Once more we take you inside the crosstabs of Rasmusen's latest poll. This time for the GOP South Carolina primary.
Big news items: Romney has matched Huckabee in a conservative Christian stronghold where pundits always said he would lose. The secondary story is the continued collapse of Rudy along with the Thompson freefall.

Topline numbers: Rudy loses a point since the beginning of September (this is his second lowest number in any SC) poll. The other news: Thompson losing six. Huckabee loses two and Romney gains five. McCain gets a three point bounce. (Note, I calculate a standard deviation of 6.6% for SC Rasmussen polls this year so the most significant number is the Thompson decline).

• Romney made huge gains in the 18-29 crowd with a whopping 19% increase in the young age bracket. (Again, I should point out that this number, like the Iowa internals, are way out of bounds but they're interesting nonetheless). Where did they come from? The 35% unsure mark at the beginning of December went down to 15%. The upstarts are finally making up their mind.
  
  
• Thompson dropped like a rock among voters age 30-39 losing 30% points over two weeks according to this Rass. poll. (Again, this is an outlier but I have to note it as something that stands out). Meanwhile Huckabee gained 14% of these folks to his camp. Conversely though, Huck lost 14% of the 50-64 crowd (from 32% down to 18%).
  
  
• Romney and Huckabee each took home 24% of the "Conservative" leaning GOPers while Thompson lost 7% of this demo, down to 12% from 19% two weeks ago.
  
  
• If you're wondering, no dramatic loses for Rudy... rather, just a steady decline by small percentage points across the board. His only gains were among "Liberal" leaning GOP primary goers and the 40-49 demo (9% increases in each demo).
  
  
• Speaking of political leanings. Thompson lost 22% from liberal leaning GOPers. (Note, this is probably a small sample of the overall group of people polled so no biggie). Interestingly enough, Rudy garners 75% of the "don't know" crowd when it comes to political leanings.
  
  
• Family stat notables. Romney is catching up with Huckabee among married voters but Huckabee leads in the "voters with kids" demo.
  
  
• Income brackets. Thompson tanks in almost each wealth demo across the board (losing an average 10% in each bracket). Romney catches Huck for the lower income bracket (23% each).
  
  
• Huckabee has a solid lock on the Evangelical vote with Thompson coming in second. (Huckabee: 42%; Thompson 14%; Romney 12%; Undecided 11%). But Romney now leads among SC Protestants and dominates among Catholics (34% to Rudy's 13%). Romney also leads the "Other" category of religion.
  
  
• As far as vote change probability goes... Romney and Huckabee actually lead the pack with 60% and 51% of those polled indicating that their vote might change. I think this readily reflects the tenuous nature of the voting pack altogether. Looking at the other state polls we find the same thing with Rudy or whoever the top two folks are. People are still really uncertain about where this is going and who they support.
  
  
• Finally, on the issues. Romney wins the on "Economy" and "Immigration" while Huck takes "National Security" and ties on the "War in Iraq". Huck lost serious ground on both the Economy and Immigration demo. Huck actually lost 16% points on the "War in Iraq" and is now in a 5 way tie. I also should note the McCain is picking up some slow steam across the board but most notably on issues of "National Security"

To sum up it...

> Romney's hard hitting challenges on Huckabee's conservative record may be capping Huck's sudden burst on the scene.
> Rudy keeps sliding but Thompson is an a relative freefall.
> Huckabee still dominates the middle-aged evangelical base but Mitt is cleaning up the younger crowd and the other religious demos.
> People are still wary of the top choices across the board.

Labels: poll, polling, rasmussen, south carolina

Rasmussen Reports came out this week with an interesting pre-holiday poll asking the question: "During your Holiday Family Gatherings, will you and your family discuss politics with a passion, avoid political discussins like the plague, or occasionally talk about the political news of the day?"

The results?

"Discuss politics with a passion": 15%
"Avoid political discussion": 25%
"Occasionally talk about politics": 58%
"Not sure": 2%

Couple of bullet points from the crosstabs:

• There was no difference in the sexes. Men and women alike lined up with the numbers above.
  
  
• However, women under 40 were almost twice as likely to "discuss politics with a passion" than their counterpart males (20% vs. 11%). In fact, 30% of men under 40 indicated that they tried to "avoid political discussion"
  
  
• Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to discuss politics with a passion (22% vs. 13%)
  
  
• People who are investors were more likely to avoid political discussion but its pretty negligible.
  
