A Battle's heating up in South Florida, in the 22nd Congressional District. State Senate Minority Leader Ron Klein (D) is taking on 13-term Republican Clay Shaw.
This Being South Florida, you would naturally expect this to be competitive, especially in a district that voted 53% for Kerry, and with Shaw voting with Bush 90% of the time! (or so Klein says in his ad, here. Shaw, incidentally, won by 522 votes over Elaine Bloom (D) in 2000, but this was before redistricting.
Many people were dismayed when when RT Strategies and Constituent Dynamics released a poll showing Klein losing to Shaw 52-44, putting Shaw above the "50% safe line", and worse, outside the MOE: (52-3.1=48.9, 44+3.1=47.1)
Deconstruction of this poll occurs, after the flip.
FL-22 contains a very long strip (60 miles) of Broward and Palm Beach counties, and in some places is only 1 mile or 2 wide, thanks to the wonderful gerrymandering of the Florida Legislature (its the red thing that looks like the monster from the black lagoon):
So what's good news contained in the poll? For one, 14% of Shaw's support comes from "Leaners", compared to only 6% of Klein's. But more importantly, the partisan breakdown is a little out of wack, from the SoS website, there are:
175,787 Republicans and 151,811 Democrats, of 429,429 registered voters, meaning about 41% Republican, 35% Democrat, and 24% Independent. But the breakdown of partisan ID in the poll? 45% Republican, 32% Democrat, and 23% Independent.
This means both Democrats and Independents are underrepresented, inflating Shaw's numbers at the expense of Klein's!
Shaw's support, according to the poll, is 39 strong/14 weak, and Klein 38 strong/6 weak. Republicans vote 63% for Shaw, with 13% additional leaning, 15% for Klein, with 5% more leaning. Democrats break down: 26%(!!)-5% Shaw; 59%-8% Klein. Indies are: 9%-27% Shaw; 53%-8% Klein.
(Incidentally, 27% of Indies are only leaning Shaw. As Klein's name rec goes up, we can convince these voters to vote Klein, or at least them push them to undecided. Just half of these Shaw-leaning indie voters swinging would account to a shift of 3%...potentially enough to swing this election.)
So what should the numbers be? After adjusting for Partisan ID:
37.1% of voters strongly support Shaw, 13.5% lean Shaw.
39.6% of voters strongly support Klein, 6.7% lean Klein.
Summing this up, we get, roughly, 50.6-46.3, a margin of 4.3%, as opposed to the 8% margin earlier and, well within the MOE of +/-3.1%. (The MoE dictates that there is a 95% chance that Shaw's support is between 47.5-53.8, and Klein's between 43.2-49.4. Assuming normal distribution, there is actually a 5% chance Klein is currently leading Shaw!)
(Stat Junkies: Yes, I made the flaw of assuming normal distribution from the median result of this poll, which may or may not be fatal. I got this number by assuming that the MoE refered to 95% confidence, meaning that the 3.1% margin equaled 1.96 standard dev's from the median. Shaw's lowest number is 47.5, and this is .78 stddev's away from Klein's median, 46.3. There's a 22.4% chance Klein is above 47.5. Similarly, there is a 22.4% chance Shaw is below 49.4. Since both these conditions need to be true, I got a result of 5%. Ish.)
So some key findings:
-26% of Democrats strongly support Clay Shaw. Why the f...good question!
-A whopping 75% of independents who support Shaw are only leaning toward him!
-This election is still very VERY winnable.
-Bush Approval in this district, adjusted for partisan ID from 48-45 approve(!!!) is 46-47 disapprove. Incidentally, Indies here have a lower approval rating fof GWB (31%) than Democrats (35%).
Thoughts and comments?
I hope to do this with other districts. If people could link me to party registration by district in other states, I'd be VERY grateful.