2008 State Polls

Ron Paul Polls Better Among African Americans than Other Republicans

10/24/07

I was watching this YouTube video in which a gentleman from the UK calls Ron Paul a racist for racist comments that were published on his newsletter. Ron Paul says that another writer was responsible for the racist comments but that he signed his name on the newsletter.

This is the video.

There is another similar video uploaded a while ago by ReallyRick along the same lines.

So that got me interested in checking out Ron Paul's poll numbers among African-Americans in hypothetical presidential matchups against the leading Democratic candidates (Clinton & Obama).

So let's break it down folks.

Here are the results of a national survey of 1,200 likely voters conducted October 12-14, 2007 by Rasmussen Reports.

It is hard to know what to make of this data unless we compare it against a couple of baselines and the perfect one would be to see how George Bush did against John Kerry in 2004.

According to CNN's 2004 exit polls, Kerry dominated Bush 88% to 11% and Bush went up 2% from his performance in 2000! So it seems promising that Ron Paul is performing in the 30% range here. So let us look at how the other Republican candidates are doing with this demographic.

Here are the results of a national survey of 800 likely voters conducted October 17-18, 2007 by Rasmussen Reports.

Here are the results of a national survey of 800 likely voters conducted October 10-11, 2007 by Rasmussen Reports.

Here are the results of a national survey of 800 likely voters conducted October 8-9, 2007 by Rasmussen Reports.

Here are the results of a national survey of 800 likely voters conducted October 15-16, 2007 by Rasmussen Reports.

So here are the "averages"... Ron Paul - 32%, Mitt Romney - 23.5%, John McCain - 20%, Rudy Giuliani - 16%.

Okay it is obvious that Ron Paul has a sizeable lead here but let's look at how the margin of error factors in because we are dealing with a small subgroup. Keep in mind that I do not have the exact sample size of these subgroups so therefore I have to estimate it based on voter turnout in the 2004 election. You can harp on as much as you want as to how that it is flawed to do so; but I have no choice. I rather get some kind of idea as to whether or not this stuff makes sense than do nothing, right?

The 2004 exit polls showed that 11% of voters were African American. That means the Ron Paul vs. Obama/Clinton poll would have had about 132 samples. This has a margin of error of 8.5%.

All of the other polls, having 800 likely voters polled, we estimate there would be 88 samples. Okay, this too has an insane MoE of 10.5%. MoE's find a range in which you have a 95% confidence rating; meaning that we are 95% confident that Ron Paul is polling between 23.5%-40.5% and 95% confident that Giuliani is polling between 5.5%-26.5%.

We could plot a probability density function and detail out the likelihood of a lot of other petty things but it seems kind of cumbersome to do so when we are working with such small samples. In light of these results, however, I would wish that pollsters would take it upon themselves to do a little bit more analysis and polling of African Americans to see what is going on.

One theory that I am suggesting here is that it seems like the less name recognition a Republican candidate has, the better he will poll among African Americans. Bush only had 11% in 2004. Giuliani is polling at 16% then McCain at 20% then Romney at 23.5% and finally Ron Paul at 32%. The contention would be that the less a Republican is known to a black voter, the less they are "against" them.

Are black voters more likely to pick Ron Paul because he is less known? Maybe not! Ron Paul does have some "liberal views" that sets him apart from the Republican field and may help him gain favor among African Americans, such as: being anti-war, against the war on drugs, against the national ID card, believing labor unions have a right to organize, and being against the Patriot Act. You would assume that if a candidate was unknown to a voter that they would just not choose anyways, right?

And to add to that. There was a subsample of African Americans in a New Hampshire primary poll that showed Ron Paul polling in first place among blacks with 22%. The MoE was 18% though!!! (Link).

It is just too bad that pollsters are too cheap to fund an extensive poll on African American voters to see with whom they jive the best because the reality is we feel that Ron Paul really would outperform his Republican counterparts in this demographic.

Related Articles

• Ron Paul Polling Strong Among 30-40 Year Olds in a General Election
• Ron Paul Surging Among Moderates
• Data Suggests Unsure Voters May Be Supporting Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee in Iowa
• What the Media Should Report About the Ames Straw Poll - Huckabee and Paul were the winners.
• Ron Paul Movement Growing by Leaps and Bounds
• Summary of all Ron Paul Polls

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