Open Left - exit polls

2008: Latino Electorate - Increasing Influence

dreaminonempty — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:00:00 GMT

When Reagan was first elected, only one percent of voters (and six percent of the population) were Hispanic. Just five years previously, jurisdictions with Hispanic voters had been added to the list of areas covered by the Voting Rights Act.

In 2008, after a rapid increase in participation, the Latino proportion of the electorate had increased almost tenfold (in part because of immigration) to 9% (compared to 15% of the population). Here's a comparison of 2004 and 2008:

Click to enlarge.

The most striking feature of the map is the increase in the Latino electorate in the South and other areas outside the Southwest.
Ten Second Summary

The Latino electorate is growing around the country, not just in the Southwest. Again, we see that we are not all alike, and more demographically uniform communities are more uniform in voting behavior as well.

The Usual Suspects
In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ending the war with Mexico provided for Mexican citizens living in territory ceded to the United States to become US citizens and vote. Most did indeed become citizens, and various states wasted no time in denying them the right to vote.

In 2008, seven states had more than 10% of the exit poll respondents describe themselves as Latino. Among them, there was essentially no change between 2004 and 2008 in Texas and Florida, and a slight decrease in California. The rest of the Southwest showed dramatic increases: from 8% of the electorate in 2003 to 13% of the electorate in 2008 (+63%) in Colorado, 10% to 15% in Nevada (+50%), 32% to 41% in New Mexico (+28%), and 12% to 16% in Arizona (+33%). The states without much change had the same status in 2004 and 2008 - uncompetitive for TX and CA, battleground for FL. The states with large increases, however, became fierce battlegrounds on the presidential level in 2008 - except for Arizona, which had some attention at the last minute - implying that campaigning and organizing likely played a large role in increasing the Latino electorate in this region.

The New South

A sixty percent increase in the share of the electorate that is Latino as we see in Colorado is damn impressive.

But how about a more than 400% increase? That's what we saw in Mississippi, which went from less than 1% Latino in 2004 to 4% in 2008.

Now, since we're looking at such small numbers, maybe we just see a statistical burp in Mississippi. Let's look elsewhere - we see a 300% increase in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, and Alabama. A 250% increase in Maryland. A 200% increase in South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa, and Minnesota. A 100% increase in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, North Dakota, Alaska, and New Hampshire.

These are all states that had a 0-3% Latino share of the electorate in 2004 and 2-7% in 2008. While that's small, it's enough now to be critical in close elections - such as the North Carolina race for president.

The interesting bit is that most of these states with dramatic growth have a geographic sweep, from the Deep South up to the Northern Plains (skipping the Southern Plains and most of the Midwest). Latino voters are clearly one important component of the New South.

Confirmation

All these single digit numbers still make me a bit twitchy, so I pulled up some 2000 Census data to look for some confirmation. It turns out there is a relationship between states with a rapidly increasing Latino share of the electorate and states with a high Latino growth rate, especially those with a high proportion of Latinos who say they moved to that state within five years preceding the census. It's a rough relationship, as we would expect when dealing with small numbers, but it looks real. We can conclude that the Latino vote is indeed increasing rapidly in large portions of the country.

The Votes

Here's how various Latino and Hispanic communities voted at the presidential level in 2008. Brazilian, which would not typically be considered Latino, and Guyanese are included simply because of geography.

Click to enlarge.

Support for Obama ranged from high to overwhelmingly high - except for the Cuban community in Miami-Dade county. This year, a nationwide Latino exit poll (conducted by email) by the William C. Velásquez Institute (WCVI) showed nearly the same results as the National Election Pool exit poll - about 70% for Obama. (In 2004, the National Election Pool had some problems, such as oversampling the Cuban community.)

If we weight each Latino community by its proportion in the Latino electorate, we would come up with about 85% for Obama nationwide. This means the communities used to derive support levels for Obama were more Democratic than the nationwide Latino electorate. We see good evidence for this in the Mexican-American community. In Starr County and select precincts in Los Angeles, more than 95% of the population is Latino, and almost all of them are Mexican-American. Support for Obama in these two locations ran about 10 points higher than support among Mexican-Americans nationwide in the WCVI poll.

We can also see, as with African-Americans, that approval of President Bush in 2005-2006 was greater among Latinos who lived in states where Latinos made up a small proportion of the population, although the trend is much weaker than among African-Americans. Once again, it appears that people tend to vote more uniformly in more ethnically uniform geographies.

Click to enlarge.

Note on names: current exit polls use the term "Latino," so that is what I am using for current data, simply because the data under discussion results from those willing to check a box that says "Latino." As far as I know this is not a term with universal approval from those to which it is applied.

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This diary is the tenth in a series taking a close look at the 2008 electorate and exploring three themes: diversity within demographics, progressive feedback loops, and demographic change.

Previous diaries:

Looking Back
Alternate History
Why Republicans Should Be Really Scared
African-Americans - We Are Not All of Us Alike
East and South Asian Americans - Diverse and Growing
West Asian Americans - Rapid Change
Native Americans - Increasing Participation
Islander Americans - In Need of More Representation
Alaskan Natives - An Economic Factor?

Tomorrow: The European American Electorate: Tribal Politics Persist

Cross posted at DailyKos.

2008 Electorate: East and South Asian Americans, Diverse and Growing

dreaminonempty — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:00:00 GMT

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:

Click to enlarge.

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.
Ten Second Summary
The Asian-American population has been growing and changing rapidly over the past several decades. Politically, there is strong and growing support for Democrats, on average. The Asian-American electorate is far from uniform, however, with very different voting patterns in different communities.

We Are Not All of Us Alike, Reprise
Clearly, the population shown in the map above did not support Obama for president. Some of you may have even recognized the neighborhood - it's part of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans - that's Lake Pontchartrain in the upper left corner. It is the center of a strong Vietnamese-American community, and home turf for Republican Congressman Joseph Cao. I estimate support for Obama at 5-8% in this community. (We can get such a good estimate in part because the Louisiana Secretary of State provides the racial breakdown of those who voted in each precinct.) As to why this community did not support Obama (or Kerry for that matter), I will note that it was founded by people fleeing communism - but I just don't know. The point is that it's a very bad idea to assume that all Asian-American communities (let alone individuals) are generally supportive of Democrats. We are not all of us alike.

Yet all evidence shows that, in aggregate, Asian-Americans nationwide did indeed strongly support Obama and Democrats in general. In fact, in a previous diary we saw that support for the Democratic presidential candidate was growing rapidly among Asian-Americans, from 31% for Clinton in 1992 to 62% for Obama in 2008.

What is the reason behind this trend? Part of the answer could be a bit of identity politics - after all, Obama lived in Indonesia as a child and part of his family is Asian-American. But that certainly can't explain the entire trend, as it doesn't apply to Kerry in 2004.

Everything Changed in the Sixties
The latest census estimate is that there are about 15,000,000 Asian-Americans (including citizens and non-citizens) in the country - or ten times the population in 1970. Over the past 40 years, there have been about 10,000,000 immigrants from Asia.

Here's a graph showing the number of immigrants from selected Asian countries. (Remember, not everybody who comes to this country stays, not everybody who stays becomes a citizen, and it typically takes years to become a citizen.)

Click to enlarge.

After a long history of preventing Asian immigration to the United States and denying citizenship even to those of Asian descent who were born here, immigration from Asia started in earnest following the reforms of 1965. The proportions of immigrants from various countries has varied over time, leading to dramatically shifting ethnic compositions in the Asian-American population. In 1960, prior to the new wave of immigrants, almost half of Asians were of Japanese descent; in 2000, it was less than 10%. Meanwhile, those with (Asian) Indian ancestry now make up 16% of those identifying as Asian.

Click to enlarge.

Diversity of Politics
What if some of the earlier groups to immigrate were more likely to support Republicans, while those who immigrated more recently were more likely to support Democrats? Wouldn't it be fun to see the Asian category broken down a bit? Really, we wouldn't necessarily expect Pakistani-Americans and Korean-Americans to have the same politics, as a group.

