2009 election revisionism: Obama and Independents

posted at 12:32 am on November 6, 2009 by Karl
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What did the 2009 election in Virginia say about Independents’ support for Pres. Obama? At least one prominent academic challenges the narrative of Indie flight:

“The biggest misreported part of this election is that you have large numbers of independents who went for Obama now going for the Republicans. Not true,” said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.

Democratic-leaning independents who turned out big time in 2008 are being compared to a smaller number of conservative-leaning independents this year who likely include a fair number of “Tea Party” attendees, the professor said. The apparent swing among independents is a function of who turned out Tuesday and who didn’t, he said.

While a major storyline coming out of Tuesday’s results has been that skittish moderates abandoned Obama and fled to the GOP out of concerns over rising deficits, there is little evidence in exit polls to support that. Of Obama voters who showed up in Virginia Tuesday, only 12% slid to Republican Bob McDonnell, according to exit polls. With John McCain’s 2008 voters defecting to Deeds at a 5% rate in the same surveys, the net trickle away from Obama is hardly enough to explain, or even substantially contribute to, McDonnell’s 59% to 41% trouncing of Democrat Creigh Deeds.

Dr. Sabato’s analysis is based on fairly obvious points about intensity and turnout in off-year and midterm elections. Moreover, Sabato later makes the point that the 2009 elections showed that Obama was unable to save Democrats in such elections. However, his analysis should be subject to a few caveats.

First, as presidents become less popular, people tend to “remember” voting for the other guy. The percentage of Obama voters — and the percentage who then voted for McDonnell — may be understated.

Second, even taking the numbers at face value, the exit polls do not provide crosstabs that allow us to see the percentage of each bloc of party-switchers that were Independents. It is possible that there were more Independents that voted Obama-McDonnell than McCain-Deeds, because — to take one easy hypothesis — McCain had some appeal to Virginia Dems in rural areas or from military backgrounds.

Third, the exit poll inherently tells us nothing about Independents who did not vote in Virginia this year. Nationally, Gallup tells us that among adults, Independents are shifting to the right generally, and on a range of issues including government regulation, gun rights, immigration, traditional values, abortion and global warming. If we look at the current basic Pollster.com poll average, Obama’s job approval has dropped below 50% with Independents — and if those results are filtered to show just polls of voters, disapproval and approval are at a virtual tie (44.8%/44.7%). Depending on which average you prefer, Obama’s job approval with Independents has dropped 10-15% so far. Given that Virginia’s 2008 election results were close to the national average, we cannot assume that a larger turnout would have a difference-maker for Deeds in Virginia.

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