2016 Election Night

If all voters who approve of President Obama vote for Clinton, it’s going to be a good night for her. The preliminary exit poll puts Obama’s approval rating at 54 percent. That’s far higher than George W. Bush’s was in 2008, when just 27 percent approved of the job he was doing. He definitely hurt John McCain’s chances of winning.

A lot of Republicans thought the polls were “skewed” because there were more Republicans than Democrats in them. Well, if the preliminary exit poll is correct, more voters today were Democrats than Republicans. Democrats made up 37 percent of all voters, Republicans were 32 percent and independents were 31 percent.

Preliminary exit polls suggest that voters don’t feel great about the economy, but they feel a lot better than they did in either of the past two presidential elections. Some 62 percent of voters said the economy was “not good” or “poor,” down from 76 percent in 2012 and 93 percent in 2008. (Only 3 percent of voters consider the economy “excellent.”) Today’s voters aren’t as bullish as in 2004, when only a bit more than half of voters rated the economy negatively. Voters also feel a bit better about their personal financial situation. Thirty percent say their family’s finances have gotten better in the past year, while 27 percent say it’s gotten worse. In 2012, those numbers were 25 percent and 33 percent, respectively.