Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Polling the Cape and Islands

In May, the Cape Cod Times and WCAI commissioned a telephone poll of residents in Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket Counties. You can find detailed results here. The Cape Cod Times has the story:

In the Times/WCAI survey, 43.2 percent of respondents say they approve of Romney's performance - moderate support in a region that tends to vote Democratic - but only 20.5 percent said they would give him their vote for the White House. Half of the respondents said they would not support a presidential bid by Romney.
Of course, the statement that the Cape and Islands tends to vote Democratic is a little misleading. When you combine the 2002 results from Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket Counties, you find that Mitt Romney won the Cape and Islands by fifteen points (55.5% to Shannon O'Brien's 40.2%). While O'Brien did win Dukes County by a comfortable margin, Romney slaughtered her on the Cape -- with Provincetown the notable exception. There just aren't enough people who live on Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket (which Romney won anyhow) to make up for it.

Even those much talked about Independents are lukewarm on the governor. When self-reported unenrolled and Independence Party voters are combined, about 45% of them approve of the job Romney is doing, with 26% disapproving and 28% having no opinion. Those are pretty poor numbers for an incumbent who won those people two and a half years ago.

The poll also asked about opinions on Marriage Equality. As I'm sure will surprise no one, support for equal marriage rights was high on the islands and the Lower Cape but residents of the Mid and Upper Cape were roughly split on the issue.

[Update]: Cape Cod Works shares his thoughts on the poll.