Well, through a massive effort, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund did just that. Their exit poll surveyed 16,665 Asian Americans in 11 languages at 113 polling sites in 11 states and DC. Wow! Another group surveyed 1237 Asian-Americans in Southern California.

Finally, using census data and precinct-level results, I estimated support for several additional Asian ethnicities as well.

A word of caution: the results are not necessarily representative of Asian-Americans nationwide. Both the AALDEF exit poll and my estimates focus on precincts with high concentrations of Asian-Americans, and urban and suburban areas. The National Election Pool exit poll, on the other hand, probably has the opposite problem, in that they quite possibly didn't conduct any interviews in heavily Asian-American precincts. Previously we have seen there may be a tendency for those who live in more demographically uniform communities to vote in a more uniform manner, so keep this in mind as you pick throught the following data.

Looking at all sources of data we get these numbers:

Click to enlarge.

One of the important things to notice is the major difference between the voting behavior of Vietnamese-American communities in California (Los Angeles) and New Orleans. Again, we are not all of us alike. The different results for all Asian-Americans between the National Election Pool exit poll and the AALDEF exit poll also stand out. Because of the factors discussed above, I would guess the 'true' results, nationwide, would be somewhere between the two.

Returning to the question of demographic change over time, indeed, we see that the group with the most rapid growth in its share of the Asian-American population - Indians - also has much stronger support for Obama than Koreans, Chinese, or Filipinos. However, this is balanced out by Vietnamese. Only a few points of the increase in support for Democrats can be attributed to the changing ethnic composition of Asian-Americans.

Another possible reason for the increase in support for Democrats among Asian-Americans as a whole might be that immigrants fleeing their home countries for political reasons may have been attracted to the more belicose anti-communist rhetoric of the Republicans, whereas their children, and more recent immigrants, don't care about such rhetoric as much. Let me be clear that this is anecdote-based speculation on my part.

Finally, the last few decades have brought about a rise in identification and advocacy as Asian-Americans, as opposed to disparate and isolated ethnic groups. I've read several sources indicating this rise in Asian-American self-identification was spurred by the brutal murder of Vincent Chin in 1982. Vincent Chin was a Chinese-American bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat in Detroit by a white autoworker and his stepson after an altercation in which, assuming he was Japanese, the attackers yelled at him "It's because of you motherfuckers that we're out of work!" The underlying sentiments - Asian-Americans are not Real Americans, they're all alike anyways, and they're to blame for current problems - have waxed and waned in public discourse over the intervening years, along with the predictable and tragic results. What seems clear to me is that such sentiments are part of a nativist, anti-immigration, anti-non-white-American strategy on behalf of the Republican party, and Asian-Americans have been paying attention.

Back to the AALDEF

There are some more interesting numbers in the exit polls, however: native-born Asian-Americans were more likely to support Obama (87%) than naturalized citizens (74%). This is consistent with the anecdotally-based idea above, at least, but far from proof - it could simply be a generation gap similar to that seen among other demographics. It does, however, clearly dash the hopes of Republicans that the children of immigrants might be more likely to vote for Republicans. Indeed, in a separate New York City exit poll, foreign-born citizens of all races except "Other" were slightly more likely to vote Republican than native born citizens.

Another point to emphasize is that 35% of voters in the AALDEF exit poll had limited English proficiency. Without the Voting Rights Act, many of these people may not have been able to vote.

Hey Wait a Minute!
Isn't the Middle East part of Asia too? Yes indeed. In fact, the AALDEF survey included Arab-Americans. In this diary I've mostly stuck to the census definition of Asian as a racial category. We'll get to the rest of Asia tomorrow.

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This diary is the fifth in a series taking a close look at the 2008 electorate and exploring three themes: diversity within demographics, progressive feedback loops, and demographic change.

Previous diaries:

Looking Back
Alternate History
Why Republicans Should Be Really Scared
African-Americans - We Are Not All of Us Alike

Tomorrow: The West Asian American Electorate: Rapid Change

Cross posted at DailyKos.

2008 Electorate: African Americans - We Are Not All of Us Alike

dreaminonempty — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:00:00 GMT

It's easy to shift into shorthand when looking at demographic data and start talking about how Group A or Group B 'votes for Obama' or 'is Democratic.' Generally we all know that we really mean only that a majority of said population behaves that way, but the words still leave behind a bit of the impression that all people in Group A vote the same way. Especially if we hear in the media over and over and over and over and over that, for instance, white working class voters won't vote for Democrats anymore.

Perhaps the most justified statement of this sort is "African-Americans voted for Obama." When the exit polls say 95% did, indeed, vote for Obama, that seems to be pretty safe.

I'm going to start off even more extreme though - here's a map of election results from Chicago: there were a whopping 87 precincts where Obama had exactly 100% of the vote (shown in pink). They were generally located in African-American neighborhoods.

Click to enlarge.

Follow me below if you're wondering where I'm going with this.
Ten Second Summary

African Americans, including immigrant communities, continue to support Democrats in very large numbers. However, even when we see a demographic group that votes overwhelmingly for one party or another, we need to remember that there are thousands if not millions in that same demographic who do not. We also need to pay attention to how the demographic is sampled, as we may see more uniform voting behavior among a specific demographic in more demographically uniform communities.

First Things First

It was the election of a lifetime. The White House, built by slaves, is now honorably occupied by a family descended from slaves. It's the American Story writ large, and a matter of pride and celebration for our nation, the world, and especially the African-American community.

From the trends we saw in a previous diary we would have expected about 90% of African-Americans nationwide to vote for the Democrat for President this year no matter who was running. This means Obama outperformed a Generic Democrat on this mark by about 5%. This also means somewhere around half a million African-Americans voted for John McCain, according to the exit polls. That's a lot of people.

Back to Chicago

It should come as no great shock that Obama did well in Chicago, especially in neighborhoods near where he lived and worked. Nearly a hundred precincts without one vote for McCain, though, is pretty impressive.

In case you're scratching your head, no, unanimous voting for one candidate doesn't support the point that we are not all of us alike. It does show how we might easily get the impression that all African-Americans voted for Obama - because in some precincts (and not just Chicago, but in cities around the country) all African-Americans DID vote for Obama. But not everywhere. So let's look elsewhere.

An Example: Mississippi

Here, too, we saw near-uniform support among the African-American community for Obama. So there's not much point in looking further - except it's a good example of how to extract information from a combination of election results and census numbers.

The following graph shows Obama's performance in counties of Southern and Central Mississippi as a function of the percent of individuals in the 2000 census who identified themselves as Black or African-American only. We see a nice straight line that makes life very simple:

Click to enlarge.

This graph only includes counties where 97% or more of individuals identified as white only or Black only in the 2000 census. Therefore, if we follow the line to the end of the graph, we can get a good estimate of support for Obama among African-Americans in this region. We can also get an estimate for support among whites. If we tweak the numbers using a range of assumptions for voter turnout among the two groups, we can come up with some ranges of support: in this case, 3-10% among whites and 97%-100% among African-Americans.

Now we can go looking at groups that weren't tabulated in the exit polls, using similar techniques as those described above. The graphs rarely end up as pretty as what you see for Mississippi, though, so the range of support I report will usually be much larger.

African and Caribbean African-Americans

There's been a substantial amount of immigration from Africa and the Caribbean in recent decades. We might suppose that African-Americans who are first- or second-generation Americans - especially those from Kenya - might be especially enthusiastic about voting for Obama. On the other hand, immigrant communities could easily have very different politics from long-established African-American communities. Unless politics in the US had a racial component to it, which of course it does. But let's quit assuming things and look at the data for all African-American communities (defined in the broadest sense). Here's a chart, including the location of the community used to generate the numbers:

Click to enlarge.

