| Barack Obama handily won all state primaries where there were disproportionately high numbers of African-American residents. (When I say "disproportionate", I mean numbers that exceed our 12-13% representation in the general population.) In some case, he took 95% of those votes (which I find unhealthy, bluntly, and not in the best interests of African-Americans given some of Barack Obama's positions, which he needs his feet to the fire held over, but that's a discussion for another time.)
Unfortunately, had Black folks not rolled, Obama would have lost in every one of those Southern states. That is because in each of those states, he lost the white Democratic vote. Before folks get waxing rhapsodic on how it's the "old folks" who are responsible for this outcome: other than in Georgia, where he won the 18-29 age group according to exit polls, Obama lost the white vote in all age groups. Reviewing exit poll data on CNN confirms the undeniable reality (at least right now) in the South: Barack Obama won South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia (all states with more than 25% Black population) because of an incredible turnout of Black voters who threw virtually all of their votes to him (I saw nothing less than 81%).
That's not the depressingly interesting part, to me. I already knew that was going to happen.
But before folks start hating on the South and Southern racism, this also appears to have been true in Delaware (where 21% of the population is Black, we are 35% of the registered Democrats, and were more than 25% of the voters on SuperDuperAssWhooper Tuesday giving Obama a stunning *90% of our votes.) While Delaware did not attempt in its exit polls to measure the impact of race, taking into account that only 11,000 votes separated Barack Obama from Hillary Clinton in Delaware it would be foolish to overlook the significant impact of Black voters, their very large turn out (25% of all votes cast in Delaware), and the lopsided weight those votes gave to Barack Obama's side of the ledger. In other words, even without the overt exit polls, it doesn't take more than basic mathematics to come to the conclusion that that if whites had given Obama the majority of their votes in Delaware, given what Black voters did the race would have been a complete blowout for him, instead of him winning by only 11,000 votes.
Of course, the obvious response (obvious in the sense that it's the first thing people say when the issue of racism and Barack Obama's candidacy comes up) is that "But Obama won in states don't have hardly any Black voters, so there!" That is indeed true. However, the truth of that appears to be masking something very important, which it would behoove Barack Obama and his ground game to think about and plan to attack - because there is something not so obvious afoot that can only hurt him in the general election.
Barack Obama won virtually all of the state caucuses/primaries where the state in question has a disproportionately low (in most cases, less than 5%) number of Black people actually living within it.
Thus, Obama won handsomely in Alaska (only 3.7% Black).
In Colorado. (4.1% Black.)
And in Idaho (0.7% Black).
In Iowa (2.5% Black)
And Kansas (6.0% Black).
Minnesota (4.5% Black).
Oklahoma (7.8% Black).
North Dakota. (0.8% Black)
Even, saints be praised, Utah (1% Black; I didn't know the Jazz had that much pull ;)).
Unfortunately, it is that data which first tipped me off to the depressingly-interesting part of the returns to date, because it is that data that caused me to ask the question:
If Barack kicked so much ass in these states where we just ain't and where (for the most part) Republicans/Reagan Democrats were/are king, how on EARTH could he have lost in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California - liberal states; progressive states, big ole BLUE states??????
Trying to get an answer to that question, being the anal-retentive bunny rabbit that I am, I looked at the only data we have: exit polls. Unfortunately, it was pondering those that led me to discover the depressingly-interesting part of all this:
Other than Barack Obama's home state of Illinois (which if he hadn't won, would have been truly horrifying for any candidate of any race or gender) Barack Obama has not yet won the popular vote in any state where whites and Blacks reside in fairly diverse circumstances; i.e. where the percentage of Black residents is commensurate with their presence in the general population, neither "too high" OR "too low".
In those states, Hillary Clinton won the primary; thanks to white, Latino (and, in the case of California) Asian voters, all of who gave her either a majority (whites) or, a de-jure supermajority (Latinos and, in CA, Asians) of their primary votes.
(Please feel free to look at the numbers, before you knee-jerk dismiss and/or naysay this. I'm not writing this diary as a Hillary supporter - I'm writing this diary as an Obama supporter, because I think questions about why Super Tuesday went down the way it did are critical for the general election, in which I am almost certain we will face a McCain/Huckabee ticket. I too, want Barack Obama to win.)
There are only three outliers to this trend, of Obama taking only those majority-white states where the Black population was disproportionately low, that I can see: Arizona, New Mexico, and Connecticut, and all have unique demographics that appear to explain the result.
