With 5 days to go until the Nov. 8 elections, we are happy to share our latest analysis on the election between Democratic County Executive Candidate Rich Fitzgerald and Republican Candidate D. Raja. We will run one final data mining exercise on Monday November 7th but will keep those numbers private until after the election. Our main goal now is to use the final wave of data to measure our predictive capabilities and hone our models to be even more effective in 2012. Stay tuned.
For now, we can report that our latest wave of analysis started with an aggregate sample of 19,000 registered voters in Allegheny County. Concurrent with our turn-out forecasts, the reported numbers are based on a final sample of 1,307 “Likely Voters”, including a subset of 1,137 “Super Voters.” Help yourself to the final baseline numbers here.
Our findings suggest that the race has widened, with Fitzgerald (48%) holding an 18-point lead over Raja (30%) with 22% of voters still “Undecided.” This represents a significant shift toward Fitzgerald since our last wave of analysis on October 4th, when Fitzgerald held a 10-point lead (41-31 with 28% Undecided). It seems that the recently-decided voters broke heavily in favor of Fitzgerald including 1% of voters who switched their preference from Raja.
The demographic disparities have remained consistent, with Fitzgerald winning handily among Women, Democrats, and voters over aged 55. These groups still represent the largest segments of the remaining Undecided voters, which could spell further trouble for Raja before all is said and done. We have provided full cross-tabs for your viewing pleasure here.