SC GOP Voter Demographics

UPDATE: Actual Vote % and Exit Poll % added
It seems that very few polls actually try to reach more than one (if any) demographic targets within their surveys. Monmouth is a notable exception. Unfortunately their latest poll was a week ago, before two debates, one candidate withdrawl, one candidate reentry (Cain/Colbert), a potential scandal or two, etc.. Given the number of news events just before the election and the questionable demographics of their pollees, I suspect many pollsters will be lucky if they come close to the actual vote percentage.

The 2012 SC GOP Primary (which is an OPEN primary in which Democrats or Independents can vote) should be a cross between the 1996 election where there was no Democratic primary as President Clinton ran unopposed and the 2008 SC GOP primary election where the competition was very close (however the record Democratic primary turnout drew away voters from the GOP primary). The SC population is getting older, and the GOP primary voters are getting more conservative. One counter trend is that Ron Paul is running a competitive campaign this time vs. '08 so his dedicated following dominated by younger voters (and the 50ish age group) and independent voters will somewhat offset other prevailing demographic trends. The 2000 election is another kind of anomaly in that the Democratic election was essentially unopposed and one popular candidate was very popular with independents (McCain) while the other candidate was also popular (Bush). So turnout was VERY high for the 2000 GOP primary.

When looking at polls before the election, it can be VERY important to look at the demographics of the people being polled. Many polls do not provide much information.

As a general rule, the less detail you see, or the more minimal the methods you see described to explain how one could reproduce the same result, the more likely there are to be errors in the results. In the case of this blog entry, I have omitted steps, but I will be continually revising this, to add more details, as time permits.

Many polls reported detailed demographics ONLY in the form of crosstabs so that you never see a simple statistic saying how many people over the age 65 were polled or how many people who do not consider themselves Republican were polled.

Methodoligical note: When only crosstabs are provided, I was able to estimate the range of possible values by solving many simultaneous algebraic equations and taking into account that a % without a decimal point (say 25% actually represents a number between 24.5% and 25.4999999...%) and trying both values to determine the maximum and minimum ranges of the final result. I then reduced the range, by using the maximum of ALL minimum values from each permutation of simultaneous equations. Likewise, I used the minimum of all maximum values. Perhaps if I had solved EVERY combination of simultaneous equations I could have narrowed the range a little more, but the range in most cases is reasonably narrow. Probably the midpoint is very close to the true value, but I offer no math at this point to support this notion.

The numbers for each year are either from exit polls, census data, or GOP election results. 2012 data is my best guess based on trends and my comparisons of the different mix of candidates each election.

