Jay Cost of the RealClearPolitics Horse Race blog tries to divine with demography Obama's chances on Super Tuesday."This is what we do know. Clinton has done well among Hispanics. Obama has done well among African Americans. Depending on where and when, white voters vary their support. How will that play out on Super Tuesday?....white voters make up a majority of the Super Tuesday population - but African Americans and Hispanics are important minorities. And remember that it is probable that in most states the electorate will oversample from African Americans and Hispanics, both of which tend to be Democrats.
And so, it seems to me that the key to Super Tuesday rests upon three questions:
First, will white voters follow the pattern they followed in Iowa and New Hampshire, in Nevada, or in South Carolina? And remember that viability, favorability, and vote can go go hand-in-hand. The current polling that shows Clinton with a large lead among whites could change in as a consequence of Obama's win. Remember that after Obama's victory in Iowa, Clinton's margin among white voters shrunk to just +8%, according to ABC News/WaPo.
Second, will African Americans "out perform" Hispanics? This is an interesting question. The exit poll found that African Americans and Hispanics each comprised 15% of the total electorate. But Nevada as a whole is 6.6% African American, and 19.7% Hispanic. If Super Tuesday African Americans "out perform" Hispanics as they did in Nevada - then Obama will be in a better position than what the above table suggests.
Third, what happens to Edwards' voters? It is unclear to me who they will go to if Edwards drops out. More importantly, it is unclear to me whether Edwards can sustain the level of support he has received to date. Voters can be brutal with their evaluations of viability. If they see Edwards as hopeless, it is quite possible that they will abandon his candidacy. If they do, where do they go?
When you say "out preform" do you mean put race in front of substance orother qualities?
ReplyDeleteDo you mean African Americans will continue to vote over 80% for an African American rather then a white man or woman? So this is a race race isn't it that Obama benefited from. Did you think he did not know that when he cried about the Tom Bradley effect? The first injection of race in the campaign. Who is the divider? Open your eyes to the reality not just the media twisting of facts. Try to be objective! I know it's hard with most major media outlets feeding the racial issue for the profit they get from fanning this national question and divide.
What Jay Cost meant was outperform in terms of turnout. In Nevada, blacks make up about 6% of the state's population vs. about 19% for Latinos. But both groups had roughly the same level of turnout (15%) for the caucus. He's suggesting that if that pattern were to prevail on Super Tuesday AND if you assume that most blacks will vote for Obama, a turnout pattern similar to Nevada would conceivably be beneficial to Obama when the votes get counted.
ReplyDeleteClearly you think different, but Obama was not the first to inject racial elements into the race (which honestly have been there from the jump, how could they not) That was definitely the Clintons. And its clear their strategy for SC was to brand him the "black candidate" in order to make him distasteful to white voters. Race is a sensitive issue to say the least, and whites are typically uncomfortable with talking candidly about race for both good and bad reasons and will often avoid doing so. The Clintons are trying to tie the way white voters see Obama to that discomfort.
They got into trouble by rolling out reviled people like Bob Johnson to try to smear him with a drug linkage and then Hillary made her LBJ comments,which while not racist, were ill phrased. There are plenty of black people on a hair trigger to cry racism at the drop of a hat and her comments were more than enough for that crowd. But the Clintons are the ones who have been cynically using race as a wedge issue and the problem they have is that its patently transparent to blacks and whites alike. Thats why Kennedy endorsed Obama among other things. He is as democratic establishment as it gets, the establishment that Hillary had in her hip pocket and is now alienating with their divisive win at all costs tactics.
-Aaron