2/2006 50 Governors SUSA

[AuH2O]

DISCLAIMER... these are not huge samples, which means the internals are pretty small subsamples. But some observations...

Ehrlich.... SO hot right now. If those internals even resemble reality, he can't lose, barring mishap. My favorite internal, well excluding the questionable 46% approval rating from blacks, is the age crosstab.

Pawlenty looks pretty good. They love Lingle in Hawaii.

In the top 25 net approval ratings, only 6 are from states Kerry won. In the bottom 25, 13 are. Of course a number of states Bush won have Democrat Governors, but I thought it was interesting.

For some reason the Maine breakdown was interesting.

One thing I like to do is just ignore the approval numbers and look at the composition tab. For instance, the Connecticut results for 'ideology': 23% conservative, 21% liberal, 52% moderate. Here are some others, in that order--

Mass.: 20/24/51.
NJ: 25/18/54
Cali: 24/24/48
RI: 25/20/52
WV: 38/14/44
Idaho: 39/14/44
Wisc: 33/14/39
Ala: 47/8/40
NY: 27/19/49

I mean, pretty interesting. There's obviously a lot of noise in those numbers but it seems clear people are more reluctant to call themselves 'liberal' than 'conservative.' 19% of New York is liberal? I've dealt with good post-2004 election data that had more categories, i.e. liberal, moderate liberal, centrist, moderate conservative, conservative. That helped even it out a bit.

The only explanation I can see is that some Democrats consider themselves to be more moderate than they really are, relative to the electorate as a whole. If given the chance, they'll describe themselves as a 'moderate liberal,' but when only given the 3 choices, they go 'moderate.'

Moderate conservatives seem more inclined to answer 'conservative' when given only 3 options.