Analyzing Texas Polling on March 4th Democratic Primary

Four surveys were released today and they show anything from an Obama lead of 6% (American Research Group) to a Clinton lead of 16% (Insider Advantage). But there is a lot of information available from the Texas Credit Union League surey that was conducted by Hamilton Research and Public Opinion Strategies. That survey puts Clinton up 49%-41%, but the useful part of this survey is that it includes over 100 pages of great crosstabs to look through. Here are a few things that stood out to me:

Obama has a 65%-16% lead among African Americans, who made up 18% of the sample. Hispanics made up 30% and Clinton holds a 63-32% lead among that group.

Obama is ahead among white men 50-44%, but trails badly among white women (27%-59%) and Hispanic women (21%-71%).

Independents made up 10% of the sample, and Obama led among that group 61-27%. Clinton led among Democrats 53-37%.

Interestingly, Obama is ahead among the 40% of respondents who said that they would vote early 46-42%. This runs counter to what seemingly happened in other states like California, where Clinton appeared to bank a lot of early votes.

One other interesting note...Clinton leads 54-32% among those who say the economy is the most important issue and she even leads 51-44% among those who say Iraq is the most important issue. But, oddly, those who said healthcare was most important were more likely to favor Obama, 53-43%. The numbers for Iraq and healthcare seem to run counter to what we have typically seen in other surveys.

Based on these figures, it looks like Clinton needs to hold on to white women and Hispanics to win in Texas. Obama needs to get high turnout from African Americans, and win 85-90% of that group as he has in other states, and he also needs to hold on to his advantage among white men.

In case you are wondering, in 2004, 24% of the Democratic primary electorate was comprised of white men and 27% was made up of white women. Hispanics accounted for 24% of the electorate while African Americans made up 21%. If we see roughly equal turnout among Hispanics and African Americans, then Clinton needs to keep a large margin among white women to make up for the fact that Obama will likely win African Americans by a larger share than she wins Hispanics.

Finally, independents made up 20% of the Democratic primary electorate in 2004, but only 10% of the sample for the Texas Credit Union League survey. If turnout among independents is higher, that would help Obama based on the support he is getting from that group in the survey.

CORRECTION: Thanks to xstryker for noting that I originally had the polling numbers in the first paragraph attributed to the wrong polling organizations.