We see strong support across the board. Politically, immigrant African communities (at least those shown here) seem just about as likely to have supported Obama as other African Americans.

The States

So far every African-American group we've looked at has, indeed, shown near-unanimous support for Obama. Am I just squashing my own argument?

The short answer is no, because even at 95% support, again, that's still a half million or more African-Americans who voted for McCain and cannot be ignored. But let's keep digging.

Here's a graph showing Obama's support among African-Americans as a function of the percent of a state's population that was African-American in 2000:

Click to enlarge.

There appears to be a slight decrease in support in states where African-Americans make up a smaller proportion of the population. That is an interesting pattern. In fact, it brings to mind a similar graph from several years ago - approval of Bush among African-Americans:

Click to enlarge.

The second graph has 18 months worth of data combined - almost 11,000 interviews in each state - which allows us to get rough numbers for African-Americans even in South Dakota. It can be fit beautifully with an exponential curve decaying to a constant.

If we look at the curve from the second graph, apply it to the first graph, and fiddle with the numbers a bit, we would guess that African-American support for Obama in states such as South Dakota might have been in the 70-80% range. Here, then, we have found some place where African-Americans are not so close to uniform in their voting behavior.

Maybe.

Here's a few possible interpretations, any, all, or none of which may be true:

1. This is the prankster's graph - the smaller the population of African-Americans in a state, the greater the proportion of those who claim to be African-American in a survey that are actually whites who are messing with the pollster.

2. In states with few African-Americans, there isn't enough 'critical mass' to form an African-American social community. As we are all social beings, limiting exposure to a strongly Democratic community and increasing exposure to a more Republican community would logically increase the likelihood of an individual voting Republican.

3. African-American individuals who are Republican are more likely to feel comfortable living outside of African-American communities, and therefore we will find that a greater share of African-Americans are Republicans in states without enough African-Americans to form large communities.

Of course, if 2 and/or 3 are correct, we ought to see similar behavior among other groups.

As it turns out we do - specifically, among white evangelical Christians. We saw here that as the proportion of whites who are white evangelical or born-again Christian increases - as the white community becomes more uniform in religion - support for Obama drops among both evangelical and non-evangelical whites. In other words, when non-evangelical whites are a distinct minority in the white community, they are less likely to vote for Obama. When evangelical whites are a distinct minority in the white community, the are more likely to vote for Obama. Remember, of course, that correlation is not causation. Nonetheless, the data are at least consistent with the idea that the more uniform a community is, the more uniformly it tends to vote.

Even when a community overwhelmingly supports one party, though, it's good to keep in mind that there's typically plenty of people in that community going the other way.
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This diary is the fourth in a series taking a close look at the 2008 electorate and exploring three themes: diversity within demographics, progressive feedback loops, and demographic change.

Previous diaries:

Looking Back
Alternate History
The African American Electorate: We Are Not All of Us Alike

Tomorrow: The East and South Asian Electorate: Diverse and Growing

Cross posted at DailyKos.

2008 Electorate: Why Republicans Should Be Really Scared

dreaminonempty — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:43:05 GMT

In 2008, 90% of John McCain's votes came from white voters. However, while the Republican relied primarily on white voters, only 55% of them voted for him.

Coincidentally, 55% is also the percent of babies born in the US in 2008 that were non-Hispanic white, according to Census estimates.

That just doesn't bode well for Republicans.

Here's how it looks:

Click to enlarge.

On the left, results from the 2008 exit polls. On the right, the decreasing share of the US population that is non-Hispanic white. Explanations below the fold.
Ten Second Summary
Not only are non-whites a growing share of the electorate and highly likely to vote for Democrats, but both non-whites and whites are increasingly likely to vote for Democrats. Republicans are in deep doo-doo. This idea has been gaining traction over the past year, but it cannot be repeated enough.

Couldn't Win Without...
We start with the 2008 results, at left above. It shows a more diverse group of voters for Obama than for McCain. Only 60% of Obama's voters were white, compared to 90% for McCain.

Here's some maps by race/ethnicity of the exit poll results:

Click to enlarge. See note on color. Only states with 51% or more are counted in EV totals.

Note that at the extreme ends of support, purple is used for the most Republican and green is used for the most Democratic support. We see that the support among whites varied dramatically. The lowest support for Obama was in AL, MS, and LA, hands down. Low (but still substantial) support of around 20-30% of white voters was found in adjacent areas of the South and NE, ID, WY, & UT. How well Obama did among whites is strongly related to (but not necessarily caused by) the proportions of whites who are evangelical and born-again Christians in many of these states.

There's only a little variation across the country in support among African-Americans. There's more variation among Latino voters, with the highest support for McCain in Arizona, his home state, and Florida, which has a large Cuban-American population. All non-white voters together show a predictable pattern based on demographics, with Obama's strongest base of support among non-whites also in the South. (Don't worry about Wyoming; it's probably just a small sample size turning it pink.)

Trends - Double Trouble

Not only are non-whites strongly Democratic, but there is a significant trend towards the Democratic candidate over the last few decades among African Americans and Asian Americans. There would actually be a statistically significant trend among whites, too, if we ignore the 1976 election. Added together, there is also a significant trend in the percent vote for Democrats among all races (right, below).

Click to enlarge.

The graph on the right starts with the first election after the Voting Rights Act was passed. Carter's peak in 1976 could be seen as a last gasp of a disintegrating economic coalition, some of whom were willing to vote for a Southern Democrat but no other, in part because of the Republican Southern Strategy, but there's also certainly the aftermath of Watergate tied up in there too and probably a few other factors as well. A cursory glance at individual states shows that the Carter peak can be seen in just about all states, but is greatly enhanced in Southern states. The general increasing trend is also not present in every state. A few examples can be seen here. And finally, don't forget we've got third parties to deal with here too, although apportioning their votes according to exit poll preferences still leaves us with a general trend in the Democratic direction.

Overall, Democrats have been improving at the presidential level at about one percentage point per cycle, on average. About half of that comes from increasing support from both non-whites and whites. To see this effect, we can calculate the performance of Democratic candidates over the past several decades if we assume the demographics of each election's voters were the same as in 2008. We see a steadily increasing trend (with the exception of Carter):

Click to enlarge.

Trends Upon Trends

The other half of the Democratic improvement comes from increasing numbers of non-white voters, in part due to immigration trends, seen here. If Obama had run for president with a 1988 electorate, and done just as well among all racial categories as he did in 2008, he would only have won just over 49% of the vote (depending on turnout), because the 1988 electorate was more white. Again, we can calculate the performance of Democratic candidates of the past, this time assuming they performed as well among demographic groups as Obama did. And again, we see a steadily increasing trend, this time due to the changing composition of the electorate:

Click to enlarge.

Non-whites are making up more and more of the electorate as time goes on, a phenomenon which first came to my attention in a political way via Ruy Teixeira; Chris Bowers among others has emphasized this as well. In 1980, whites were 89% of the electorate. In 2008, they made up 74% of the electorate. Also in 2008, only 59% of 18-year olds were non-Hispanic white, and (as mentioned above) only 55% of newborns. To return to the graph from the introduction:

Click to enlarge.

The black line shows actual census data from 2000. The red dashed line continuing on shows projected data for newborns for the next few years. The other two lines show the effect of immigration - not all immigrants, however, will be able to vote. The lines are all pointing in one direction: Republican heartburn.

The vertical dashed line marks 1990 - these people were eligible to vote (if citizens) for the first time in the 2008 election.

Again, McCain's supporters were 90% white. In a country not too far down the road where only half the voters are white, there will be no hope for the current Republican party if almost all Republican support continues to come from whites. Indeed, Republicans only represent 13% of congressional districts with populations that are less than 60% non-Hispanic white.

