and accurately) reported, Florida's GOP primary was limited to registered Republicans, so how did independents play such a decisive role? The answer is a twisted tale of state law, election procedures and survey research. But at root, there...
By Jon Cohen | January 31, 2008; 12:51 PM ET | Comments (10)
BTN: John Edwards
John Edwards exited the Democratic presidential election race today, here's the tale of the tape ... How he fared: Iowa 30 percent (2nd place, by two-tenths of a percentage point); New Hampshire 17 percent (3rd); Nevada 4 percent (3rd); South Carolina 18 percent (3rd); Florida 14 percent (3rd). High-point in...
By Jon Cohen | January 30, 2008; 03:47 PM ET | Comments (17)
New Racial Dynamic in S.C.
The racial divide has deepened in South Carolina, with Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton by a wide margin among African Americans, but badly trailing both Clinton and John Edwards among white voters. And underneath the chasm in vote preferences in the new McClatchy-MSNBC poll by Mason-Dixon, there are signs of...
By Jon Cohen | January 25, 2008; 03:50 PM ET | Comments (95)
BTN: Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich, who reportedly ended his 2008 White House quest today, never had much traction with voters. Here's a glimpse Behind the Numbers. Kucinich got zero delegates out of the Iowa caucuses and finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary with 1 percent of the vote. In Michigan, he was...
By Jon Cohen | January 24, 2008; 05:39 PM ET | Comments (60)
Demos for next Democratic primaries
As attention turns to South Carolina and beyond, here are some sex, race and age breakdowns from 2004 contests (where available from NEP exit polls). Percentages listed are the size of each group in the state's Democratic primary in 2004 (e.g., 57 percent of all Democratic voters in South Carolina...
By Jon Cohen | January 22, 2008; 11:18 AM ET | Comments (14)
Hitting the Mark on Issues
This year's crop of presidential candidates are doing a better job addressing the issues Americans care about than their predecessors did eight years ago, at least according to a USA Today-Gallup poll out today. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents in the new poll said the candidates are "talking about issues...
By Jennifer Agiesta | January 17, 2008; 06:00 PM ET | Email a Comment
Postives and Negatives
With eight in 10 Americans now closely tuned in to the presidential campaign, the new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds shifting impressions of the leading candidates. Here's where things stand now. Kudos to the Winners... The public appears to have warmed up to each of the four candidates who've won...
By Jennifer Agiesta | January 15, 2008; 04:00 PM ET | Comments (2)
1948 all over again? Evangelical Democrats?
We posted these two items to The Trail: What if the Polls Were Right? [Longer version of Post article] Democratic Pollster Peter Hart has a contrarian view on the latest polling kerfuffle. Hart, one-half of the polling team behind the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, this afternoon posted an insightful online...
By Jon Cohen | January 11, 2008; 11:34 AM ET | Email a Comment
The Method or the Map?
Liberal blogs are aflame with speculation that Diebold voting machines rigged a Granite State victory for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Vote tallies from the New Hampshire Secretary of State show that she won by 4.23 percentage points in the counties using Diebold optical scanners, but lost by 5.81...
By Jennifer Agiesta | January 10, 2008; 07:39 PM ET | Email a Comment
About those young voters...
A well-reported five-point bump in turnout among younger voters helped propel Barack Obama to victory in Iowa, and a look Behind the Numbers shows just how different this new generation of caucusgoers is from the historically more "reliable" group of over-65 voters. Last Thursday evening, 22 percent of Democratic caucusgoers...
By Jennifer Agiesta | January 7, 2008; 01:21 PM ET | Comments (2)
Five Key Findings from the Iowa Entrance Poll
Find the Behind the Numbers take on the top findings from the Iowa Entrance Poll here, or download Saturday's Post Politics Podcast for an audio version. A full set of crosstabs from the National Election Pool's entrance poll of Iowa caucusgoers can be found at these links (Democrats, Republicans). We'll...
By Jennifer Agiesta | January 4, 2008; 11:11 PM ET | Email a Comment
60 percent evangelicals? Yes, but ...
Before the 60 percent evangelical figure ossifies, we go Behind the Numbers for an important caveat about the data. (Please remember Tuesday night.) On last night's network entrance poll six in 10 GOP caucus-goers described themselves as "born-again or evangelical Christian." That's a much higher proportion than many expected; it's...
By Jon Cohen | January 4, 2008; 12:38 PM ET | Comments (8)
Change Drives Democrats, Religion Republicans
The Iowa caucuses are typically low-turnout affairs that are notoriously hard to predict, but this year, pre-election polls accurately captured the underlying dynamics of both parties' contests. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama appealed to a change-oriented Democratic electorate, while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee won the GOP race in large part...
By Jon Cohen | January 4, 2008; 12:21 AM ET | Comments (1)
Behind The Trail
As the race for Iowa heated up, Behind the Numbers fled to The Trail. Here are three recent posts... About That Independent Turnout Obama, Huckabee Lead Register Poll Iowa: Nearly 80,000 polled Happy caucus day!...
By Jon Cohen | January 3, 2008; 04:18 PM ET | Email a Comment
Clinton's Home-Court Edge
In Sunday's paper, The Post's Alec MacGillis took a must-see look at the Clinton campaign's argument that the senator's success in upstate New York sets her up for success in swing states. As a sidebar, the latest data from the state show some advantages, but no clear path back to...
By Jennifer Agiesta | October 25, 2007; 12:10 PM ET | Comments (12)
GOP Women for Clinton?
Earlier today, Hillary Clinton's top strategist Mark Penn estimated she could get as many as a quarter of Republican women to vote for her in the general election if she's the nominee. Here's some perspective on that optimistic assessment . . . 1) If 24 percent of Republican women were...
