Day 6: Colorado

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the other hand, 43% identified as suburban

Colorado does have some blue collar suburbs as well (not that Kerry did especially well in them) ya know.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah,

Ah... tis good to know that someone else knows

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Maybe so, but bear in mind that Adams County (very blue collar) has a median HH income of $47,323

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I don't trust the demographic bits of exit polls period... even an otherwise fairly accurate exit poll can blow up on that sort of thing (case in point being the exit poll for the U.K election, which somehow managed to fail to spot that the election turned out to be the most class-polarised since 1974 (October)... despite getting the size of Labour's majority bang on).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In truth, I had to look it up...I couldn't think of where they were.  I found mentions of them, but I still don't know where they are.

That would be very interesting information if you have it.

Put simply, the northeastern suburbs of Denver (itself a pretty blue collar for a large city) are very blue collar (especially for a metro area) while the other suburbs tend to be very white collar. A lot of people employed in the construction industry for one thing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah, but is that numerically true if you do national averages?

Should be

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Actually it is if you look in terms of raw votes rather than %'s

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Yeah but those were almost all middle class public sector workers rather than working class voters. Basically they polled their local election vote (less in some places; like Bishop Auckland or Newcastle*) in a general election for once.

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That does depend how working class is defined, but yeah they do fit into the Market Research DE group for the most part (largely the E group). Not that there were many Respect voters overall. 1% overall I think, but I could be wrong...

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Especially when you have a polling industry as gloriously incompetent as ours with a long track record of missing important trends in the electorate due to massive over-sampling of certain areas without that trend...
I don't know how they do it so consistantly... but I think it takes some skill.
For whatever reason they didn't pick up the collapse of Labour support amoung professional type voters (remember the exit poll only gave the LibDems one net gain (presumably Yardley). Bearing in mind the sort of voters who swung yellow, I think that's important...) and they underestimated Labour's working class vote; seeing as this was the case in pretty much all polls during the campaign, the pollsters models seem to have a major flaw in them.

*Putting Bishop Auckland before NUT does not in any way reflect petty parochialism on my part. Not at all. Honest.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Putting Bishop Auckland before NUT does not in any way reflect petty parochialism on my part. Not at all. Honest.

Well it is a much more important place.