The strategists in the Republican party do seem to recognize this, and there's a good argument that many minorities who currently vote Democratic have culturally conservative values that would mesh well with the Republican party. All the Republicans would have to do is minimize the Real-Americans-Are-Just-Like-the-Cleavers tendencies of their white voting base, while at the same time showing that minorities are welcome in their party. Hint: having Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as the de facto leaders of the GOP doesn't help. Neither does tokenism, or calling Justice Sotomayor racist. In fact, it results in even less favorable views of Republicans among minorities - less than 5% favorability as of this writing.

Ding, Dong, the ... Uh Oh.
This is not to argue Democratic complacency. While it's safe to predict that the country will grow less white, previous political trends can be interrupted. And, even if previous trends do continue, trends allow for year-to-year ups and downs. If Obama loses the White House in 2012 with 49% of the vote, this would still be consistent with the trends of the last 30 years.

Every year it gets harder for Republicans in their current incarnation to win elections, because their demographic base is shrinking. But not, obviously, impossible.

Up Next
This is all very interesting, but the categories are very broad. Lumping a diverse crowd such as Latino voters all together? We can do better than that - and we will, starting tomorrow.

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This diary is the third in a series taking a close look at the 2008 electorate and exploring three themes: diversity within demographics, progressive feedback loops, and demographic change.

Previous diaries:

Looking Back
Alternate History

Tomorrow: The African American Electorate: We Are Not All of Us Alike - even one of the most Democratic voting blocs in the country is not uniform

Cross posted at DailyKos.

Exit Poll Analysis Suggests Obama Victory Due to Surge in Youth and Minority Voting

project vote — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:43:42 GMT

The United States saw dramatic increases in voting from traditionally underrepresented groups, including minorities and young voters, according to a new analysis released this week by Project Vote. If borne out by systematic analysis of the voter rolls, this change in the electorate is evidence of the power of successful voter registration drives and an indication of the strong inclination of voters to participate in the process when candidates address their issues.
Countering the conventional wisdom that the voting population on November 4 did not change as dramatically as predicted, the analysis, The Demographics of Voters in America's 2008 General Election: A Preliminary Assessment, demonstrates that African-Americans, Latinos, and young voters cast millions more ballots in 2008 than in 2004.

"The analysis estimated that about 5.8 million more minorities voted in this year's presidential election than in 2004, while nearly 1.2 million fewer whites went to the polls," wrote Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers. "The figures appear to reflect the success of Project Vote and other liberal voter registration groups in registering millions of young, poor, elderly and minority Americans to vote in recent election cycles."

According to the analysis, African-Americans cast nearly three million more ballots nationwide in 2008 than in 2004-an increase of 21 percent. The total votes cast by Latinos went up by 16 percent-more than 1.5 million-and young Americans aged 18-29 cast 1.8 million more votes, a nine percent increase. That the overall totals did not increase significantly compared to 2004 was in part due to a decrease in voting by white voters.

In addition to presenting an analysis of ballots cast from the United States as a whole, the memo by Project Vote consultant and Ph.D. candidate Jody Herman and Barnard College political science professor Lorraine Minnite examines several key states in detail, including Colorado, Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

The Project Vote data is preliminary, and does not speak to "turnout," which is traditionally a measure of the percentage of the voting-eligible population that shows up to vote. Project Vote expects to release a full report on turnout in the 2008 election in 2009 when government survey data on the voting-eligible population comes available. Yet, this preliminary analysis indicates that a significant shift occurred this year.

"There is no doubt that this surge in voting by Americans of color and young people had a powerful impact on the outcome of the election," said Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote, in a press release issued today.

"Separate opinion polls and election results themselves indicate that an overwhelming majority of African-Americans and Latinos backed Obama," according to Gordon.

"Thus, the appearance of an African-American presidential candidate with a sympathetic message may have prompted the nation's minorities to vote at levels approaching white voters -- if final state vote counts do not upend Project Vote's figures," wrote AlterNet's Steve Rosenfeld last week. "Its findings also suggest the U.S. electorate is not an inflexible assembly of voting constituencies, but has segments that are mobilized -- or demobilized -- depending on the year, candidate and message,"

In an email exchange with Rosenfeld, Frank Sharry, executive director of pro-immigration reform group, America's Voice, said "neither the turnout increase among Latinos -- nor the swing in support to Democrats -- were surprising."

"Telling people you don't like them and don't want them is not a winning electoral strategy," wrote Sharry. "But that is what the Republican Party has been saying to immigrants, Latino immigrants in particular, for the past four years. No surprise, then, that record numbers of Latinos turned out in 2008 and that the swing away from Republicans to Democrats among Latino immigrants in particular was dramatic."

If This Is Center-Right....

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:30:24 GMT

As Media Matters pointed out, Brent Bozell is a little confused over whether Obama is a socialist or a Reaganite Conservative.

Socialist (From the October 27 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends):

BOZELL: This is the arrogance, I think, of the Obama campaign, but it's a well-placed arrogance in the sense that they've gone through this entire campaign without being questioned seriously by anyone except for this news network, the Fox News network, which is why they studiously avoid the Fox News network. But when you go through the entirety of the campaign saying the kind of things that you're saying in the debates, where on, for every question, you've got a redistribution of wealth answer, where you've got socialism, where you've got the government controlling every aspect of life. You don't expect a reporter to ask you, "Is this socialism?" Because the media don't ask that question. Well, some uppity reporter did -- and look what happened, they cancelled her. And, by the way, she won't be going to the ball, either.

Reaganite Conservative (From the November 7 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom):

BOZELL: There's a lot of work that needs to be done. But here's the key thing, Bill, that really isn't being reported: Anyone who looks at the exit polls this year will find two fascinating results. Number one, this country remains every bit as center-right as it's been for a generation. And number two --
HEMMER: You don't think that's changed -- you don' think that's changed at all?
BOZELL: No, it hasn't. Look at the exit polling. The number one issue was the economy, nothing came close. The American people are fiscally conservative, and the fascinating thing, Bill, is that Barack Obama ran as a Reaganite and won over the fiscal -- the public as a fiscal conservative. That's what the polling data shows.
HEMMER: You said there were two things. What was number two?
BOZELL: Well, number one is that the public is conservative; number two, Barack Obama won as a conservative. That means that Barack Obama does not have the mandate to enact the left-wing agenda he wants to enact. He didn't run on it, he ran from it. So, this is not necessarily bad news for conservatives.

But what happens if we just ignore the confusion, and go with #2? What does a Reaganite Conservative look like these days?
First, the election. To restate the obvious: People elected the more liberal candidate and increased the congressional majorities of the more liberal party--in both houses. Doesn't sound too conservative to me.

Number one, this country remains every bit as center-right as it's been for a generation.

Well, it's true that the center-left popular vote in the 2000 election (Gore plus Nader) was similar to where we are today (51.1% in 2000, 52.6% in 2008). But in 2000, Bush didn't lose Florida by so much he couldn't steal it, and he didn't lose North Carolina, Virginia and Nebraska-CD2 at all.

Nor did Democrats hold an 80-seat majority in the House for a generation. Winning the House vote by 7.2%.

But, if that's what a center-right nation looks like.... Well, let's roll with it.

Second, the exit polls. Bozell is 100% correct that the economy was the number one issue. Fully 63% of the people said so in the exit polls, and of them, 53% voted for Obama, compared to 44% for McCain. Another 9% cited health care--a more specific economic concern, and those voters went for Obama by a much wider margin--73/26%. But does this mean "The American people are fiscally conservative"?

Well, 75% said the country was on the wrong track, and they voted for Obama 62/36%. Just 20% said it was going in the right direction, and they voted for McCain 71/27%.

On the economy specifically, just 7% said it was "excellent" or "good", and those voters went for McCain, 72/26%. A whopping 93% said it was "not so good" or "poor", and they went for Obama, 54/44%.

Neither of those sound too conservative to me, considering that conservatives have been running things for virtually all of the last 8 years.

Furthermore, 51% said the government "Should Do More", and they voted for Obama 76/23%, while only 43% said government was "Doing Too Much", and they voted for McCain 71/27%. Again, that doesn't sound too conservative to me.

