I've been trying to figure out how this election is close, despite the fact that new voters appear to be overwhelmingly for Kerry, plus independents have shown up as being for Kerry.
The latest Democracy Corps graphs shed some light on the subject. Hit the link for a bit of commentary.
According to this survey, only 7-8% of the electorate is made up of new voters, and these new voters are breaking for Kerry about 60-40 (fig 11). This is consistent with other polls of first time-voters. But I thought that first time voters would be a larger proportion of the electorate than the 7% this poll shows. Two points:
First, Kerry is apparently banking on a turnout of between 115 and 120 million voters. Based on this poll, this seems feasible. Since the "already voted" category may include infrequent voters, that means there are at least 7 million new voters. That puts turnout at at least 108 million. If turnout is at 120 million,
Again, the Democratic Loyalist world is fired up. Unions, which were once not behind Kerry as much as they had been for Gore, have been brought back into the fold. African American voters are fired up about voter suppression. And non-church goers do not want God as their co-president (with all due respect God, I'm fine with You being co-president, as long as You register as an independent).
Within the contested world, Kerry is doing well with Young voters and Post-Graduate males, but has small losses among Married blue-collar women in particular, and working women in general. The reason Kerry is talking up the minimum wage is that these groups are ripest for the picking.
What's interesting is the demographics where there is a party ID/presidential vote gap. Post-Graduate men who do not consider themselves Democrats are voting for Kerry (+10 for Kerry, +4 on Party ID), while working class women who do not consider themselves Republicans are voting for Bush. (-19/-26 for married blue collar women, +8/+14 for poor women, -6/-1 for older blue collar women).
The first group is something I want to pick up on. In a previous election analysis, Democracy Corps has claimed that this "Education Gap" is the new shift in the electorate for 2004, and that it will persist for coming elections. I think this party ID/vote gap shows this not to be the case. A certain portion of well-educated voters are voting against Bush the man, and I suspect they will be happy to vote for a moderate Republican who has, shall we say, a better command of the English language.
The second group represent people who think Democratic, but seem to want to vote for Bush, either for emotional reasons or because they're "security moms". Bush is all over places like GMA and Oprah trying to keep these voters in the fold. They need to be convinced that Kerry can handle the War in Iraq; attacking on the missing bomb material cache will be important. Playing up economic issues will also help.
Why are these voters staying with Bush? Among women in the Party/Presidential gap, it looks like the "terror gap" and "Iraq gap" are a bit higher than they are for the overall populace.
The vote fraud issue also appears to have some positive effect in moving voters to vote Democratic. People don't respond well to voter suppression, and it plays very will into the preconception that the Republican party doesn't particularly like African-Americans. So I would suspect that this story, the missing explosives, and a bit on the minimum wage and health care, are the stories to push in the final hours.