Today's front page of the Denver Post has an article about a Mason-Dixon poll of 800 registered CO voters conducted Jan 21-23. Obama leads the Democratic side (within the margin of error) and Romney leads the Republican side (way outside the margin of error).
Here are the M-D results:
Democrats
Obama 34%
Clinton 32%
Edwards 17%
Kucinich 3%
Undecided 14%
Republicans
Romney 43%
McCain 24%
Huckabee 17%
Undecided 7%
Paul 5%
Giuliani 4%
More results and commentary below.
Cross-posted at SquareState.
I'd like to continue by comparing results from this Mason-Dixon poll and SquareState's last straw poll. Note that I am not trying to draw any meaningful conclusions - just note some differences and have some fun. As noted below, the SquareState poll is extremely unscientific - 30 bloggers don't reflect the state, as shown below.
Candidate M-D SquareState (1/21/08)
Obama 34% 34%
Clinton 32% 9%
Edwards 17% 47%
Kucinich 3% 6%
Undecided 14% 0%
I think this is the first commissioned poll of actual voters I've seen. As we've talked about amongst ourselves for a while, netroots' support has consistently differed from the remainder of the voting population (as polled).
I'm interested in seeing how the South Carolina results might affect our results. We should also start seeing and hearing more of the candidates here - how will that 14% undecided group break? Now that Kucinich has officially ended his candidacy, will folks be allowed to indicate initial support for him on Feb. 5th?
*****
More results:
64% responded that this will be their first CO caucus. How will confusion and unfamiliarity with process affect things?
The top three issues were reported to be: economy 26%, Iraq 14%, health care 11%. The environment garnered only 5% as the top issue - 7th place. I would like to see this issue recast as global warming or something like that. "The environment" - what the heck does that mean as an issue?
There's plenty of optimism out there: 47% said the country would be better off in 5 years. 21% said worse, 20% said the same. I'm glad Democrats seem to be headed for numerous victories this fall, but I'm not sure where I'd put myself on this scale. The challenges facing us are enormous - recovering from 30 years of conservative mismanagement will require a lot of time. Voters are fickle - how long will Democrats have a chance to effect change?
Ah yes, the change vs. experience issue: Which candidate quality will be more important when voting this year? 46% change vs. 37% experience. Interestingly, 17% responded both or not sure. Both? Experienced in change maybe?
Trust in handling issues broke down similar to other polls I've seen by party: Democrats do better with health care, economy, Iraq and the environment. No matter how much they flub things, Republicans continue to score well on terrorism (Brown people only, please. Those crazy white people shooting up churches and schools aren't terrorists) and immigration.
Barack scores well when people were asked who is more likely to work with Republicans if elected: 35% (H.C. @ 22%, J.E. @ 21%). McCain also does well with this: 45% (M.R. @ 18%, R.J. @ 13%, M.H. @ 9%).