Category	Politico/GWU	Clemson	You Gov	2012 Actual	2012 Estimate	2008	2000	1996
Poll: Days Before Election	3-4	2-3	1-3	0	0	0	0	0
Percent Undecided	8%	20%	2%	0	0	0	0	0
Percent May Change Choice	5-34%			0	0	0	0	0
Decided Day of Election				17%	19%	18%	9%	17%
Decided Day Before or 2 Days Before Election				38%	17%	16%	10%	14%
Decided within Last Week					50%	47%	38%	55%
Decided in January				76%	75%	73%
Decided prior year				24%	25%	27%
Voters or Polled	600	429	759	601,166	480,000	445,499	565,704	278,183
Voters/Adult Pop Voters				16.5%	13.1%	13.0%	18.8%	11.1%
GOP Primary Winner/%	Romney 37%	Gingrich 32%	Gingrich 33%	Gingrich 40%	?? 30%	McCain 33%	Bush 53%	Dole 45%
GOP 2nd Place/%	Romney 30%	Romney 26%	Romney 29%	Romney 28%	?? 27%	Huckabee 30%	McCain 41%	Buchanan 29%
Dem Primary Winner/% or GOP 3rd Place	Paul 11%	Paul 11%	Paul 18%	Unopposed	Obama 55%	Gore 92%	Unopposed
Dem 2nd Place/% or GOP 4th Place	Santorum 10%	Santorum 9%	Santorum 16%	No One	Clinton 27% Edwards 18%	Bradley 2%	No One
GOP %			71%	71%	65%	78%	61%	69%
Indy %			27%	25%	28%	18%	30%	26%
Dem %			2%	4%	7%	5%	9%	5%
Very Conservative %			45%	36%	40%	34%	24%	25%
Somewhat Conservative %			44%	32%	28%	34%	37%	41%
Moderate or Liberal%			11%	32%	32%	31%	40%	33%
Moderate %				23%	22%	24%	29%	25%
Somewhat Liberal %				7%	7%	5%	8%	6%
Very Liberal %				3%	2%	2%	3%	2%
Male (census data)	51%	49%	53%	51%	52% (48%)	51% (48%)	50% (48%)	53%
Age 65+ (census data)	50%		29%	27%	26% (18%)	?? (17%)	25% (16%)	23% (16%)
Age 60+ (census data)	64%				36% (26%)	35% (25%)	35% (22%)	32% (23%)
Age 45-64 (census data)	40%		46%	45%	43% (35%)	??% (35%)	40% (31%)	37% (28%)
Age 45-59 (census data)	27%				33% (27%)	32% (27%)	30% (25%)	28% (21%)
Age 30-44 (census data)	8%		16%	19%	20% (25%)	23% (26%)	25% (30%)	31% (32%)
Age 18-29 (census data)	1%		9%	9%	11% (22%)	10% (22%)	10% (23%)	8% (24%)

Category	20/20 Insight	Monmouth	ARG	NBC/Marist	PPP	2012 Actual	2012 Estimate
Poll: Days Before Election	4-6	6-9	1-2	4-5	1-3	0	0
Percent Undecided	4%	7%	2%	8%	5%	0	0
Percent May Change Choice				16-45%	22%	0	0
Decided Day of Election						17%	19%
Decided Day Before or 2 Days Before Election						38%	17%
Decided within Last Week							50%
Decided in January						76%	75%
Decided prior year						24%	25%
Voters or Polled	512	963	600	684	1540	601,166	480,000
Voters/Adult Pop Voters						16.5%	13.1%
GOP Primary Winner/%	Romney 34%	Romney 33%	Gingrich 40%	Romney 34%	Gingrich 37%	Gingrich 40%	?? 30%
GOP 2nd Place/%	Gingrich 23%	Gingrich 22%	Romney 26%	Gingrich 24%	Romney 28%	Romney 28%	?? 27%
GOP 3rd Place	Santorum 15%	Santorum 14%	Paul 18%	Paul 11%	Santorum 16%	Santorum 17%	Paul 20%
GOP 4th Place	Paul 11%	Paul 12%	Santorum 13%	Santorum 14%	Paul 14%	Paul 13%	Santorum 10%
GOP %		69%	76%	62.5-68.7%	75%	71%	65%
Indy %		30%	24%	31.3-37.5%	21%	25%	28%
Dem %		1%			4%	4%	7%
Very Conservative %		41%*		10.5-32.9%	41%	36%	40%
Somewhat Conservative %		38%*		31.7-72.9%	35%	32%	28%
Moderate or Liberal%		21%*		17.7-35.4%	25%	23%	32%
Moderate %						23%	22%
Somewhat Liberal %						7%	7%
Very Liberal %						2%	3%
Male (census data)		52%	52%	40-50%	53%	51%	52% (48%)
Age 66+ (census data)					32%		25% (17%)
Age 65+ (census data)		26%				27%	26% (18%)
Age 45-64 (census data)		41%				45%	43% (35%)
Age 46-65 (census data)					38%		44% (35%)
Age 45+ (census data)		67%		72.7-77.8%			69% (53%)
Age 18-44 (census data)		33%		22.2-27.3%			31% (47%)
Age 30-45 (census data)					22%		21% (26%)
Age 30-44 (census data)						19%	20% (25%)
Age 18-29 (census data)					8%	9%	11% (22%)