Lastly, did the exit polls show that people thought they were voting for a conservative? Well, not so much. 42% said that Obama was "too liberal", compared to just 4% who said he was "too conservative", while 50% said he was "about right". What's more, 3.7% of the voters thought he was "too liberal", but voted for him anyway. Just 2% of voters thought he was "too conservative" but voted for him anyway.

But, hey, if that's what a center-right nation looks like.... Well, let's roll with it.

Third and finally, let's look at another poll , this one from Celinda Lake, polling for the Change To Win labor federation. This was a poll of working Americans--non-supervisory workers to be exact.

SUMMARY
In the 2008 election, workers soundly rejected the Republican economic frame of deregulation and government inaction, choosing Barack Obama to be their next President. Workers believe he is the candidate least influenced by corporations and CEOs (of whom they blame for the current economic crisis). They believe he would do a better job of improving their personal economic situation, improving wages and conditions, and that he is the candidate that best represents the American Dream.
An astounding 84 percent of working Americans feel the economy is on the wrong track with only ten percent saying it is on the right track. Among younger workers the gap is even starker, with 87 percent who feel the economy in America is on the wrong track, and just seven percent feeling it is on the right track.

This intensity carried over into working Americans' enthusiasm for voting in this election. Almost 7 in 10 working Americans (68%) felt more enthusiastic for voting in this election compared to elections past, fully 19 points higher from the fifth American Dream survey in September 2008. Only 12 percent felt less enthusiastic and just 18 percent felt the same. Among workers under 30, 71 percent felt more enthusiastic.

For working Americans, the single most important issue in deciding their vote for President was the economy and jobs (72%), followed by health care and prescription drugs (26%), and the war in Iraq (23%). Likewise, 81 percent said the state of the economy and jobs itself would influence their vote for President either a lot or a little (58% a lot, 23% a little), with only 18 percent saying it would make no difference. The state of the economy and jobs influenced younger workers even more, with 84 percent reporting it would influence their vote for President (59% a lot, 25% a little).

Barack Obama scored a decisive victory, winning working Americans 51 percent to John McCain's 39 percent, with 10 percent either not sure or voting for a third party candidate. Obama's victory was even more convincing among working Americans under 30, winning by 24 points, 58 percent to John McCain's 34 percent, with nine percent either unsure or voting for a third party candidate.

American workers recognized the role Republican anti-government policies had in creating the current economic crisis, and now soundly reject these same policies, signaling the end of the Reagan era. Sixty-eight percent agree that we need to reform government to make it work for us, and that our government has to be part of the solution, while only 27 percent agree with the Republican frame of government is the problem and not the solution.

A comfortable majority (56%) of American workers say the current economic crisis was actually the result of deregulation and a lack of corporate oversight that let greed run wild. They believe that we need more government oversight and enforcement to hold corporations accountable. Barely over a third (37%) believe too much government regulation interferes with the proper functioning of the free market, and that we need to let the free market function to create jobs to grow our economy. As a result, almost three-fourths of working Americans said it is extremely important to them personally that their candidate for President represents working people (73% rate 10 or "extremely important").

Despite the economic crisis and the problems in government, American workers believe the American Dream is still obtainable. Only 19 percent believe they may not or will not be able to obtain the American Dream while a solid majority (73%) either have obtained it (15%) or believe that it is still obtainable (58%).
The cornerstones of the American Dream in the eyes of workers remain having a job that pays enough to support a family (82% extremely important, 94% total important), being able to ensure children have the opportunity to succeed (79%, 92%), having a secure and dignified retirement (74%, 17%), and having affordable quality health care to depend on (73%, 17%).

Working Americans feel most strongly that the best steps the President and Congress can take to make the American Dream more attainable are making sure employers keep their promises to employees with regard to pensions and health care (72% extremely effective, 87% total effective), followed by enacting health care reform to guarantee that every American has access to quality affordable health care (66%, 81% total), cracking down on oil speculators and price gouging at the pump (62%, 79% total), and ensuring equal opportunity and equal pay for women and minorities (61%, 79% total).

Solid majorities believe it is Barack Obama over John McCain who has the best vision for restoring the American Dream (54% to 31%, and 64% to 23% for workers under 30) and who really represents the values of the American Dream (54% to 27% and 60% to 27% for workers under 30). Two-thirds of working Americans believe Obama can make a difference in helping people achieve the American Dream (43% a lot of difference, 23% a little).

Similarly, working Americans perceive John McCain as the candidate who is most influenced by big corporations and CEOs (46% McCain, 23% Obama, 15% both influenced by corporations and CEOs). Among workers under 30, forty-nine percent perceive McCain as more influenced by corporations and CEOs, with just 17 percent for Obama.

So, in short, focusing solely on American workers, Lake found even stronger manifestations of all the trends shown in the exit polling--and more explicit rejections of the conservative, Republican, Reaganite worldview. And, she found that voters were enthusiastic--not disappointed that they didn't have a "real conservative" to vote for.

But, hey, if that's what a center-right nation looks like.... Well, I say let's roll with it!

The Pluralist Coalition Manifests

Chris Bowers — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:30:00 GMT

The 2006 and 2008 national exit polls show an overall pro-Democratic margin within 1% of each other. However, they reach this margin in very different ways. Specifically, Obama heavily under-performed 2006 Democrats among white voters, losing that group by 12% compared to only a 4% Democratic defeat two years ago. However, he won the campaign anyway, and did so with a margin nearly identical to 2006.

How did he do so? In the extended entry, I discuss the long awaited rise to power of the pluralist coalition.
In 2006, non-whites composed 23% of the electorate, and broke for Obama by a margin of 75%-24% (see the "religion among white" crosstab). However, in 2008, non-whites composed 26% of the electorate, and broke for Obama by a 79%-18% margin (see the same crosstab). That amounts to a 4.1% increase for Obama, drawn entirely from non-white voters, virtually canceling out Obama's 5.7% drop among white voters.

Obama also won white non-Christians, who represented 13% of the electorate, by a margin of 72%-25%, This margin is identical to the Democratic score among this group in 2006, meaning that Obama's entire decline among whites came from white Christians. Compared to 2006 Democrats, Obama gained among non-whites, held steady among white non-Christians, and dropped among white Christians.

This is the manifestation of the pluralist coalition I have written about for four years (see Maybe It Is a Battle Of Civilizations, Towards a Pluralist Strategy and The End of Bubba Dominance for my major writings on the subject). Here are some figures about this coalition to keep in mind:

Roughly 60% of all Democratic voters are now non-white and / or non-Christian (per exit polls).
Democrats hold a 3-1 margin among non-whites and / or non-Christians (per exit polls)
Non-whites and / or non-Christians now compose 39% of the electorate, their highest total ever (per exit polls)
Over 60% of the country under the age of 43 is non-white and / or non-Christian (Source). Many commenters will justifiably ogle the huge, pro-Obama youth vote this year, but really the non-white and / or non-Christian vote are deeply intertwined.
Over 100% of the population growth in America comes from non-whites and / non-Christians. That is, the white Christian population in America is actually slowly declining, even though the population of the country is still increasing on right pace with average world population growth. (Source)

In this context, Obama's victory should not be seen as a historical fluke created by the confluence of disastrous Republican governing, a 2004 Illinois Senate field that collapsed around him, and a great speech at the Democratic convention four years ago. It is, instead, a harbinger of America's future.

The coalition that Obama won with is just getting started in terms of political dominance. This really is the end of the political dominance of the socially conservative white voter, no matter how many pundits claim that we live in a center-right America. (See also Simon Rosenberg's essay On Obama, race and the end of the Southern Strategy.) In fact, if anything, as long as center-right media and political institutions fail to see the writing on the wall and actually start appealing to this coalition, they will continue to lose market share.

America is not a center-right nation. It is now a culturally pluralistic nation, and the line between identity and ideology is becoming awfully blurry these days.

