In a recent poll, Gallup contacted 262,075 people. Of those people only 78,556 identified as Republicans.
I'm not smart about math, and I don't think gallup is giving enough information to really analyse this. But maybe you have some ideas
I'm getting those numbers from this poll:
Conservatives Dominate Republican Party, Skew Older
Religion, age are key differentiators of conservatives and moderates/liberals
http://www.gallup.com/poll/143231/Conservatives-Dominate-Republican-Party-Skew-Older.aspxSee down at the bottom on methodology:
"Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking Jan. 2-Sept. 23, 2010, with a random sample of
262,075 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is less than ±1 percentage point.
For results based on the total sample of
78,556 Republicans, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is less than ±1 percentage point."
Unfortunately they don't say whether the others were independents/democrats, etc/
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So how do these numbers affect how the "enthusiasm gap" should be interpreted?
From this other Gallup Poll:
Generic Ballot Virtually Tied: Democrats 46%, Republicans 45%
Republicans losing strength in September compared with August
by Frank Newport Sept 20 2010
http://www.gallup.com/poll/143132/Generic-Ballot-Virtually-Tied-Democrats-Republicans.aspx"The enthusiasm gap this past week was 19 percentage points, with 47% of Republicans very enthusiastic about voting, compared with 28% of Democrats. Republicans have enjoyed at least a 10-point advantage on this measure since Gallup began tracking congressional election preferences in March, including margins of 16 points or higher since August."
They seem to be a bit fuzzy on how many of their sample were republicans and how many were democrats, unless I am missing somthing.
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