* Before weighting due to voting history and other demographics (likely age, sex, race and perhaps party id)

Category	We Ask America	Insider Advantage	Ipsos/Reuter	CNN/Time	2012 Actual	2012 Estimate
Poll: Days Before Election	2	3	8-11	4-8	0	0
Percent Undecided	14%	2%	10%	8%	0	0
Percent May Change Choice				43%	0	0
Decided Day of Election					17%	19%
Decided Day Before or 2 Days Before Election					38%	17%
Decided within Last Week						50%
Decided in January					76%	75%
Decided prior year					24%	25%
Voters or Polled	988	718	398	505	601,166	480,000
Voters/Adult Pop Voters					16.5%	13.1%
GOP Primary Winner/%	Gingrich 32%	Gingrich 32%	Romney 37%	Romney 33%	Gingrich 40%	?? 30%
GOP 2nd Place/%	Romney 28%	Romney 29%	Paul 16%	Gingrich 23%	Romney 28%	?? 27%
GOP 3rd Place	Paul 14%	Paul 15%	Santorum 16%	Santorum 16%	Santorum 17%	Paul 20%
GOP 4th Place	Santorum 9%	Santorum 11%	Gingrich 12%	Paul 13%	Paul 13%	Santorum 10%
GOP %			100%	63-83%	71%	65%
Indy %				17-37%	25%	28%
Dem %					4%	7%
Very Conservative %					36%	40%
Somewhat Conservative %					32%	28%
Moderate or Liberal%					32%	32%
Moderate %					23%	22%
Somewhat Liberal %					7%	7%
Very Liberal %					2%	3%
Male (census data)					51%	52% (48%)
Age 65+ (census data)					27%	26% (18%)
Age 45-64 (census data)					45%	43% (35%)
Age 30-44 (census data)					19%	20% (25%)
Age 18-29 (census data)					9%	11% (22%)

IPSOS claims to have weighted results to "South Carolina current population registered voter data by gender, age, education, ethnicity and an eight item political values scale".

Time/CNN claims to have weighted to "reflect statewide Census figures for gender, race, age, education and region of the state." Since older people are much less likely to vote, and virtually no non-whites vote in the GOP primary, it is unclear how much this is a distortion of the actual voting population for this primary.

GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out

This is not my usual tone for this blog, but I grow weary of bad polls and bad explanations of the GOP race.

From Wikipedia:
Garbage in garbage out "was coined as a teaching mantra by George Fuechsel,[1] an IBM 305 RAMAC technician/instructor in New York. Early programmers were required to test virtually each program step and cautioned not to expect that the resulting program would 'do the right thing' when given imperfect input. The underlying principle was noted by the inventor of the first programmable computing device design:

On two occasions I have been asked,—'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

In my years of working with health insurance data, we spent far more time cleaning up garbage data, redefining vague information into something more useful and coming up with models that rationally explain how healthcare services were used before we got to using much more than basic arithmetic. Rarely were T tests, R squared values or more sophisticated statistics used like actuaries or less successful competitors did. You can't put lipstick on a pig.

As I look at the internals of various primary polls for Iowa, New Hampshire and now South Carolina, I am struck by the number of times a poll with seriously flawed input data is touted by the media and used to build a false narrative. The worst case has to be the late December CNN Iowa poll, which surveyed ZERO voters who weren't registered Republicans, despite the undisputed significant voting by non-Republicans in Iowa GOP caucuses. The right % should have been 25%, the same % was demonstrated during the last non-competitive Iowa Democratic caucus (1996) - the same number that would be validated in the 2012 exit polls. Since the media either was ignorant of it, or gave so little warning, and there were no other polls for two days, the 24 hour media trumpted a nonexistent surge by Santorum due to this seriously flawed poll. So today, I read an article about how the evangelical leaders have coalesced around supporting Santorum... someone who would have likely stayed in 6th or maybe reached 5th place in Iowa and then returned home if not for a single flawed, heavily promoted poll.