  
• Interestingly, while "passionate" discussion was relatively the same among Whites, Blacks and "Others" (16%, 10% and 16%) Blacks were far more likely to discuss politics occasionally (56%, 72%, 54%), and avoidance of political discussion lines up in a like manner (26%, 16%, 27%).
  
  
• Other age breakdowns. It appears that the fluctuation of "passionate" and "avoidance" goes in cycles. 18 to 29 avoid more; 30-39 more passionate; 40-49 less passionate; 50-64 more passionate; 65+ avoid more.
  
  
• How about incomes? Avoidance seems to be the key variable: Under 20K - 42% avoid; 20K-40K 28% avoid; 40K-60K: 17% avoid; 60K-75K: 18% avoid; 75K-100K 22% avoid; 100K+ 15% avoid. Most "passionate" bracket? The last one, 100K+ at 22%
  

Labels: christmas, election, holidays, politics, poll, polling

UPDATE: I caught wind of this story last night and immediately called my source. He told me that he would be very surprised if it were connected to Romney & Co. Then he said: "our client is not political. At best we're a 3rd party vendor in this." So the question is this: Target Consulting does fit the 3rd party story but they are decidedly political. More to come... stay tuned.

National Review Online has a new article up by Mark Hemingway digging deeper into the notion of whether or not the Romney campaign itself conducted the recent surveys with apparently anti-Mormon messages. (I'm proud to say that he links to MMM quite a bit for his information).

Mark's article is pretty balanced but is obviously digging hard for a connection. There is only one or two more bits of information:

• Hemingway makes a connection between Target Point Consulting, Alex Gage (Romney's number cruncher), and Western Wats (the company most closely connected to the recent calls). In short, the Romney campaign has paid Target Point Consulting $720,000 during this cycle. There is also evidence that Target Point has used Western Wats in the past.


• Amanda Earnshaw, the caller who donated $2300, is part of a family that has been deeply involved in the Romney campaign. Mark tries to bring the connection between Amanda and a supposed caller in an August poll that someone complained about. This is periphery evidence at best.

First, the notion that a single link between Target Point and Western Wats exists is not surprising. My source tells me that they are frequently a 3rd party vendor in many of these efforts.

The rest of it is pretty much stuff you already know from yours truly and others.

I will say this. This connection is logically plausible but totally unproven and we need to get to the bottom of this very quickly.

Having re-read the article I'm not convinced. The evidence is pretty scant and stretching to accuse Romney as he does. Let's review:

• Lindorfs - disproven


• Amanda - irrelevant (highly coincidental if true)


• Other donors - irrelevant


• Target Consulting -> WW --> Gage --> Romney - plausible but the proof is a single entry from a bulletin board


• Related Romney camps -they exist, but its the largest data collection firm in the world. Chances are a lot of campaigns use them

Labels: Alex Gage, nro, polling, target point consulting, western wats

UPDATE: Quick clarification. I had previously asked my source about the notion that Romney is behind the poll. He said it was "nonsense". I should clarify that this is his opinion. From my conversations I gather that he does not know exactly who is behind the survey but thinks that a Romney motive is "ridiculous". Again, he is understandably tight lipped on all this.

Numerous anti-Romney blogs are alive with fervor just hoping that Romney himself conducted the anti-Mormon calls to help his campaign. They cite political connections with the data collection firm and the fact that its based in Utah.

Couple of facts here:

If you are political campaign wanting to conduct research over the phone or Internet this Utah-based firm would be one of your first choices.

• The firm "Western Wats" is the biggest data collection firm in the country. Probably a good number of political entities have used it.
• "Western Wats" employs more than 1500 people
• The company has numerous call centers all over the country (not just in Utah)
• The company does not write the scripts nor do they analyze the data
• The company does not do "push polls", but they do conduct "message testing" (sometimes even this is controversial)
• Fortune 500 firms use their services all the time
• There are dozens of projects going on at any given point in time.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sick and disgusted about these calls... but to pin them on Romney's campaign is just projecting anger at Mitt.

In short, while it may have been founded by Utahns it can hardly be called a Mormon firm. The connections to the Romney campaign are far and few between and coincidental in my mind.

Labels: anti-mitt, Anti-mormon, polling, utah, western wats