In Arizona (3.8% Black), you have an enormous Latino presence and, as has been diaried over and over, Latinos broke all over disproportionately for Hillary Clinton. That's a no brainer, and I think explains what happened in Arizona where Latinos are 30% of the vote and nationally heavily favored Hillary Clinton (for whatever reasons).
New Mexico is similar to Arizona, with Latinos making up 34% of the electorate there. This is obviously just from eyeballing, but it seems that the percentage of Latino voters with a preference for Hillary Clinton combined with the fact that Richardson was still on the ballot and got a large percentage of Latino votes despite his withdrawal to cancel out the majority of white voters who voted for Obama. Since these separate majorities became, for all intents and purposes, a 'wash', the fact that Latinos in New Mexico did vote for Barack Obama in quite respectable numbers simply couldn't overcome the mathematical advantage that whites voting for Hillary Clinton had, in terms of population. This theory may not be far fetched: after all, there was only a 1,100 difference between Barack and Hillary in New Mexico.
Connecticut, which has a 10.2% Black population is distinguished both by its high wealth compared to the rest of the country and very high post-secondary education levels. While, as northeastern states go, Connecticut had a somewhat rocky history race-relations wise (it was one of the last northeastern states to abolish slavery, doing so only in 1848) these two population characteristics tend to suggest, given how successfully Barack Obama has campaigned with "the elite" (and before folks start hatin', I put myself in that category too at least as far as income and education go, even though you'll still find me the whist table and cutting a rug just like I did before I got bougy), that these race-neutral probably cancelled out the "race effect", right?
Depressingly, yet interestingly, wrong.
From what I can tell (which is not just based on a guess from the seat of my pants; see below) Barack Obama didn't win the white vote in Connecticut either. That means that Connecticut is not necessarily the outlier it seems at first, when compared to the trend of other states which have disproportionately low numbers of Black Americans within their borders. Mathematically, any other explanation other than Black voters throwing a superduperwhooper majority of their votes to Barack Obama on Super Tuesday in numbers large enough to carry the day seems hard to find (although obviously I'm not a statistician). Hard, at least, if what was reported by the exit polls is true:
Total Votes Cast in Connecticut - 350,588
| Barack Obama |
179,342 |
| Hillary Clinton |
164,831 |
| John Edwards |
3,408 |
| Uncommitted |
3,007 |
Using CNN's exit poll data for Connecticut (which leaves a lot to be desired) one can at least try to estimate the demographics of the total voter pool. So let's try and do that:
Est. Breakdown of Total Votes- 350,588
| Segment |
% of Total |
Est. Votes |
| White - Under 30 |
8% of electorate) |
28,047 |
| White - 31 to 44 |
17% of electorate |
59,560 |
| White - 45-59 |
31% of electorate |
108,682 |
| White - Over 60 |
26% of electorate |
91,553 |
| Black Voters |
9% of electorate |
31,552 |
| Latino Voters |
7% of electorate |
24,541 |
| All Others |
3% of electorate |
10,518 |
(CNN's percentages actually come out to 101% but I've done this quick and dirty so bear with me!) From that quick and dirty calculation, one can look a little more deeply at where Barack Obama's majority share of votes came from (IF the exit polls are an accurate reflection of what actually happened).
Let's start with the only exit poll data that they bothered to collect/report out there where race was concered in Connecticut - exit polls for white voters. Using the percentages which CNN has reported, this is how white votes theoretically broke down on Super Tuesday in Connecticut:
Obama's Share of White Votes in Connecticut (Est.)
| Percentage of Votes |
Est. Vote Count |
| 54% of White Under 30 |
15,145 |
| 45% of White 31-44 |
26,802 |
| 45% of White 45-59 |
51,081 |
| 45% of White 60 & Over |
44,645 |
| |
|
| Total Votes |
137,673 |
Recognizing that this is truly an imperfect calculation wrought from imperfect data (so no need to holler too much about that as a means of deflecting from the uncomfortableness of the idea that Barack Obama is not presently winning the majority white votes anywhere in America where white folks and Black folks rub shoulders in proportionate numbers)) is already winning the white voting majorities majority white votes everywhere meme; I'd be all for an actual calculation if it's available since this is as important to me as it probably is to you and would love to have my hunch proven wrong on this - you have no idea), this means that taking into account all of his white voters in Connecticut, Barack Obama got 41,669 votes in that state that were not cast by white people.