Early Exits

Chris Bowers — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:31:02 GMT

Via distantshore in quick hits, take these for what they are worth (read numbers as Obama-McCain):

GA 47-51
FL 52-49
IA 58-42
IN 52-48
MI 60-39
MN 56-39
MO52-48
NC 52-48
NH 57-43
NM 56-43
NV 55-45
OH 54-45
PA 57-42
VA 55-45
WV 45-55
WI 58-42
National 54-44

Remember to take your salt with these. The good news is that Obama wins even with a large, 5%-7% shift toward McCain.

Mid-day Open Thread

Chris Bowers — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:15:00 GMT

I voted at about 8:15 this morning. Took twenty minutes or so. Given reports from my friends, the lines were huge everywhere in Philadelphia early in the morning, but tapered off after 9 a.m. Lots of hard-core voters out early. Lots.

The best part about my voting experience was when the judge of elections claimed a young woman in line ahead of me wasn't on the rolls, and was about to send her to another division. I quickly pulled out my street list, confirmed she was a registered voter in the division, and told the judge to look again (as a certified poll watcher, I can do this). The judge looked again and found her. Turns out the page the voter was on was just stuck. So, I helped someone else--a registered Democrat--vote, too. Cool.

Obama people are all over the neighborhood, pulling people out to vote. I don't remember any Election Day canvassing in the area ever before.

This is an open thread. How was your voting and / or activist experience?

Obama Up 10% With 30% Reporting

Chris Bowers — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Obama has inched up in the tracking polls for the third straight day, and he now leads by 6% according to Pollster.com with less than 77 hours before the polls close in all swing states. (Iowa is the last "swing state" to close, if you can call Iowa a swing state, anyway. Part of Montana closes at 11:00 p.m. eastern). So, McCain has to gain a full 1% on Obama every thirteen hours between now and then in order to win. That means that McCain has to flip about 100,000 voters every hour, or three every second, in order to tie Obama. Best of all, he can only target 70% of the electorate for these votes, because 30% is already spoken for.

More in the extended entry.
According to Rasmussen and Gallup tracking polls, Obama is up by about 10% with nearly 30% of the vote already cast. Here is the relevant quote from today's Gallup poll, which Obama currently leads by 10%:

The trend in early voting has trended consistently upward on a day to day basis, moving from 7% of registered voters, who had already voted during the period of Oct. 17-19, to the current estimate of 27%. Another 8% of registered voters still indicate that they plan on voting before Election Day itself. The vote choices of these early voters -- all of whom are included in the likely voter pool since they are definite voters -- skew more toward Barack Obama than the sample average.

So, Gallup has Obama up by 11% or more with 27% or the vote already in. Rasmussen shows nearly identical numbers:

Nearly a third of voters say they have already cast their ballot and Obama leads by nine among this group. Obama also has a similar lead among the small group who have not voted but still plan to vote early. The candidates are essentially even among those who plan to vote on Tuesday.

Gallup and Rasmussen have by far the largest sample sizes, allowing for more useful crosstabs of early voters. The Gallup and Rasmussen crosstabs on early voters are larger than the entire GWU . Battleground and IBD / TIPP tracking polls, for example. Combined, Gallup and Rasmussen show that Obama is leading by 10% with 30% of the vote already cast.

This is fantastic, and extremely reassuring news. It means that McCain has to win the remaining 70% of the vote by more than 4% just to tie Obama. It means that lines at many strong Democratic precincts won't be as long on Election Day. It means that it is more difficult for these votes to be suppressed. It means that these voters can't forget to vote, or suddenly face an emergency that prevents them from voting. As I discussed yesterday, it means that Obama has already won the Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico victory firewall, and now only needs to hang onto Pennsylvania in order to win.

It also means, unfortunately, that exit polls might give us a scare on November 4th. It appears that exit polls do take early voting into account, but only in 18 states and do not include cell-phone only early voters. For both of these reasons, the exit polls might skew toward McCain a bit, and give a bunch of us some heart palpitations. That is a negative, but overall a very small negative compared to the overwhelming benefits of this early voting advantage.

Only 15% Oppose One-Party Rule In D.C.

Chris Bowers — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:45:00 GMT

In accordance with current Republican messaging, Rasmussen's top political story right now is a poll that argues only 34% of the country thinks one-party rule is a good thing:

As Election Day 2008 approaches with the prospect of a Democrat in the White House and Democratic control of the Congress, only one-third (34%) of U.S. voters think rule by one political party is better for the country.

Forty-five percent (45%) say it's better if the White House and Congress are each run by a different political party, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty-one percent (21%) are undecided.

With 21% undecided, and neither answer reaching a plurality, clearly this isn't a subject that the electorate has every put much thought into. This is much to the chagrin of both the McCain campaign, and concern troll, elitist "bi-partisan" pundits everywhere.

However, let's leave abstract questions about "one-party rule in D.C." aside for a moment, and actually look at how people vote in federal elections. This is not, after all, an abstract question. The same people who vote for President also vote for House and Senate. Maybe, rather than asking poll questions, we should actually check to see how people vote across these three offices. The percentage of people who do not vote for the same party in a single Presidential, Senate and House elections would be the actual number of people who oppose one-party rule in D.C.

In 2000, according to the Presidential exit poll, 85% of all voters chose one party for both President and Senate (no numbers were available for the House). In 2006, only 16% of the participants in the national House exit poll indicated that they were neither Kerry voters who voted Democratic for U.S. House, nor Bush voters who voted Republican for U.S. House (I can't find any comparable numbers for 2004).

So, there you have it. Only about 15%-16% the country is actually opposed to one-party rule in D.C., in that only about 15%-16% of the country doesn't vote straight party line for President, Senate and House. Five in six Americans have no problem with one-party rule, in that they vote for the same party for President, Senate and House.

That's not a very bi-partisan, anti-"one party rule" country, is it? Too bad that facts like these won't stop pundits from crowing about the supposed hatred of one-party rule in D.C.

Run Center, Run Right

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Remember back in June, when Barack Obama "clarified" his positions on a whole raft of issues-including warrantless wiretapping-all in a rightward direction?

At the time, I felt there were three things worth noting:

(1) Some shifts away from majority positions to rightwing minority positions were presented as shifts "to the center". Most notably, even most Republican voters now see "free trade" as more bad than good.

(2) We were told that this was a "political necessity."

(3) We were told that this "always happens."

(1) and (2) were particularly dubious when Obama backed away from his criticism of NAFTA, given how crucial Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are to winning the White House, and how hated NAFTA is among the very blue collar voters that Obama needs in order to beat McCain there. But #3, at least, seemed plausible to those who don't recall the elections of 1968 and 1980. Even those who do recall those elections are likely to insist that they, too, followed the standard pattern of running away from the center in the primaries, and towards it in the general election. And now, at least, I'm not inclined to argue with them, because now we clearly have a counter-example on our hands: John McCain ran center in the primaries, and now is running right.

The "Political Necessity" Canard

Before turning to my main topic, it's worth taking note that the claim of "political necessity" was soundly refuted, when it came to Obama moving right. Chris pointed this out quite clearly in a July 8 diary, "Obama Seen As Less Liberal; Polls Don't Change":

First, Chris took note of Obama's shift to the right:

The conventional wisdom is that, as a result of a recent statement on guns, a recent flip-flop on FISA, and a conservative toned television advertising campaign, Obama is "moving to the center" now that the primary campaign is over. According to Rasmussen, that CW is mirrored by the shifting perceptions of the general public, who view Obama as less liberal than they did one month ago:
During the Primary campaign season, Obama was viewed as politically liberal by an ever-increasing number of voters that grew to 67% by early June. However, since clinching the nomination, he has reversed that trend and is now seen as liberal by only 56%.

Twenty-two percent (22%) characterize the Democrat as Very Liberal, down from 36% early last month.

