Here's a picture of Republicans shooting themselves in the foot:
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This shows the dramatic change in support from the Arabic-speaking community in Dearborn, Michigan. In 2000, Bush won with around 70%; in 2008, the community voted nearly 100% for Obama. I found no other community with change this stunning. This is what happens when you demonize a group of people: they stop voting for you. Quickly.
Of course, for those of you who read the previous diaries in this series, you know what I'm going to say next: we are not all of us alike. The Arab-American vote is not as monolithic nationwide as it is in Dearborn. We'll also explore communities with ties to other parts of Western and Central Asia below the fold.
The national exit polls showed nearly two-thirds of those identifying themselves as Asian voted for Obama, a strong majority. Let's use the census data to find some neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of Asian Americans and examine the election results.
Here's a promising place to start:
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This map shows percent Asian by precinct; there is a nice variation from none (yellow) up to about three-quarters (dark blue).
We should see a corresponding pattern in the precinct results then - here, dark blue shows strong support for Obama:
Click to enlarge.
Oops...
There's certainly a pattern there, but not what we might have expected from the nationwide exit polls.
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