Secret revealed: The difference between DU and national Democrats (Marist and DU Polling)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

It is not news that the population of active DU posters is different from the population of Democratic voters.

But this really struck me. In yesterdays Marist Poll people were asked their view of the US economy.:

People who chose "the worst is yet to come" plan to vote D-32% R-56%
People who chose "the worst is behind us" plan to vote D-63% R-27%

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/misc/usapolls/US101021/Obama/Congress_Party%20Candidate%20to%20vote%20for.htm

I would not have expected that question to be such a powerful voting-choice indicator in that direction. That result seems on par with major political indicators like church attendance, military service, rural vs. urban, etc.. And it suggests that the poorest people are more optimistic about the economic future.

So I did a DU poll and waited until there were over 100 responses. The results (as of now) are:

the worst is yet to come - 73%
the worst is behind us - 27%

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9407185&mesg_id=9407185

Maybe DUers are gloomier. Maybe DUers are better informed about economics. Maybe people in the most economically distressed regions are disproportionately attracted to progressive internet discussion.

[Poboy]

1. "Maybe DUers are better informed about economics."

I'd go with this answer, or better yet, DUers are overwhelmingly the ones who are paying close attention, as opposed to the general population.

Either that, or I'm one of the outliers. I definately think the worst is yet to come, but there is no way I am voting for the LUNATICS.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. The Lunatics would make it worst-est

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. ROFL

Um, have you read DUers talking about economics? The guy playing dominoes while sitting on a milk crate down the corner is better informed on economics.

It is to laugh!

[Subdivisions]

5. Break it down for us, Maynard. n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Those numbers don't tell us how Democrats in the poll answered

They tell us that, of those who said ""the worst is yet to come"", 32% are D, 56% R; but they don't tell us the ratio between "the worst is yet to come" and "the worst is behind us" (from which we could work out how all the Democrats in the poll answered). I guess that number is available somewhere, but it's not on that page.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. Dems optimistic 63%, pessimstic 32%, no answer 5%

Topline numbers: D-47% R-41%
____

worst yet to come D-32% R-56%
worst behind us D-63% R-27%

There are some "no answers" in there (D-5% R-7%)

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. No, the 63% is "of those who think 'worst is behind us', 63% are D, 27% are R"

and "of those who think 'worst is yet to come', 32% are D, 56% are R". When you read across the table, the numbers add up to 100%. It doesn't tell us the total proportion of who said "behind us" and who said "to come". For example, look at the "college graduate/not college graduate" figures - you can't tell from those how many college graduates there are in the whole sample. Or look at the age figures when split up into 4 groups - clearly, we cannot say that the age split for Dems is "Dems 18-29 57%, 30-44 55%, 45-59 40%, 60 or older 45%" - those figures add up to far more than 100%.

If the 'behind us/yet to come' figures are restricted to registered voters (as opposed to everyone who answered the poll, including unregistered people), then we can work back, using the registered voters split, to the divide on how Democrats answered. But it doesn't say that, so I don't think we can assume that.

On edit: ah, sorry, I've noticed the very top line of the table is "USA Registered Voters". So we can make that calculation. It does actually work out that the split for all registered voters was pretty much equal between optimistic and pessimistic, so that the Democrat split is indeed about 63% optimistic, 32% pessimistic. But we had to do the calculation to know that.