Today I see an even worse poll, from some organization I've never heard of, that somehow believes that less than 5% of the voters in South Carolina's primary will be less than 40 years old and 55% will be at least 65 years old. For reference, in 2008 35% were older than 60 like in 2000 according to the exit poll. The 2000 exit poll showed that 25% were older than 60.

This poll is inexplicably given a weight rating of 4 bars out of 5 on Nate Silver's otherwise credible forecasting model. Aggregators favor combining as many polls as possible, no matter their quality, hoping that with enough garbage, the various garbage factors will cancel each other out. Some skilled analysts like Nate Silver, attempt to quantify and somewhat discount the garbage by using theoretical formulas about sampling error on a bell curve, applying some likely useful heuristics like the age of the poll, and employing the somewhat controversial, though still likely useful strategy of rating a pollster by how close it's polls come to predicting the actual result.

I guess this is better than nothing, but it is not something we did in the healthcare data analysis industry, nor did any of our competitors. Admittedly, we were spending millions of dollars on these tasks, while the polling aggregators do this for something with at least one or two zeros in their budget.

Still, I can't believe that spending a little effort on trying to adjust the data or at least dump a poll that has such problems as today's horrendously bad SC poll isn't low hanging fruit for these small organizations.

Nate Silver's latest article also repeats a widely spread meme that the South Carolina GOP is home to 60% evangelicals/born agains and as evidence, cites a 2008 exit poll that doesn't even ask this question. Worse yet, the 2000 GOP exit poll shows 34% belong to the religious right (which is not the same as born again/evangelical, but it is the closest I could find). Perhaps some non-exit poll has this 60%, but before I cite that, I want to do a serious look at the internals to figure out if other anomalies exist.

Another false notion:

Too often I hear that South Carolina isn't like New Hampshire where independents are such a factor. Wrong. It is an open primary. In 2000 when there Gore still had some modest competition from Senator Bradley, 39% of voters who identified themselves as Independent or Democratic voted in the GOP primary. This is compared to Iowa's caucus in 2012 where there was no competitive race for the Democrats and 25% of the GOP voters were non-Republicans.

These bad polls due to age distribution and independent voter % can heavily penalize Ron Paul - someone who the establishment wants to discredit, but I'll leave that explanation for another post.

As I look at suspect polling internals, I wonder if the accuracy of the aggregations in Iowa and New Hampshire weren't the beneficiaary of a certain amount of luck, and that a repeat of the NH Dem 08 primary is waiting.

So for the next week I'm going dumpster diving into SC and FL voting/polling data, sifting through the garbage, hoping to bring out some good.

Or for my dyslexic friends: IGOG. Into the Garbage, Out comes Good.

New Hampshire Primary Election Trivia

Over the last 60 years, Romney's 2012 vote total is a relatively high percent of all votes cast combined in the combine primaries in New Hampshire per official vote totals from the New Hampshire secretary of state.

Of the leading NH vote getters, only Henry Cabot Lodge in 1964 and Hillary Clinton in 2008 failed to be nominated by their party. The candidate who was elected President has been in the top 3 every time except in 1992 when Bill Clinton came in 4th with 12.4%.

