A look at 100 key demographic blocs, and how Trump and Clinton are faring among them

Polls, polls, polls. Every day, it seems there is a new poll. She’s up. She’s down. He’s up. He’s really down.

What does it mean?

To many media outlets, polls are cheap click bait to drive web traffic. To cable news networks, they are the score in the latest inning of an endless political baseball game. There are some smart polling analysts, but most stories about polls are politically shallow and journalistically useless.

As a political reporter who has covered every presidential race since 1980, I hope I can offer you a respite from pedestrian polling analysis. Welcome to “The Index,” a new analytical feature that will run periodically through Election Day 2016. I hope I can bring you something new, different and interesting.

Here’s my angle: I will analyze the 2016 presidential election through the voting preferences of 100 different demographic blocs. Thirty-three of them are part of Donald Trump’s Republican base. Thirty-three of them are part of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic base. And 34 of them are battleground groups — keys to both candidates’ paths to the White House.

A few of the groups are the basic demographic groups you are accustomed to hearing about: Republicans and Democrats, very liberal and very conservative voters, African Americans and born-again whites. I included these as tests of the loyalty of core voting groups for each party.

But I’m also looking at some groups you don’t read much about, the kinds of groups that will tip you off about the way the election is going. Among them: Latinos making more than $100,000 a year, white men under age 30, families with active duty military or veterans, white southerners with college degrees, homeowners, moms with kids at home, Midwestern white men, white Catholic women, even Mormon women.

I’ll analyze the different support levels of Latino voters in the Southeastern United States (where Cubans have some influence in Florida), the Southwest (from Texas to Arizona), and the Pacific coast. Differing levels of support in each region could be a tipoff as to whether states like Arizona or Georgia are in play, or whether Trump has any chance in Florida or New Mexico.

In each update, I will describe which candidate is leading among each group, and you can easily see how much better or worse than the national norm that is. The reason is simple: As the “horserace” changes from week to week, a key is whether a certain voting bloc is skewing more heavily toward Clinton or Trump. Clinton currently leads every recent national poll, but if the race ends up close, that variation from the norm will be important.

The information for the feature comes from Reuters’ polling data, which is available, open source, on the internet. I am using Reuters’ rolling five-day averages for most of my analysis. I chose Reuters’ numbers because the poll is respected, but, most of all, because the global news service makes the information available to anyone. You can check behind me to examine my methodology — or to create new searches of your own.

One small asterisk (*): Certain subgroups are too small to have a statistically significant counts on the five-day average. In the cases marked with an asterisk (*), I have included data for these groups from the past 30 days of polling. One warning: Subgroups are, by definition, smaller than the entire survey, so they have a larger margin of error and more volatility from survey to survey.

With no further introduction, here is the first set of data:

Overall (6/20-24)

Clinton 40.3%, Trump 31.3%

Clinton +9

Note: (C) means that Clinton leads by more than the 9 point national difference. (T) means that her lead with the group is less than her national lead.

Battleground groups

• Latinos earning >$100K    Clinton +24* (C)
• White Catholic men    Clinton +11 (C)
• Great Plains states   Clinton+11 (C)
• Voters earning $75K+    Clinton +11.1 (C)
• White men under 30    Clinton +10 (C)
• Men    Clinton +9.7 (C)
• Families with active duty military or veteran    Clinton +9.6* (C)
• Active duty military    Clinton +9.4* (C)
• Voters earning between $50K-100K    Clinton +9.3 (C)
• Midwestern white men    Clinton +9
• Women    Clinton +8.7 (T)
• Whites earning >$150K    Clinton +8 (T)
• Unmarried white women    Clinton +7.9 (T)
• White single, never married    Clinton +6 (T)
• White divorced    Clinton +6 (T)
• Whites earning between $50-75K    Clinton +5 (T)
• Midwest    Clinton +4.9 (T)
• Great Lakes    Clinton +3 (T)
• White Catholic    Clinton +3 (T)
• White women, no children at home    Clinton +2.8 (T)
• Whites earning between $50-$100K     Clinton  2.7 (T)
• Whites under age 40    Clinton +1.2 (T)
• Homeowners    Clinton +1.9 (T)
• Whites earning between $75K-$100K    Clinton +1 (T)
• White southern women with college degree    Clinton +0.4* (T)
• Independent     Tie (T)
• Married voters     Trump +1 (T)
• White southerners with college degree     Trump +2.1* (T)
• Southern white men with college degree     Trump +3.9* (T)
• Whites 50-65    Trump +4 (T)
• Lean conservative     Trump +4 (T)
• Midwestern white women     Trump +5 (T)
• White Catholic women     Trump +5 (T)
• Mormon women     Trump +8* (T)

