Results of CCS "Election Year" Survey Questions

The Jefferson County Survey of the Community, conducted annually by the Center for Community Studies at Jefferson Community College, is an inventory of the attitudes and opinions of a representative sample of Jefferson County residents. The primary goal of the survey is to collect data regarding quality of life issues of importance to local citizens. In the 9th annual survey, conducted during the first week of April, the Center for Community Studies also included five questions directly relating to the upcoming Presidential election, the results of which are included below.

Working under the supervision of the Center for Community Studies research staff, 29 statistics students at the College completed 421 telephone interviews on the evenings of March 31 – April 2, 2008. The telephone numbers selected for inclusion in the survey were completely anonymous and randomly chosen. This year, 51% of individuals contacted were willing to participate in the survey.

Out of the 407 Jefferson County respondents who responded to political-related survey questions included in this year’s survey, 60.7% responded “Yes” they had voted in the last Presidential election and 78.2% responded “Yes” they are currently registered to vote. These statistics, and all subsequent statistics, have been weighted for age and gender to reflect the distributions that represent the entire adult population of Jefferson County.
When the 319 respondents who are registered to vote were asked their party affiliation, 35.4% responded “Republican” while 36.0% responded Democrat and 13.8% responded “Independent.”

Democrats were slightly more represented in this sample than Republicans, a clear variation from both the Political Party affiliation of Jefferson County voters who voted in the 2004 Presidential election (35% Democrats, 60% Republicans), as well as the Political Party affiliation of Jefferson County voters who voted in the January 2007 NYS Presidential primaries (44% Democrats, 56% Republicans, among all who voted in the primary). Therefore, weights for Political Party Affiliation have been additionally applied to the following three questions that were posed to only likely voters – those participants who indicated that they plan to vote in the 2008 Presidential election.

“The Economy” is the most commonly cited factor (34.2%) that will have the most influence upon a Jefferson County voter’s Presidential choice in 2008. “The War in Iraq” (23.5%) and “The Honesty/Integrity of the Candidate” (17.2%) were the next two most commonly chosen factors.
When asked “If the next Presidential election were today and the candidates were Hillary Clinton and John McCain, who would you be most likely to vote for?” out of the 300 respondents, 47.2% responded “Hillary Clinton,” while 39.6% responded “John McCain,” and 13.2% responded “Not Sure.”
When asked “If the next Presidential election were today and the candidates were Barack Obama and John McCain, who would you be most likely to vote for?” out of the 300 respondents, 39.5% responded “Barack Obama,” while 45.5% responded “John McCain,” and 15.0% responded “Not Sure.”

Clearly, there appears to be more support for Senator Clinton than Senator Obama among Jefferson County likely voters, when each of these Democrat candidates opposes Senator McCain. However, in these two hypothetical contests, the direction that the “undecided voters” sway could result with any of the three candidates winning the election in Jefferson County if it were today.

Note: With a sample size of 300 likely voters included in this study, the Margin of Error used to generalize these sample results to the entire Jefferson County adult likely voter population is approximately +6.0%.

The Center for Community Studies will be releasing the complete results of the full survey, along with this year’s survey instrument with all of the questions that were posed to Jefferson County residents, on June 5, 2008. Copies of the complete study results and analysis will be available after June 5 by contacting the Center for Community Studies, as well as on the Jefferson Community College website.

For more information please contact Richard R. LeClerc, Director of the Center for Community Studies at Jefferson Community College, 315-786-2488.

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