2009 VA Gov Electorate Voted 51-43% for McCain; PPP finds 2013 Electorate Giving 45% to Romney

John McCain, seen here with Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell in Oct. '09, wound up being a valuable asset to the campaign. Of the Virginians that voted on election day '09, 51% said they supported him in '08. Photo courtesy of Preston Gannaway & The Virginian-Pilot

Yesterday, Public Policy Polling released their second Virginia Governor poll of the year, with very little changed from the last survey in January. Terry McAuliffe (D) maintains his 5 point lead over Ken Cuccinelli (42-37%), while McAuliffe's net favorability rating fell slightly, and Cuccinelli's rose slightly. Oh, and in a rare move, the number of undecided voters actually increased from 13% to 21% since the last survey 5 months ago.

At the same time, PPP finds the Virginia electorate remains largely unchanged as well. Five months ago, Democrats held a 3 point partisan identification advantage (35% Dem, 32% Rep, 32% Ind), which is now down to one point (34% Dem, 33% Rep, 33% Ind). The racial identification findings from January and now are virtually identical (74% white, 18% black, 8% other), as well as ideological I.D., age I.D., gender, and '2012 vote'.

But how does the PPP electorate compare to the one found by exit polls in 2009, when Republican Bob McDonnell defeated Democrat Creigh Deeds in a landslide?

In most ways, it's similar, with one big exception.

White voters comprised a slightly larger slice of the electorate in '09 (78%) than what PPP finds now (74%), but not enough to significantly alter the poll results. The 2009 race featured an R+4 party I.D., while PPP finds D+1 (again, the difference is not enough to substantially change the survey result if reweighted). PPP also finds a larger gender turnout gap than seen in 2009, as well as a slightly older electorate, but nothing that would change the fundamentals of their topline.

The one exception to the above paragraph can be seen in the crosstab regarding the 2012 vote. Often times, pollsters will ask respondents who they voted for in the previous presidential election, mostly to get an idea of how the pool of survey takers compares to the prior presidential electorate (this question was frequently used in survey analysis in the run-up to the South Carolina 1st Congressional District special election between Mark Sanford and Elizabeth Colbert-Busch to gain insight into the strength of GOP turnout).

As has been noted here before, off-year, non-presidential races have a tendency (though not always) to attract less Democratic friendly electorates than in presidential years (see the 2010 vs. 2008 general election exit polls). But that is not the case in either of PPP's Virginia Governor polls. In both surveys, 49% of respondents say they voted for Barack Obama in 2012, while 45% claim they supported Mitt Romney. 6% say they supported someone else, or do not remember. That's an identical margin to the actual result in Virginia last November, when Obama carried the state 51-47%.

Gov. Nikki Haley looks strong in SC-1, But Not As Strong As In November 2010

Gov. Haley (R - SC), 2nd from left, pictured with staff for Vogue photo-shoot in 2012. Photo courtesy of Norman Jean Roy & Vogue.

In all the hysteria surrounding the circus that was the South Carolina First Congressional Special Election, a little-noticed poll finding from PPP's now infamous "Colbert-Busch surging" April survey surely got the attention of both Gov. Nikki Haley and her likely 2014 opponent State Senator Vincent Sheheen (D).

In the same poll where PPP found Elizabeth Colbert-Busch with a 9 point lead over Mark Sanford, Gov. Nikki Haley led  Sheheen by a margin of 44-38%; much smaller than the margin by which Mitt Romney carried the first district in 2012 (58-40%), and indeed, smaller than the margin Mark Sanford eventually won the district (54-45%).

Not only that, her 44-38% lead over Sheheen in a heavily Republican district represents quite the deterioration in her support since election night 2010.

Unfortunately for researchers, determining Haley's support in the 2010 Governor's race by congressional district is NOT easy. For starters, the boundaries of District 1 were entirely different when Haley was first elected in November 2010. And to make things MORE difficult, South Carolina does not provide gubernatorial results by congressional district (because SC districts rarely follow actual county borders). But thanks to Harry Enten of The Guardian and the South Carolina Election Commission, I was able to track down the Haley v. Sheheen results in every precinct that makes up the CURRENT District 1. Through that research, it was determined that Nikki Haley defeated Vincent Sheheen for Governor in CURRENT-DAY SC-1 by a margin of  58-40% (the same margin by which Romney carried the district against Obama). See the table below for South Carolina Governor Results in EACH county that is at least partially contained within the 1st district: (for a complete tabulation of the 2010 Governor votes in each 1st congressional district precinct, go here.)

Now you can see why 44-38% in a district she carried by 18 points bodes very poorly for Haley, especially considering that her overall winning margin in 2010 was just four points, or 51-47%.

But not so fast. Wasn't that April PPP poll widely canned in the aftermath of the SC-1 election? Remember, that poll that showed a wild fluctuation to a very Democratic friendly electorate for one survey, before returning back to it's nearly identical electorate from before in the final poll?

If you agree with The New Republic's Nate Cohn and The Guardian's Harry J. Enten's take on tha April "Colbert-Busch surging" poll from PPP, then Nikki Haley can take solace in the fact that she's likely doing a bit better in SC-1 than a 44-38% lead over her Democratic challenger.

To see exactly how well she COULD BE DOING, let's simply reweight the April PPP racial I.D. numbers and ideological I.D. numbers to the two survey findings that fell more in line with the 2012 SC-1 presidential electorate (their 1st and final SC-1 poll).

The chart below takes a look at how Nikki Haley's numbers would have looked against Vincent Sheheen in the 1st District had the racial identification of the respondents looked like PPP's March and May surveys:

As you can see, Governor Haley would've had as much as a 9 point lead over Sheheen (44-35%) had PPP found an SC-1 electorate like they had in March.

The Roller Coaster Electorate - A Guide to PPP's South Carolina Special Election Polling

Photo courtesy of rawstory.com

Last night, reputable polling firm Public Policy Polling (D) had one of their worst misses in months, while newcomer Red Racing Horses did little to advance their stature.

They were the only two polling firms to release public surveys on the South Carolina 1st Congressional District special election between Mark Sanford (R) and Elizabeth Colbert-Busch (D). And neither was able to see that the infamous "Appalachain Trail" Governor was about to make a triumphant landslide return to Congress.

To be fair, it wasn't an easy outcome to predict given Sanford's luck over the last three weeks.  He was abandoned by the national Republican Party, he was competing against a pseudo-celebrity challenger, he was being outspent 5-1, and embarrassing details about his divorce to Jenny Sanford were hitting the press.

Nonetheless, The Guardian's Harry J. Enten has a great post-mortem on the pollster failings in this race, specifically PPP's 2-week old finding of Colbert-Busch leading Sanford by 9 points, which as Enten notes, has the dubious distinction of being one of the worst polls taken in any special election since 2004.

Enten's piece, as well as a twitter debate between The New Republic's Nate Cohn and a Daily Kos tweeter, prompted me to take a closer look at the shifting electorate reported by PPP over the three polls and six weeks they surveyed this special election. 

As the chart below indicates, as brief as it was, the SC-1 special election was somewhat of a roller-coaster ride according to PPP, in terms of both who led the race and who PPP expected to comprise the electorate:

The race started in late-March with the Democrat at a very, very small advantage, which was unusual considering the partisan leanings of the 1st District, as well as the fact that PPP poll respondents looked awfully similar to the 2012 presidential electorate; they supported Romney over Obama by 56-40% (similar to the actual 58-40% margin), conservatives greatly outnumbered moderates and liberals by a 2-1 margin, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 15%, and African Americans only made up 12% of the electorate.