TargetSmart/William & Mary Release Florida Poll of Early and Likely Voters [View all]

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Source: TargetSmart/William & Mary


CONTACT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
11/1/16

Coleman Bass TargetSmart Communications, LLC [phone] [e-mail]
TargetSmart/William & Mary Release Florida Poll of Early and Likely Voters
-Clinton Buoyed by Early Vote-

Hillary Clinton’s strength with the early vote in Florida is propelling her to a lead in the key battleground state, according to a new poll released today by TargetSmart and William & Mary. In the poll, Clinton holds a 48 to 40 percent lead over Donald Trump in the Sunshine State, a more advantageous position for Clinton than most other publicly available polling has suggested in the last week or so. As of the morning of November 1st , 2016, TargetSmart tracks that 3,695,359 people have already cast their votes in Florida.

Leveraging TargetSmart’s proprietary voter file - that is updated daily through the early voting window - this poll reached a significant number of voters who have already participated. Among those early voters (who were asked which candidate they had voted for), Clinton outpaces Trump by a 17-point margin, 55 to 38 percent. Reflective of the trends that have been published in other public polls in recent days, the TargetSmart/William & Mary poll shows the contest in Florida is very competitive among those who have yet to cast their ballot. Among those non-early voters (who were asked which candidate they will vote for), Clinton attracts 42 percent of the vote and 43 percent back Donald Trump. The poll also shows the U.S. Senate race tilting decidedly in Marco Rubio’s direction as Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy trails Rubio 43 to 49 percent. Unlike Clinton, Murphy only breaks even with early voters, having garnered 48 percent of the vote among them to Rubio’s 47 percent. And, among non-early voters, Rubio holds a solid lead with 51 percent of the vote to Murphy’s 39 percent.

Poll Methodology
The TargetSmart/William & Mary Poll was conducted using a blended web/phone data collection approach. As weighted, 530 online interviews were conducted from October 25-28, 2016 among panelists from six leading online opt-in panel providers who were matched to the TargetSmart voter file. As weighted, 188 telephone interviews were conducted from October 27-30, 2016 to supplement the online sample, with telephone numbers for targeted populations being selected at random from the TargetSmart voter file. The survey reached 311 respondents who voted early in the 2016 general election, either absentee, by mail, or in-person, according to data from the Florida Secretary of State that was matched back to the TargetSmart voter file. These early vote data were weighted to reflect population parameters on TargetSmart Partisanship Score, TargetSmart 2016 General Election Turnout Score, age, gender, party registration and media market of the overall population of early voters in Florida who had participated as of October 31. The survey reached 407 respondents who had NOT voted early in the 2016 general election, either absentee, by mail, or in-person, according to data from the Florida Secretary of State that was matched back to the TargetSmart voter file. These non-early vote data were weighted using a two-step process to yield a likely voter model. First, the non-early vote sample was weighted to reflect population parameters on TargetSmart Partisanship Score, TargetSmart 2016 General Election Turnout Score, age, gender, party registration and media market of the overall population of all registered voters in Florida who had NOT participated as of October 31. Then, to derive a likely voter model, a second round of weighting was employed on the non-early vote sample only, in which weights were assigned to each respondent in proportion to their TargetSmart 2016 General Election Turnout score, with higher weights being assigned to respondents with a higher likelihood to vote, and lower weights being assigned to respondents with a lower likelihood to vote. The TargetSmart 2016 General Election Turnout model is an ensemble method classifier model that was created to predict the likelihood that an individual will vote in the 2016 general election. In this second round of weighting all early voter respondents were assigned a weight of 1, to reflect the fact that they have already voted. No margins of sampling error are calculated for this survey, as this statistic is only applicable to fully randomly sampled surveys, which this survey is not due to its partial reliance on online interviews.
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About TargetSmart:
TargetSmart is the leading provider of political data that enables campaigns and organizations to successfully communicate with large audiences, and personalize outreach. Our superior politically-focused, consultative approach combines consumer data, databases, data integration and consulting solutions for personalized multichannel marketing strategies. TargetSmart leverages over 25 years of experience in data management to deliver high-performance, reliable data products and solutions.
About William & Mary:
William & Mary is a public university located in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded by Royal Charter in 1693, it is the second oldest institution of higher education in the United States. U.S. News and World Report ranks William & Mary sixth among all public universities in the country.


Read more: https://www.scribd.com/document/329698329/TargetSmart-William-Mary-Florida-Poll-of-Early-and-Likely-Voters