I think a compelling case can be made that voters with High School diplomas only, or some college forced Saxby Chambliss into a runoff in the 2008 General Election. Is that a risk Georgia Republicans can take?
The following table relies on CNN-reported Exit Polls for Georgia from the 2008 General Election for President and United States Senate. There are some differences between the results reached by the Exit Polls and the actual voting results, but it appears that you can make a good argument that Chambliss was forced into a runoff in the General Election by voters with a high school diploma only, or “some college.”
The first table shows a breakdown of the 2008 General Election vote between John McCain (R) and Barack Obama (D) by education level.
McCain’s net advantage among the “high school graduate” and “some college” voters was net +1.54 points, which contributed to a total net +5.09 in the exit poll.
| 2008 Presidential Election (Georgia) Exit Polls | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obama (D) | McCain (R) | GOP % =/- | % of voters | GOP +/- | |||||||
| Not high school grad | 63 | 37 | -26 | 7 | -1.82 | ||||||
| High school grad | 45 | 55 | 10 | 21 | 2.1 | ||||||
| Some college | 51 | 49 | -2 | 28 | -0.56 | ||||||
| College graduate | 43 | 56 | 13 | 32 | 4.16 | ||||||
| Postgraduate | 39 | 50 | 11 | 11 | 1.21 | ||||||
| 5.09 | |||||||||||
| High school grad or some college | 1.54 | ||||||||||
| Statewide Results | 52.2 | 47 | |||||||||
The second table shows the same breakdown by education level for the United States Senate race between Saxby Chambliss (R)(i) and Jim Martin (D), in which Chambliss was forced into a runoff election.
| 2008 United States Senate Election (Georgia) Exit Polls | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Martin (D) | Chambliss (R) | GOP % =/- | % of voters | GOP +/- | |
| Not high school grad | 63 | 37 | -26 | 5 | -1.3 |
| High school grad | 47 | 49 | 2 | 20 | 0.4 |
| Some college | 49 | 48 | -1 | 30 | -0.3 |
| College graduate | 42 | 55 | 13 | 32 | 4.16 |
| Postgraduate | 51 | 45 | -6 | 12 | -0.72 |
| 2.24 | |||||
| High school grad or some college | 0.1 | ||||
| Statewide Results | 49.8 | 46.8 | |||
| McCain – Chambliss | 2.4 | 2.85 |
Here, we see Chambliss nets only +.1 point, more than 1.5 points off the net gain by McCain among “high school graduate” and “some college” voters. Since Chambliss needed just more than +.2 points to avoid a runoff, I believe that relative weakness among this group could have been the culprit. In 2014, would this make a difference between Georgia electing a Republican or a Democrat?
[Data note: the 2008 Exit Polls for the Senate race showed data not available in the “Not a high school graduate,” slot, so I assumed it was equivalent to the Presidential race. The tables I originally created made this clear, but the explanatory note was lost in uploading to our server backend. Leaving that portion out of the equation still shows sufficient weakness amont the High School Graduate and Some College cohorts to explain Saxby Chambliss being forced into a runoff]
Comments ( 0 )