A Few More Ohio Gov Numbers

First off, Bryan -- whom I am embracing as my new best friend solely to piss off his annoying troll -- has a post up at BSB crunching crosstabs numbers from a Zogby pre-primary poll (Evidently he is a Zogby Gold subscriber). It shows that Blackwell's strength is not with African Americans, but with whites and Hispanics. Interesting, happy news. We will need to keep an eye on those numbers.

Second, in following up my research about the previous post, I noticed a curious trend in the SurveyUSA primary numbers. Results among Black Republican likely primary voters shift sharply in the couple weeks leading up to the election:

Date: 4/22/06-4/24/06
Blackwell: 42
Petro: 51
Undecided: 7
% of Likely R Primary Voters: 3%

Date: 4/28/06-4/30/06
Blackwell: 64
Petro: 14
Undecided: 23
% of Likely R Primary Voters: 4%

A couple of factors may come into play here. The first is that the numbers are small, so a shift of only a couple of voters skews the results. Here are the numbers for the two polls where n is the number of likely Republican primary voters and n(aa) is the number of likely Republican African American voters:

Poll1
n=435
n(aa)=13

Poll2
n=428
n(aa)=13

After all, the MOE for the poll as a whole is a mesomorphic 4.8%.

But a possible second factor is the recruitment of African Americans as Republican primary voters. As I noted, the buzz around town is that the BOE noticed a high number of blacks picking up Republican ballots. Only Blackwell was reportedly trying to do that. Because the numbers are so tiny, a few recruited primary voters could throw them off.

Getting the canvass for Summit County is on my to-do list. It will be interesting to see if Republican primary voters spike in the predominantly black wards.