Although the remaining vote numbers get even more ephemeral, one can still try to guess where those came from. IF (and this is indeed speculation) Latino voters gave Hillary the 55% percent or more of their votes they have given her everywhere else in the country (and I haven't seen a percentage any lower than that anywhere), Barack Obama likely got, at most, 11,044 votes from that source. Unfortunately, that would have still left him needing to pick up 30,655 votes from somewhere.. So, to be fair, let's give him 50%/ ½ of all "Other" voters (for the record, I do not in any way support the media's lumping Asians, Native Americans and all those in between into "Other"): another 5,259 votes.
If those assumptions are true (and I admit that since Connnecticut did not exit poll enough non-white people to have any data, we'll never know for sure) that means that, in all likelihood, 25,396 out of the estimated 31,552-strong pool of Black voters went out into their precincts in Connecticut and voted for Barack Hussein Obama (hey, I like his middle name!). I feel some confidence in this, because this figure would have given him around 80.1% of the vote (the minimum number of Black votes that Barack Obama appears to have garnered everywhere he has ran).
I've been trying to find articles about whether Black turn out in Connecticut was higher or lower than average, with no luck so far.
When you play with these numbers as I have, it seems that yet again, Black voters were the margin of victory for him in that state: same as they were in the Southern states. Same as in Delaware, discussed above.
If what I am seeing is a fair read of the data indicating a true trend/pattern, rather than race paranoia and/or "race baiting" (a word getting misused beyond belief in this campaign), I don't see how Barack Obama's campaign doesn't take account of going forward, and affirmatively strategize around it. This assumes that the campaign strategists are not, like far too many of the campaign's supporters who haunt the blogs, busy denying any and all concerns having to do with Barack Obama's electability in the name of "Obamamania" (silly silly name, that!) aka the historical destiny of choosing Barack Obama as our party's nominee. And a frenzy Obamamania has indeed become for the most faithful. (For the rest? A depressing but increasingly likely inevitability, since no realist can erase Hillary's strong potential to bring out the worst of the rabid right in opposition to the idea of her presidency in the general election -- even though it really is through no fault of her own, their hatred of her -- no matter what goes down in the primary season. Obama has has momentum, and far fewer knee-jerk negatives with the other party members voting in November other than possibly race - and everyone knows it. Thus, it is very likely than not that Barack Obama will become our nominee.
Given this, we need to think long and hard about what will shift about the nature of the race when Hillary Clinton and all the other Democrats are no longer in this race, and the only choice the electorate faces in November is between electing a Black man for President and electing a white one, all qualifications for the job aside.
(I used to believe in the idea of the "best qualifications to be President" determining who became President; but then I lived through 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 and got realness slapped upside my now-greying head.)
One of the things that, IMO, must be carefully strategized through just like a military general is the possibility of the Bradley/Wilder effect, writ large on the entire country for the first time. It is something that only a fool can ignore, when you know the numbers. At least, only a fool that does not want to WIN ignores it. So I do hope someone other than myself who is working to help Barack Obama successfully navigate this latest chapter in Black History (and, since I voted for him yesterday, I do indeed want him to navigate it successfully; no party line crossing for me, thanks!) notices this trending. Because I'm not that smart, and if I noticed this trending just looking at the exit polls that actually tried to measure the impact of race (some states have so few Black folks they didn't even bother to ask these questions), and feel that it is a huge potential problem if/when John McCain gets the Republican nomination (and an even bigger one if McCain picks someone other than Mike Huckabee aka someone who will not galvanize Democrats to vote to prevent his insanity from running the country the same way that Hillary may galvanize Republicans to come out to defeat her) surely someone else must see it too.
I'll end by saying that someone the other day asked if I enjoyed being "provocative" when it comes to discussions of race. I originally took that question as asking me whether I enjoy stirring up racial shit for the sake of stirring up shit. For the record, I don't, but if what I write provokes thought, I'm all for it.
Someone else, in a different discussion, lamented that I don't write very much about solutions. That's a legitimate criticism, to me. I do think there are solutions to the potential problems - I also think they will require Barack Obama to reexamine aspects of his platform. Since this diary is long enough already, I'll write about those next time.
---------------------------
Ed Note: The results in Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington State from Saturday 2/9 -- all of which went for Barack Obama - confirm that this theory is not as crazy as some have said. He took all those states, handily.
Louisiana: 31.7 Black
Washington: 3.6% Black
Nebraska: 4.4% Black
And, sure enough, CNN Exit Polls show that Barack Obama lost the white vote in Louisiana even as he won a decisive overall victory there.
I add this data only because of the irrational reactions I saw from folks about the very idea that this was occuring (one particularly bright person suggested that the problem was with the Southern Baptist vote, as if somehow they'd all taken over NY, NJ and MA without anyone noticing.) I'd rather acknowledge it and fight it, myself. |