Trump base

• Voted for Romney     Trump +67.6 (T)
• Republicans     Trump  +52.4 (T)
• Very conservative voters     Trump +45 (T)
• Moderately conservative whites     Trump +35 (T)
• White born-again men     Trump +35 (T)
• Southern white men     Trump +33 (T)
• White born-again voters     Trump +32.7 (T)
• White Tea Partiers     Trump +30.5 (T)
• White born-again women     Trump +30 (T)
• Whites who attend church at least once a week     Trump +26 (T)
• Southern white women without college degree     Trump +26 (T)
• Midwestern men without college degree     Trump +26 (T)
• White women, children at home     Trump +17 (T)
• Southern white men without college degree     Trump +15 (T)
• White non-college grads     Trump +14.3 (T)
• Southern white women     Trump +13 (T)
• Whites 65+     Trump +13 (T)
• Mormons     Trump +13* (T)
• White independents who voted for Romney     Trump +13 (T)
• White Catholic over 40     Trump +12 (T)
• White married voters     Trump +10.6 (T)
• Whites $100K-$150K     Trump +9 (T)
• Southeast     Trump +8.6 (T)
• South     Trump +8.2 (T)
• Southwest     Trump +7 (T)
• Whites 50+     Trump +6.9 (T)
• White voters     Trump +6.4 (T)
• Veterans     Trump +5.7* (T)
• White, children at home     Trump +5.2 (T)
• White non-college grads earning <$50K     Trump +5 (T)
• White voters earning less than $50K     Trump +2.8 (T)
• Non-college grads     Trump +0.1 (T)
• Rocky Mountain West    Clinton +4 (T)

Clinton base

• African Americans who attend church at least once a week    Clinton +71.6 (C)
• African Americans    Clinton +70.6 (C)
• Voted for Obama    Clinton +68.2 (C)
• Latino voters in West    Clinton +60* (C)
• Very liberal voters    Clinton +59.4 (C)
• Democrats   Clinton +50.1 (C)
• Latino voters in Southwest    Clinton +49* (C)
• Asian American voters    Clinton +45 (C)
• Voters with advanced degrees    Clinton +45 (C)
• Minority voters without college degrees    Clinton +41 (C)
• White Catholic under 40    Clinton +35 (C)
• Students    Clinton +33 (C)
• Voters with college degrees    Clinton +32.2 (C)
• College graduates    Clinton +32.2 (C)
• Latina voters    Clinton +29.8* (C)
• LGBT voters    Clinton +27 (C)
• Latino voters in Southeast    Clinton +24* (C)
• Latino voters nationally    Clinton +24* (C)
• Unmarried women    Clinton +22.6 (C)
• White voters with college degree    Clinton +21.1 (C)
• White men with college degree    Clinton +21 (C)
• White women with college degree    Clinton +20 (C)
• Voters who never attend religious services    Clinton +19.3 (C)
• White students    Clinton +19.5 (C)
• Southerners with college degree    Clinton +19 (C)
• Latino men    Clinton +18* (C)
• Voters under 40    Clinton +16.4 (C)
• Far West Clinton Clinton    Clinton +16 (C)
• Mid-Atlantic    Clinton +15 (C)
• Voters who attend religious services once a month or less    Clinton +15 (C)
• New England    Clinton +14 (C)
• Voters under 30    Clinton +13.9 (C)
• Women with no children at home    Clinton +10.9 (C)

In the next few days, I will post some of the analytical highlights of this first data dump, explaining which subgroups’ results I think are the most important and surprising. I look forward to sharing the 2016 political roller coaster with you.