Youth for Rand Paul has raised the issue that a recent CNN poll may not be accurately capturing Rand Paul’s support because the poll had no respondents less than 50 years old.
Check out the PDF of the poll results:
Page 33 has “N/A” for voters under 50 years old.
Page 34 has “N/A” for voters under $50K income per year and “N/A” for voters without a college degree.
Page 35 has “N/A” for voters from the Northeast, the West, the Midwest, and voters who are Urban and Rural.
Page 35 has “N/A” for voters who oppose the Tea Party.
So, a fair reading of these poll results is that they only represent people who live in the South, who don’t oppose the Tea Party, who make more than $50K and are over 50 years old. And they live in suburbs.
What results would we see if CNN had taken a more complete sample?
It’s worth investigating, but it may be a wash. Rand’s supporters probably do skew young, but they probably also skew upper-middle-class, college-educated, and Tea-Party supporting. The remaining dimension — where voters live (geographic region and urban to rural) — is interesting, but probably not very significant in the grand scheme of things.