Really interesting read - A Fascinating Look at the Primary Electorate

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-fascinating-look-at-the-democratic-primary-electorate

by Josh Marshall

"As I've mentioned a few times, we've gotten into the survey business, both of the public at large but especially of our own audience, which is a good proxy for center-left and liberal news junkies around the country and also primary voters. We've been doing various polling tied to the 2016 presidential race and after the jump I have some numbers that gave me a different take on how to look at the Democratic primary race.

As I said, this is not the public at large but TPM readers. The samples of Sanders, Clinton, and Biden each have at least 2300 qualified respondents. The number of respondents for President Obama is 1459. All were taken in the second half of this week. And again, what interests me about these numbers is that it is not the population at large or even Democrats at large: it's a center-left demographics which rates very high on 'influence' markers. They follow news closely; they converse with people in their social sets about politics frequently, online and off; and they're disproportionately in professional positions of influence.

Now, there are various things you can draw from these numbers. But the big thing that just jumps right out at me at least is how basically similar attitudes are toward Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders and how different they are from Clinton and Biden.

Overall favorability ranges from a high of 84% for Obama to 68.4% for Clinton. Unsurprisingly these people are all thought pretty highly of by a generally center-left readership. But the difference in intensity of affinity is huge, as Donald Trump might say."

__________________________________________

check out the link - the Insight graphs are really interesting to ponder.

Happy reading!

[peacebird]

1. Off topic. Unexpectedly needed to babysit grandson, which caused me to miss your talk at Monticello

I was looking forward to gphearing/meeting you face to face... How did it go?

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. Hi! It went really well....

The Thursday event at Montalto was really special...Friday was fine (I love speaking in the Woodland Pavilion), but 9 AM is early and with the first day, wished for a bigger audience. Saturday at noon in the tent was great (packed, felt really energetic). The Splendid Table episode ran this weekend too, and my book really got kicked on Amazon because of it! Just noted I've got the #1 selling veggie book - 1,600 or so out of 8 million books - just staggering to me!)

We will meet some day - I will surely be back to Monticello. I tell myself this is a marathon, not a sprint, and I am at the beginning of things....and it is so much fun, and so gratifying! My next step - get an heirloom topic weekly podcast off the ground - within a few months!

[peacebird]

4. Wow! I am not suprised your book is doing so well, btw! It is wonderful!

Next year at the heritage festival perhaps!

[HereSince1628]

3. The most important thing about the primary electorate isn't it's smarts

it's that it's a very small fraction of the overall electorate, usually less than 20%

Consequently high enthusiasm in supporters is a better predictor of primary results than supporters smarts.