By Jon Cohen | October 18, 2007; 03:12 PM ET | Comments (23)
MoveOn Who?
The seemingly ubiquitous controversy surrounding MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ad does not appear to have resonated widely. Few Americans off the campaign trail or outside the halls of Congress have even tuned in. The ad, which ran in The New York Times as the top U.S. commander in Iraq testified...
By Jennifer Agiesta | September 28, 2007; 01:38 PM ET | Comments (17)
Candidate Wordplay
In a break from the (maybe) elevated issue struggles of the week, a new poll out focuses on the personal characteristics of the top presidential contenders. Asked to match descriptions to candidates, Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters give Hillary Clinton a decided edge over Barack Obama and John Edwards when...
By Jon Cohen | September 20, 2007; 03:34 PM ET | Comments (5)
McCain: Poised to Make a Comeback?
John McCain's campaign had been all but declared dead earlier this summer after poor fundraising in two consecutive quarters and a major staff shakeup, but recent polling shows that the hemorrhaging has stopped. Could McCain emerge from these depths still a contender? In the Washington Post-ABC News poll released this...
By Jennifer Agiesta | September 17, 2007; 01:48 PM ET | Comments (5)
Polling on Post.com
Here's a quick look at recent polling-related posts that have appeared on the Post's diary of campaign 2008, The Trail: Could Gingrich Go For It? Rumblings about the former speaker's potential presidential candidacy continue, but what do the polls say about his chances? War Top Issue Now, Could Shift By...
By Jennifer Agiesta | September 14, 2007; 04:50 PM ET | Comments (2)
No Deferral Necessary
Four and a half years into the Iraq war, there's no groundswell to move away from an all-volunteer fighting force. In a Gallup poll out today, only 18 percent said the United States should return to the military draft. Late last year, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) advocated restoring compulsory military...
By Jon Cohen | September 7, 2007; 02:29 PM ET | Comments (2)
The Reach of a Scandal
Idaho Senator Larry Craig is already feeling the political consequences of his guilty plea to a charge of disorderly conduct in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. Calls for his resignation and an ethics investigation, questions about the Republican Party's ability to hold his seat in the usually very-red state and discussions...
By Jennifer Agiesta | August 29, 2007; 03:42 PM ET | Comments (15)
Rove's Legacy: Midterm Blowback
Karl Rove's effort to construct a lasting GOP majority suffered a setback in last November's midterm elections. His emphasis on turning out the conservative base -- rather than playing to the middle -- was not enough to help Republicans maintain control of Congress, possibly forever tarnishing his "brainy" legacy. Prior...
By Jon Cohen | August 13, 2007; 05:26 PM ET | Comments (3)
Bonds, Vick and the Race Factor
Two of the sports world's biggest stars are making headlines this week, one for his performance on the field (and how he was able to achieve it) and the other for off-the-field conduct; San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds is poised to break Hank Aaron's long-standing career home run record after...
By Jennifer Agiesta | July 20, 2007; 07:17 PM ET | Comments (3)
How Much for Reduced Emissions?
With concern about global warming on the rise, many Americans now say they are willing to change their ways to help the environment, but how much are they willing to pay in exchange for reduced emissions? A Washington Post-ABC News-Stanford University poll conducted in April found that 50 percent of...
By Jennifer Agiesta | June 21, 2007; 04:17 PM ET | Comments (3)
American and Russian Publics View One Another Skeptically
George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin will attempt to rekindle their friendship at next week's Group of Eight summit and again in July at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, but it may take more than smiles and handshakes to change the way the American and Russian publics each...
By Jennifer Agiesta | June 1, 2007; 05:10 PM ET | Comments (8)
A Presidential Picnic
Many Americans will be breaking out their grills this Memorial Day, spending time at picnics and barbecues with family, friends and a big helping of potato salad. But, if voters could chat with one of the presidential frontrunners from each political party at their Memorial Day picnic, who would they...
By Jennifer Agiesta | May 27, 2007; 09:24 PM ET | Comments (4)
Pew Surveys Muslims in America
A new study puts the number of U.S. Muslims aged 18 and over at 1.4 million, about 0.6 percent of the total adult population. The research, based on the first national probability sample of U.S. Muslims, offers a detailed look at the diverse community, and reveals most Muslim Americans to...
By Jon Cohen | May 22, 2007; 10:55 AM ET | Comments (27)
Blair and the British: Ready for a Change
Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced that he will step down on June 27, but he will not be leaving on a high note. Only 28 percent of British adults said they are satisfied with his job performance, according to the most recent Ipsos-MORI survey, and more than half in...
By Jennifer Agiesta | May 14, 2007; 07:00 PM ET | Comments (1)
New Orleans: The Long Road Back
A new survey of New Orleans area residents shows how deeply Hurricane Katrina continues to plague the lives of those living in the city's hardest-hit parishes. In the poll, released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation, eight in 10 residents of Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes said Katrina...
By Jennifer Agiesta | May 10, 2007; 01:00 AM ET | Email a Comment
Tonight the Role of Ronald Reagan Will Be Played By...
As 10 GOP contenders take the stage tonight at the Reagan Presidential Library, expect frequent references to "The Great Communicator," who left office with high approval ratings. When his second term ended, more than six in 10 Americans approved of how Reagan was handling his job. And asked retrospectively, 71...
By Jon Cohen | May 3, 2007; 04:45 PM ET | Comments (2)
VA Tech Doesn't Move Needle on Gun Control
Three new polls indicate that there's been little change in public support for gun control since last week's shooting rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech. An ABC News poll released Monday found that 61 percent favor stricter gun control laws; the same percentage as in a Post-ABC poll last...
By Jennifer Agiesta | April 24, 2007; 01:15 PM ET | Comments (49)