Year	% of ALL Votes Cast for Leader	Leading Candidate	2nd Place Candidate	3rd Place Candidate
1952	36.1%	Eisenhower	27.8% - Taft	15.3% - Kefauver
1956	68.3%	Eisenhower	26.2% - Kefauver	4.6% - Stevenson
1960	52.7%	Nixon	36.8% - Kennedy	7.5% - Fisher
1964	26.9%	Lodge	23.7% - Johnson	16.9% - Goldwater
1968	52.2%	Nixon	18.4% - Johnson	18.1% - McCarthy
1972	38.9%	Nixon	20.3% - Muskie	16.3% - McGovern
1976	28.9%	Ford	28.3% - Reagan	12.5% - Carter
1980	29.0%	Reagan	20.8% - Carter	16.4% - Kennedy
1984	39.8%	Reagan	23.6% - Hart	16.6% - Mondale
1988	21.1%	Bush (Sr)	15.9% - Dole	15.7% - Dukakis
1992	26.9%	Bush (Sr)	19.1% - Buchanan	17.0% - Tsongas
1996	26.2%	Clinton (Bill)	19.8% - Buchanan	18.4% - Dole
2000	29.4%	McCain	19.9% - Gore	18.6% - Bush (Jr)
2004	30.3%	Kerry	20.7% - Dean	18.9% - Bush (Jr)
2008	21.7%	Clinton (Hillary)	20.3% - Obama	16.9% - McCain
2012	32.2%	Romney	19.1% - Paul	16.1% - Obama

Comparing Obama's result to past incumbent Presidents running for reelection, all of those who only received about 1/2 the votes of their own party were not reelected, all of those above this mark were reelected.

Year	% of Party	Candidate	% of All Votes
1956	98.9	Eisenhower	68.3
1964	95.3	Johnson	23.7
1984	86.4	Reagan	39.8
1996	84.3	Clinton	26.2
2012	81.1	Obama	16.1
2004	79.8	Bush	18.9
1972	67.6	Nixon	38.9
1992	53.2	Bush	26.9
1976	50.1	Ford	28.9
1968	49.6	Johnson	18.4
1980	47.1	Carter	20.8
1952	43.9	Truman	12.3

My NH Predictions

My Forecast

34.5	Romney
22.6	Paul
21.7	Huntsman

My age distribution post was updated around 2 PM EST as was my Indy vs. Republican Breakdown post.

Live Blog for the election night and an analysis of the quality of my predictions after the fact are here

At this point, I am assuming the last Suffolk poll is my base for predictions. It correlates with Nate Silver's poll and although I am VERY suspicious about how Suffolks 2 day rolling average could change from 39.0 to 34.6 to 33.2 then back up to 37.4 over the past two days (250 voters surveyed per day have a VERY large sampling error) Suffolk is the most recent poll (which matters most in volatile primaries). (I exclude ARG's polls as their quality repuation is not good). The news has been bad for Romney in the past few days, so I can't believe a poll that implies at least an 8 point increase for Romney on Monday vs. Sunday is truly representing the electorate. However, Suffolk has an excellent polling reputation and it provides enough detail to let me do some adjustments where I feel they are needed (vs. polling averages and aggregation models which are so complex I have no idea how to analyze the fundamentals).

For reasons detailed here, I also assume that 56% of the electorate will be "Independent" which in New Hampshire is legally called "Undeclared".

BTW, despite hearing frequently in the media, that Indy's are not a factor in South Carolina, they too have an open primary and the Dems do not have an interesting primary, and moreover, I believe it is held at a later date. So Indy's should be an underrated factor in SC. But more on that after tonight.

I am also adjusting due to age distribution. As detailed here I believe the Suffolk poll is too heavily weighted towards older voters. I have decided to chose the well regarded Marist poll for age distribution in my forecast, though by reputation, I am also enticed by the even more well regarded Selzer poll. However since Selzer only polled NH once, over a month ago, I am not sure if the same quality holds as with their famous Iowa polls.

When the exit polls come out, I will compare this to see whether I guessed right. While I am not satisfied that I fully understand the dependency function (given age, what is the chance you will vote for candidate X), due to time constraints, I will assume that most recent Suffolk poll captures this function well enough. For South Carolina I will have more time to analyze this.

Finally, I realize that these variables aren't really additive. There are co-dependencies. Given the larger uncertainties in these polling adjustments, I feel that this mathematical sloppiness is smaller than the inaccuracy of the underlying data and underlying model. I also don't claim accuracy to 3 significant digits. I use a single decimal point mainly because I think the difference between 2nd and 3rd place could be VERY close.