McCain similarly has been seen as politically conservative by more and more voters, also hitting 67% a month ago, but he is still viewed that way by 66%. While19% saw him as Very Conservative in early June, that figure now has risen to 28%.

This was rationalized at the time in the terms cited above. "Move to the center" (not right), "political necessity", "always happens", yada yada yada. Well, not exaclty, Chris noted. The political payoff for this oh-so-necessary rightward shift turned out to be precisely nil:

So, now that Obama is perceived as moving to the center, while McCain is still perceived as conservative, Obama's poll numbers should improve, right? Wrong. According to the daily tracking poll from the same polling firm, Rasmussen, the campaign has not changed at all as a result of Obama being perceived as less liberal:
Obama has been at 49% every single day since June 22nd
Obama has been at 48%, 49% or 50% every single day since June 8th
Obama has led by between 4-6% every day since June 23rd, and in all but three days since June 11th. In the other three days, he twice led by 3%, and once led by 7%.

Poll movement of this small degree is not really movement at all, but rather "statistical noise." .... This is very strong proof, even scientific, that Obama's move to the center has not won him any votes, and that the perceived change in the ideological gap between Obama and McCain did not impact their relative vote share.

Indeed, the real reason for shiting rightward is simply that that is what the political elites demand, and now that the pesky Democratic voters no longer have to be appealed to (where else do they have to go?), Obama-like others before him-was happy to comply.

"Political necessity" is simply an elite, rightwing narrative that provides cover for this abandonment of what the voters wanted. "It always happens" is another such narrative. And it, too, has now been shown to be a lie.

The "It Always Happens" Canard

In terms of ideology in the 18 GOP primaries, McCain's appeal was so decidedly centrist that in 15 of those states his percent of the vote declined monotonically to the right. This means an absolute negative correlation between how conservative a voting block was, and how likely they were to support McCain. He got the highest vote percentage among those who considered themselves "somewhat liberal," with a smaller percentage among those who considered themselves, "moderate," an even smaller percentage among those who considered themselves "somewhat conservative," and the smallest percentage among those who considered themselves "very conservative."

There were only three states where this pattern did not hold. In South Carolina, he got 49 percent of those calling themselves "somewhat liberal," compared to 51 percent calling themselves "moderate." In New Jersey, it was 64 percent "somewhat liberal," compared to 67 percent "moderate." In Massachussettes, it was 56 percent "somewhat liberal," compared to 59 percent "moderate." These are all neglibable differences well within the margin of error. For all intents and purposes, McCain's strongest ideological appeal was to the most liberal group of those who showed up throughout the primary process.

The results were similar, though not as striking when we turn to partisan identification. Ron Paul had such a strong appeal to independents-drawing a higher percentage of them than Republicans in every single state-that he made it harder for McCain to grab more independents than Republicans. Still, McCain managed to do this in 8 out of 18 states, with equal percentage in one state, and a larger percentage of Republicans in 9 states. In comparison, Huckabee did better among independents in just 4 states, and Romney did better with them in just one.

There is no mistaking it. This is not just another media myth. John McCain was running center in his primary campaign. And now, with Sarah Palin's nomination as his running mate, he's clearly running right.

The most commonplace analysis of this casts this as a "base turnout" strategy, and sees it as a risky choice, given the growth of the Democratic base since 2004, when a base turnout strategy worked to re-elect Bush. But it's clearly more complex than this, since it involves a concerted effort to reshape the campaign narrative in ways that greatly favor the Republicans. Media support for such a reshaping strategy has been quite evident throughout the Bush era, and McCain has benefitted even more from media favoritism ("We're his base."--Chris Matthews.)

McCain's high level of support among independents, and his relatively high level of approval by Democrats can be directly attributed to the media's buddy-buddy relationship with McCain, which goes even deeper than their similar relationship with Bush, who endeared himself to them by giving them insulting nicknames ~~as if~~ because they were his pets. It's true that McCain's relationship with the media is starting to show considerable strain. But it's not because McCain is shifting hard right. It's because he's lying so blatantly, so clumsily, and attacking the media so hamfistedly.

A similar general election shift to the left by a Democrat could hardly be imagined.

America Is Not Becoming More Moderate and Less Partisan, Part Two

Chris Bowers — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:38:07 GMT

This is a continuation of a two-part series that began yesterday. The first part can be read here--Chris

Selective anecdotes can be used to support any thesis. However, a broad, quantitative analysis of long-term trends typically points to far more narrow conclusions.

This is the case with American politics as much as it is the case with any other area of investigation. Despite repeated claims by journalists, pundits and politicians that America is becoming less partisan and less ideological, and embracing bi-partisanship and centrism, every marco-trend in American politics indicates the opposite is occurring.

If America really were embracing centrism, then we would see the following:

Americans would not be at their all-time peak of liberal policy mood;
Moderate self-identification would be increasing, not decreasing;
More moderate challengers would be defeating less moderate challengers in primary elections, not the other way around;
More moderate members of Congress would have a higher retention rate than less moderate members of Congress, not the other way around.

Also, if America really were becoming less partisan, then we would see the following:

More voters would be selecting the nominee of an opposing party, not less;
More voters would be choosing third-party candidates, not less;
More voters of all types would be self-identifying as Independent, not just Republicans.

Instead, what we see across all seven of these trends are either a movement toward an increasing embrace of partisanship and non-centrist ideology, or simply a movement away from Republicans and toward Democrats. Yerterday, I covered three of these trends in detail. Today, in the extended entry, I cover the other four (one of which was not mentioned in yesterday's post).

More in the extended entry.
4. Is third-party performance improving in general elections?
Answer: No
Since 2000, third-parties have seen a consistent decline in their share of the national popular vote in U.S. House elections:

2006: 3.9%
2004: 4.2%
2002: 5.4%
2000: 5.7%

This is mirrored in the performance of third-parties in the presidential election, where the share of third-party votes has declined every cycle since 192, reaching a low of 1.00% in 2004.

While there are currently two independent members of the U.S. Senate, both of whom were elected in 2006, in both campaigns one of the two major parties failed to present a serious nominee. In Vermont, there was no Democratic nominee competing against Bernie Sanders, while in Connecticut, the Republican nominee only received 10% of the vote in the Lamont vs. Lieberman general election. In both cases, the independent candidate was already a statewide elected member of Congress, indicating that both campaigns were won because of well-known, popular local politicians were on the ballot, rather than through a rejection of the two major parties.

5. Are moderates challengers of both parties defeating incumbent non-moderates in primary elections?
Answer: No
Since 2006, six congressional incumbents have been defeated in primary elections. On five occasions, a more moderate incumbent was defeated by a less moderate challenger: Ned Lamont's defeat of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, Tim Walberg's defeat of Joe Schwartz in MI-07, Donna Edwards's defeat of Al Wynn in MD-04, Andy Harris's defeat of Wayne Gilchrest in MD-01, and Jason Chaffetz's defeat of Chris Canon in UT-03. On only one occasion, a more moderate challenger defeated a less moderate incumbent: Hank Johnson's victory over Cynthia McKinney in GA-04. Clearly, the trend is for moderates to be defeated in primaries by less moderate challengers, rather than for less moderate incumbents to be defeated by more moderate primary challengers.

6. Are moderates challengers of both parties defeating non-moderates incumbents of the opposing party in general elections?
Answer: No
In 2006, twenty-four incumbent members of the House, and six incumbent members of the Senate, were defeated for re-election. The lone Democrat was Cynthia McKinney in the House.

Of the twenty-three defeated Republican House incumbents, the median ideological ranking, according to voteview.com, was 66th most liberal among the Republican caucus.

