Unlikely Voter

Gallup did a poll of religion in America, by state. I thought it would be interesting to chart that against Barack Obama’s 2012 vote share.

Here are the results.

Sometimes, as in the case of Roe v. Wade, a change in the law of the land will result in a large change of public opinion in favor of the new change. Once the change is made, certain levels of resistance go away, and others just come to accept it.

Not so in the case of PPACA, Pew finds.

Hey look, a post!

While I’m sure everyone involved is so proud of Vanderbilt’s data filtering app for its recent poll of Tennessee showing Barack Obama still losing in one of the two states he ran behind John Kerry in, but the problem is that the details are made less transparent.

What a shame.

Rather than look at just one state, I thought it might be interesting to see what Swingometer has to say about a national poll, and as it turns out, the most recent national poll is the tracking poll from Rasmussen Reports.

This one is much better news for Mitt Romney than the North Carolina poll was.

North Carolina was President Obama’s narrowest win in 2008. I’ve long thought that the state would be the quickest, easiest pickup for Republicans in 2012. As the final matchup between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney shapes up, early polling begins to confirm that guess.

Quinnipiac University put out a pair of polls this week I thought were interesting to note. Now, I have and still do think that it’s too soon to test general election Presidential matchups, so don’t think I’m reading a lot into these. But apart from that, I find it odd that Mitt Romney is doing better in Pennsylvania than he is in Ohio.

Forgive me for venturing out from strict horserace poll analysis, but given the the administration’s recent moves on coal power, I couldn’t help but wonder how that might affect the President in swing states, should prices rise in coal-burning states.

A check I made this morning suggests that the answer is yes, if coal is an issue in this election, it could swing close states.

Marist College polled South Carolina for NBC. By request, I’m looking at this poll, but not because of anything it says about the upcoming primaries in the state.

Instead, it’s the projection of the general election that is interesting. It seems to suggest a wave for the Democrats bigger than 2006 or 2008.

Ten years ago, Gallup started polling the opinions Americans had of various industries. Two years later, the US Government was thrown into the mix. Monday, Gallup looked back to see how they’ve all done over the last decade.

It turns out the Federal Government is now less popular than any polled industry. Including Bankers, Lawyers, and Oil men.

I mentioned recently that broader polling pools favor Democrats, so when a big new poll of adults comes out from Gallup that shows Barack Obama to be in trouble, I take notice.

This week Gallup polled four Republican candidates against Barack Obama. For the three leading Republicans the results are typical, and do more to show the difference between polls of adults and polls of registered voters (Gallup polled both).

But oddly enough, Ron Paul was different.

By request, we have a somewhat unusual poll: We Ask America asked Iowa Republicans which candidate they don’t want as the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012.

As is usual this time of year, the poll is skewed by the inclusion of non-candidates. This time, overwhelmingly so.

By request, I took a look at this poll by PPP for Daily Kos and SEIU. Markos Moulitsas himself is hyping the poll as showing an enthusiasm gap, which of course was one big indicator of the electoral wipeout we saw in 2010.

I think that he’s right, to a degree. However I read the figures as having two conclusions: First, the TEA party effect is still there, and Republicans are slightly more engaged than Democrats at this early point in the cycle. Second, the Union activism of this year is not having the same engagement effect with Democrats, that the TEA party, the ARRA, and the PPACA had with Republicans.