For the 7.4% undecideds, I will make a gut feel call and give 1% to all the candidates who will get 3% of the vote or less, and 1/3 of the remainder to the candidates who may appeal to the values of the voter, but who are generally perceived by the voter as having no chance to win (e.g. Paul, Gingrich, Santorum) split allocated linearly according to their base polling % (so 1/3 * 6.4 * 17.6/(17.6+10.6+9=1. For the remaining 2/3 of that 6.4% given 2/3 of it to Huntsman who has momentum and 1/3 to Romney who has perception of being the odds on winner).

I wish I had more time to develop a reasonable method for allocating people who change their preference. Suffolk doesn't provide 2nd choice votes and I didn't have time (like I did for Iowa) to look at the PPP poll which does provide that info. We'll try harder for SC. So I went with my gut, which is informed by watching too much cable news.

So how did I get at the numbers at the top?

Last Suffolk Poll	Candidate	Indy Split Change	Age Distribution Change	Undecided Allocation	Last Minute Candidate Switch	Total
37.4	Romney	-1.9	+.2	+1.4	-2.6	34.5
17.6	Paul	1.2	+1.8	+1	+1.0	22.6
15.6	Huntsman	2.7	-1.6	+2.8	+2.2	21.7

Indies Vital in New Hampshire

Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman attract many more Independent voters in New Hampshire than Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. So getting the right mix of Independent voters is very important to accurate polling.

To date, only the last Selzer poll over a month ago and a couple of the Suffolk tracking polls have been near the 50% Indy split which should occur on election day. The daily Suffolk tracking polls have been particularly confusing as they have varied from 37% to 48.5% Indy split.

Why is virtually every poll missing the right mix of Independent voters?

In New Hampshire, undeclared voters (Independents) may vote in the GOP primary Tuesday. Currently they make up 42% of all registered voters in the state. Traditionally, the percent of independent voters in a NH primary when both Democratic and Republican primaries are contested is very similar to the percent of registered independent voters. However, when one party has an unchallenged incumbent (like 1996 with President Clinton or 2004 with President Bush), the percent of independents in the opposing parties primary goes way up. See stats below. % of Registered voters comes from state controlled lists (often reported via news services). The % of actual voters in a primary comes from exit polls.

New Hampshire Independent Voter Percentage

Year	% of All Voters	% of GOP Primary	% of Dem Primary
1996	28%	35%	No Contest
2000	38%	39%	36%
2004	37.7%	No Contest	52%
2008	44.9%	37%	44%
2012	40.7%	51-56%??	No Contest

The range of independent turnout for 2012 GOP Primary is based on linear extrapolation from the 1996 and 2004 primaries with the low number assuming a similar ratio of % in the GOP primary vs. Registered Voters from 1996 while the high number assuming a similar ration of % in the Dem Primary vs. Registered Voters from 2004.

Now, what are pollsters using as their ratio of Independents for next Tuesday's contest? What would the difference be if they had a different overall Indy ratio (based on their own candidate specific results by party breakdown)? See below:

Pollster	% of Independents	Poll's Romney Lead	Romney Lead w/56% Indies
NBC/Marist	38%	20%	16%
Magellan	39%	20%	??
PPP	42%	17%	13%
Suffolk	41.1%	19.8%	17.7%
UNH/Boston Globe	43%	22%	19%
UNH/WMUR	43%	24%	22%
ARG	44%	19%	14%
Selzer/Bloomberg	53%	23%	??
Rasmussen	UNKNOWN	24%	??
CNN/Time	UNKNOWN	27%	??
Zogby/Washington Times	UNKNOWN	14%	??

Although some pollsters provided Indy vs GOP breakdowns at the poll level, some did not also breakdown splits by candidate by Indy vs. GOP so they have a ?? in the left column.

Those with UNKNOWN may have even excluded ALL non-GOP registered voters as CNN has done for every Iowa poll. Take those polls with a HUGE grain of salt.