Letter to Presidential Candidate - Essay Example

Mr. Barak Obama Presidential Candi for the United s of America Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor 1111 East Broad Street Richmond, VA 23219 RE: Voting trendsDear Mr. Obama,It is clear that this year’s presidential elections are going to be a very tight race. As a supporter of your ideas and the Democratic Party, I am aware that you will be arriving in our state of Virginia next month to campaign. I have prepared a few suggestions for you based upon our 2006 exit polls. Our state is almost equally divided between the Democratic and Republican parties.

According to the 2006 exit polls, 36 percent of the voters were Democrats and 39 percent were Republican. In many areas, the Republicans have a slight advantage. For this reason, I feel continued campaigning in this state is well-advised. The demographics of the region indicate that women are more likely to vote democrat than men and white people are more likely to vote republican than minorities. In addition, more black men than other races were likely to vote democrat. Age groups seemed to be evenly divided among all groupings between democrat and republican.

These demographics suggest you should do well in our state. An appeal to the youthful element of your campaign may help you to swing some of the younger voters to your party while your primary focus should be on increasing your appeal to the white population. If you focused on appealing to the white female population, you would be able to also maintain your appeal to the minorities and women who are already pre-disposed to your party. The majority of Virginia’s population has an income level between $30,000 and $150,000 and tends to vote Republican.

This population group is also marked as having moderate education levels (high school graduate through four-year college degree) and voting Republican. Democrats are strong on the extremes – very low income and very high income plus very low education and very high education. While the population is relatively split between Republican and Democrat, our independents tend to lean more toward the Democratic party, by 56 percent in the last election. Most of the citizens of Virginia live in either suburbs (39%) or rural areas (33%).

Suburbs voted 55% republican and rural areas voted 51% republican. The strength of the Democratic Party in this state is in the smaller cities (61% democrat). It will also be helpful for you to know how the voters of Virginia feel about some of the more important issues. Values issues were considered either extremely important (46%) or very important (20%) in the last election cycle. Most of the voters rating values as an important were Republicans (63% and 51% respectively) while Democrats tended to rate values issues as either somewhat important (61%) or not at all important (72%).

In 2006, a majority (56%) of the voters felt illegal immigration was an important issue and that illegal immigrants should be offered legal status. 62% of the people who voted in favor of this were Democrats and 65% of those who felt illegal immigrants should be deported were Republican. A majority of the voters also felt taxes were an important issue (41% extremely important; 32% very important). Those who felt they are extremely important were predominantly Republican (62%) while 51 percent of those who felt they were very important were Democrat.

As a result of these demographics and poll results, it is advisable that you target your message toward the middle income voting block as well as those with moderate education levels, particularly those with some college as they are more likely to swing to the Democratic side. Demonstrate your values to appeal to the Republicans without actually discussing them which would turn away the Democrats who are looking for something more sincere and work to let the voters know you understand the issues as they most affect the middle man.

Sincerely,[You signature][typed/written name]