First week's online poll analysis

Good morning! My name is Dr. Lamar Pierce and I am the Chief Research Officer for Civic Science, the company that powers the new Pennsylvania Democratic Party online poll. Let me first say how excited we are to work with Chairman Rooney and the entire committee. This year promises to be a historic one for the Democratic Party and we look forward to helping party leaders better gauge the moods and opinions of Democrats in Pennsylvania.

You may find it hard to believe, based on the simplicity of our three-question polls, but a great deal of research and testing has gone into our research model. By limiting the number and complexity of questions, we can provide an experience that is quick, simple, and convenient for voters. Our goal is to achieve the highest possible response rates, so that we can build a much larger and diverse sample of respondents.

By reaching more people in more corners of the Commonwealth, we can generate more insightful and useful public opinion data. And by updating the poll with new questions every week, we can build an ongoing dialogue with you, the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania, to better enable Democratic leaders and candidates to represent you. We hope you find our polling feature to be interesting and rewarding, so that you will continue to participate week after week.

This week, over 1,000 Pennsylvania Democrats voted in the online poll. We designed this initial poll to identify correlations among gender, national priorities, and preferences between the Democratic candidates for President. We immediately observed that while Barack Obama holds the majority of support from our sample, this support distinctly changes across gender and issue priorities. Here are a few of the interesting things we learned:

• 60.3% of respondents support Barack Obama, while only 37.4% support Hillary Clinton
• Obama’s support is highest among women, of whom 65.6% support Barack
• Clinton’s support is highest among those believing the economy is of highest priority, with Hillary gaining 43.8% vs. Barack’s 53.7%.
• Clinton’s support is lowest among those prioritizing the war, with only 23.9% support vs. Obama’s 73.8%
• Overall, 43.7% prioritize the economy, while 35.5% prioritize the war and 20.9% prioritize health care.

(* It is important to note that these results, by themselves, are not necessarily representative of Pennsylvanians as a whole, nor do they claim to be predictive of an election outcome. These results are merely valuable as a means of identifying correlations and trends among a specific population of active Democratic voters.)

Again, all of us at Civic Science are excited to work with the State Committee and its members in the weeks and months to come. If you ever have any questions or technical problems, please e-mail us at simon@civicscience.com.

With Kindest Regards,
J. Lamar Pierce, Ph.D

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