Analyzing Exit Polls in LA Mayoral Race

There's been a lot of data to analyze following last week's Mayoral Primary election. Here are some interesting features in the exit poll conducted on March 8, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times (2789 voters with a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points):

• Hahn got 59% of the Asian American vote
• Villaraigosa got 64% of the Latino vote
• Parks got 54% of the African American vote
• 8% of the respondents said they were gay or lesbian
• Villaraigosa got 43% of the gay/lesbian vote
• 51% of respondents said they were liberal, 25% conservative, 24% moderate
• The gender split was 50-50 (unusual since women usually make up the voting majority)
• Villaraigosa had a +4 "gender gap" (35-31 male-female split), Hahn had a -2 (23-25)
• Villaraigosa won 825 precincts, Hertzberg 474 , Parks 185 and Hahn a mere 102 (but he placed second in more than all of the other three)

Loyola Marymount University also conducted their own exit poll and also found some interesting results (as highlighted by Jerome over at MyDD and Antonio's blog):
1200 Primary voters were asked as they left the polls:
If no candidate wins 51 % today, and there is a runoff election who would you vote for?

                Hahn      Villaraigosa    Don't know
City Total      29.7%      57.5%          12.8%
Group
White           30.4%      56.5%          13.0%
Black           33.3%      49.0%          17.6%
Latino          19.9%      74.2%           6.0%
Asian           51.1%      29.8%          19.1%

The margin of error is +/2.8 percentage points. The numbers indicate precisely
what a deep hole Hahn is in. He started off the campaign to the May 17 run-off election down 28 points! His only chance is to depress turnout so that his advantage with absentee voters can have a bigger impact on the final result. In the primary election, there were 408,069 votes cast (26% of the 1,474,186 registered voters in the City of Los Angeles), 104, 959 (25.72%) were absentee ballots. These votes were reported first and led to much consternation since Hahn led with 30%, Hertzberg had 26% and Villaraigosa trailed with 23%.

In the 2001 race, turnout was 33% in the primary and barely increased to 36% in the run-off. If we get the same effect this year we could expect a 28% voter turnout on May 17. Being generous and giving the Mayor a 15 point lead among absentee voters, Hahn would have to limit Villaraigosa's lead among election day voters to 5 percentage points to have any chance of peventing Antonio from becoming El Alcalde.