Winning in West Virginia didn’t change Bernie Sanders’ chances of winning the Democratic nomination. Donald Trump is more popular when poll respondents don’t have to talk to another person. And there are substantial demographic divides in support for Hillary Clinton vs. Trump. This is HuffPollster for Wednesday, May 11, 2016.
SANDERS WINS WEST VIRGINIA, BUT DOESN’T CUT INTO HIS DELEGATE DEFICIT - Mollie Reilly: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia, edging out rival Hillary Clinton for a majority of the state’s 29 delegates. It’s a minor win for Sanders: West Virginia awards delegates proportionately, and while votes are still being counted, he’s unlikely to win by enough percentage points to significantly dent Clinton’s lead in the delegate race. Sanders was expected to do well in West Virginia, where voters are largely white and working class. He also likely benefited from the state’s primary system, which allows independent voters to vote in either the Democratic or Republican election. More than 250,000 West Virginia primary voters were unaffiliated, according to state data." [HuffPost]
Was the Sanders win buoyed by Trump voters? - Philip Bump: "Preliminary exit polls -- numbers that will be re-weighted as votes start coming in -- suggest that more Democrats who are voting for Bernie Sanders on Tuesday are likely to support Donald Trump in November than Hillary Clinton. But MSNBC's Steve Kornacki tweeted a more remarkable data point: Almost 4 in 10 Sanders voters plan to support Trump over Sanders. There are usually some people in exit poll data who say they'd vote against their preferred candidate in the general election. After all, the general election offers different choices than the primary, and if you're a conservative Democrat, you may think that Sanders is preferable to Clinton or vice versa, but also that a Republican would be preferable to both." [WashPost]
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TRUMP SUPPORT VARIES BY TYPE OF POLL - Thomas B. Edsall: "There is...strong evidence that most traditional public opinion surveys inadvertently hide a segment of Trump’s supporters. Many voters are reluctant to admit to a live interviewer that they back a candidate who has adopted such divisive positions. In matchups between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump does much better in polls conducted online, in which respondents click their answers on a computer screen, rather than in person-to-person landline and cellphone surveys. An aggregation by RealClearPolitics of 10 recent telephone polls gives Clinton a nine-point lead over Trump. In contrast, the combined results for the YouGov and Morning Consult polls, which rely on online surveys, place Clinton’s lead at four points. Why is this important? Because an online survey, whatever other flaws it might have, resembles an anonymous voting booth far more than what you tell a pollster does." [NYT]
The difference between online and phone polls is constant since last June - HuffPollster has noted this “mode difference” in the past. The effect never went away, even as Trump’s candidacy gained steam and he became the undeniable frontrunner and presumptive nominee. In fact, the difference got bigger in March and April. The chart below shows the breakdown for all national Republican primary polls since Trump announced he was running in June 2015.
DEMOGRAPHICS MATTER IN A TRUMP VS. CLINTON MATCHUP - Hannah Hartig, John Lapinski and Stephanie Psyllos: "As Trump’s campaign switches focus to defeating the Democratic nominee in November, data from our latest poll show that he may also need to focus on improving his standing with a number of key voter groups. Clinton, who has dominated Sanders throughout the primary cycle among non-white voters, continues to do extremely well against Trump among these voters in a hypothetical head-to-head. She wins black voters 86 percent to 9 percent – a 77-point gap. Clinton also wins Hispanics 61 percent to 28 percent.…Trump wins the white vote 52 percent to 41 percent….There is also a significant gender gap this election cycle, with Clinton beating Trump by 19 points among women, while Trump carries men by an 11 percent margin." [MSNBC]
OPINIONS OF OBAMA'S ECONOMIC LEGACY ARE DRIVEN BY PARTISANSHIP - HuffPollster: "In a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, just one-third of Americans said that [Barack] Obama made things better for the economy after the financial crisis. Two-thirds of Democrats, but just 6 percent of Republicans, think Obama made things better after the financial crisis; 39 percent of Democrats, and just 2 percent of Republicans, give him credit for helping them personally…To demonstrate just how much that partisanship plays a role in views of the economy, the HuffPost/YouGov poll split respondents into two groups. Half were asked about the performance of the economy since the year 2008. Half were asked how things had changed since Obama was elected. Republicans in the second group — the ones responding directly to questions about Obama — were considerably more likely to say things had gotten worse…. Democrats in the group who saw Obama’s name were far more reluctant to admit that income inequality has risen during his tenure than those in the group who didn’t see his name." [HuffPost]
**HuffPollster is taking Thursday and Friday off this week so we can attend the American Association for Public Opinion Research annual conference. We’ll be back on Monday, May 16.**
WEDNESDAY'S 'OUTLIERS' - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-A focus group finds that swing voters don't believe Donald Trump's policies would benefit the rich. [WashPost]
-Here's why you shouldn't give too much weight to yesterday's poll showing Trump ahead of Clinton in Ohio. [HuffPost]
-Andrew Prokop provides some reasons why Hillary Clinton's lead against Trump could vanish. [Vox]
-Half of Americans who are 50 or older plan to work beyond the retirement age of 65. [AP-NORC]