Danger, math ahead. I confirmed with Ted Nesi that the WPRI poll breakdown for the 1st Congressional district was 45% Democrat, 40% Independent and 12% Republican. So, I thought I’d delve deeper into the Doherty/Cicilline poll numbers because I thought it could tell me something interesting about District 1 independent voters. It also gave me some perspective by looking at the raw polling numbers.
Basically, according to the poll, 250 voters were sampled in District 1. That left a margin of error of 6.2%, which also is roughly the margin of Cicilline’s lead over Doherty. Keep that in mind. If we are to apply the poll breakdown offered by Nesi, above, and apply that to the raw voter numbers, we come up with, roughly, 112 Democrats, 100 Independents, 30 Republicans and 8 “other”.
Taking the percentages from the poll for the Doherty/Cicilline race and breaking them down by party ID (including “Independent” but excluding “other”), we find the following:
Democrats
73 votes for Cicilline
20 votes for Doherty
5 votes for Vogel
12 undecided
Independents
47 votes for Doherty
34 votes for Cicilline
7 votes for Vogel
11 undecided
Republicans
25 votes for Doherty
2 votes for Cicilline (who they hell are they? – ed.)
3 votes for Vogel
0 undecided
Tally it up and you get:
109 votes for Cicilline
89 votes for Doherty
15 votes for Vogel
23 undecided
So by the raw vote, Doherty trails Cicilline by 20 votes in this poll. There are still 23 undecided. That’s within the margin of error.
As for my original question? Well, it looks like independent voters favor Doherty, although, by using the voting for/against questions, it is interesting to see that actual Independent “support” for each candidate is tied and the Doherty advantage is provided by those voting AGAINST Cicilline. (30 Independent voters are voting FOR Cicilline and 29 FOR Doherty while the breakdown for AGAINST is 5 against Doherty & 17 against Cicilline).