Defeated Republican Incumbents, Ranked By Most Liberal In Republican Caucus
Jim Leach: 2
Michael G. Fitzpatrick: 6
Rob Simmons: 7
Nancy Johnson: 9
Charlie Bass: 11
Jeb Bradley: 12
Sue Kelly: 15
Curt Weldon: 18
Joe Schwartz: 23
John Sweeney: 31
Clay Shaw: 60
Richard Pombo: 66 (median)
Anne Northup: 81.5
Don Sherwood: 92
Henry Bonilla: 116
Charles Taylor: 117.5
Melissa Hart: 117.5
Mike Sodrel: 126.5
Jim Ryun: 180
John Hostettler: 181.5
Gil Gutknecht: 191.5
Chris Chocola: 207
J.D. Hayworth: 208

Overall, 236 Republicans served at least some length of time in the 109th Congress. With the median incumbent ranking 66th most liberal of 236, defeated incumbents heavily skewed toward the moderate end of the Republican scale. An additional 16 of the 66 most liberal Republican members of the 109th Congress have since retired, representing half of the Republican House retirements in the 2006 and 2008 election.

Much the same pattern can be seen among the defeated in 2006 Senate incumbents, according to voteview.

Lincoln Chafee: 1
Mike DeWine: 4
Jim Talent: 8
Conrad Burns: 23
Rick Santorum: 26
George Allen: 37

Fifty-five Republicans served in the 109th Senate. Among those 55, the average "liberal" ranking of the six who were defeated for re-election was 16.5. While Democrats of any type suffer virtually no electoral defeats whatsoever, moderate Republicans bear the brunt of continued Republican electoral defeats.

7. Are voters increasingly splitting crossing lines to vote for the other party?
Answer: No
In 2000, according to exit polls, 7.1% of the electorate was either a self-identified Republican who voted for Al Gore, or a self-identified Democrat who voted for George Bush. In 2004, according to exit polls, such cross-over voters only represented 6.3% of the electorate. In 2006, in a further drop, such voters only composed 5.5% of the electorate, according to exit polls. The lack of exit polls for 2002, along with the presence of Ross Perot in the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, make longer-term comparisons difficult. However, in the short term, more voters are choosing candidates from their own party than ever before. This is demonstrative of increasing partisanship among voters, not less.

***

Selective anecdotes can be used to support any thesis. However, a broad, quantitative analysis of long-term trends typically points to far more narrow conclusions. In this case, it is simply unsupportable to argue that America is becoming less partisan and more moderate. No matter how often it is repeated by journalists, pundits and politcians, that simply is not true.

Exit Polls: Hillary +7 in IN, Obama +12 in NC

Matt Stoller — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:03:31 GMT

I'm not sure if this is a rule of thumb, but I've noticed that exit polls tend to show the more liberal candidate outperforming the eventual results.

Bet half your life savings on these numbers, the other half on Zogby. This is an open thread.

More exits (Chris): There are some other exits out there that show even more favorable numbers for Obama:

Indiana: Obama: 50.5%--49.5% Clinton
North Carolina: Obama 60%--38% Clinton

Since this obviously won't happen, and once again the exits appear to be skewing heavily toward Obama, I'm inclined to go with the "more liberal candidate exit poll" skew theory. That is, liberals tend to vote earlier, probably because many are young (in school), many live in cities (can walk to the polling place), and many are creative class (flexible work hours makes for easier voting time). Also, conservatives tend to use early voting more, and exits only measure the election day vote.

Exit Poll Information

Chris Bowers — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:11:17 GMT

Update: Here are some head to head numbers:

Vermont: Obama 67, Clinton 33
Ohio: Obama 51, Clinton 49
Texas: Obama 51, Clinton 49
Rhode Island: Clinton 49, Obama 49

Take these for what they are worth, which is not very much at all. I am a bit surprised that Rhode Island is tied. But really, I'm not too surprised.

***

Here is some preliminary, third-hand, pre-spun information on the exit polls:

The Obama campaign expects to net seven or eight delegates out of the night from winning Vermont... they expect, delegate-wise, RI and Ohio will tie, and Texas, because of the caucus, will be a wash.

The Clinton campaign, having recieved leaked exit polls showing slim leads in both Texas and Ohio, is already challenging, in the press, the aggressiveness of Obama's caucus operation but is generally happy with early reports that turnout in Texas is high.

And some more exit poll info:

Early exit polls show independents are a sizable chunk of the electorate in presidential primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

In all those states except Rhode Island, Tuesday's primaries were ``open,'' meaning all voters could choose which party's contest to vote in. In Rhode Island, only registered independents could choose between parties.

The surveys for The Associated Press and television networks found self-described independents were about one in five voters in Ohio's Democratic primary, one in four in Texas, a third in Rhode Island and four in 10 in Vermont.

And yet more exit poll information can be found here. No specific head-to-head numbers, but I'm not really sure how useful those would be, anyway. Early voting has been huge, and that is not included in the exits. Also, early exit polls tend to shift quite a bit from final exit polls.

Maps: Election results in 37 states, 160 nations, and 1749 counties

dreaminonempty — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:32:23 GMT

Click to enlarge.

Blue shows Clinton winning, green shows Obama winning. Explanations, and more maps, below the fold.
Democrats Abroad reported back yesterday, with 22,755 voters making their voices heard from around the world. Which of course lends itself to another map. Many countries had only one or two votes, but taken regionally, the map shows Obama's greatest strength is in Africa and Asia among Democrats Abroad. Clinton had a curiously strong showing in the Dominican Republican (606 out of 671 votes) and another good run in the Philippines (79 of 143) and Israel (190 of 354). Clinton also won the following 15 nations or territories (none had more than 11 votes total): Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Dominica, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Malta, New Caledonia, Reunion, Somalia, Turkmenistan, and Yemen. (As a side note, this should kill the myth that Clinton can't win in the Caucasus.) There were ties in 10 more countries, and Obama won the rest (132 more). Here's some close-up views of some parts of the world:

Click to enlarge.

The middle map in the introduction above shows state-by-state results in the US with the relative importance of each win to the overall delegate count. The size of the circles is proportional to the net delegate gain (subject to change, of course) the winner takes from each state. We can see just how Obama has been able to offset Clinton's wins in contested states like Massachusetts and New Jersey with wins in a swath of states that 'don't count' like Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota.

The map on the right in the introduction above is an update of a map from last week with new data for Wisconsin, Hawai'i (district level only), and Michigan. The Michigan data are estimates from county results and the exit polls (which show voters would have voted 46% Clinton, 35% Obama, and 12% Edwards had all three been on the ballot). The dramatic difference across the Wisconsin/Michigan border is the result of two effects: the difference it makes when Obama campaigns in a state, as well as Obama's increased support in general since the Michigan primaries. It's also interesting to note that there's not a particularly dramatic difference across the Wisconsin/Minnesota border (which held a caucus, not a primary) or the Wisconsin/Illinois border (which Obama represents in the Senate, of course). Again, however, Wisconsin held its primary two weeks later, so the effects of Obama momentum may have made up for his earlier advantages in neighboring states for other reasons. Below, a close-up of this region, and an updated cartogram.

Click to enlarge.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

Update: An alternate color scheme can be found here.

Also, a wolf raised by boys points out that although Clinton won two of the three countries in the Caucasus, Obama won the vote total of the three countries, with 58% of the Caucasian vote.

Maps: Exit Polls (and the myths they spawn)

dreaminonempty — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:49:26 GMT

We have a wealth of data from exit polls over the last few months. Staring at tables of data isn't the easiest way to get the big picture, though. So, seeing as this is my blogosphere niche, I've made some maps. Here, for instance, is a map of Obama's support among those who made up their minds the day of the election:

Click to enlarge.

The other thing about the exit polls is that it's easy for discussion to degenerate into statements like 'Clinton's voters are white women and Latinos.'

But did you know that without the votes of Latina women, Obama would have lost New Mexico by 12 points? Didn't hear much about that in the media, didja?

Follow me below as we explore the exit poll data in more detail and bury some of the myths that have caught my attention.
First, some important points:

1. I figured having maps for only one candidate was good enough, as for most states there are only two candidates, and I chose Obama. My apologies to Clinton supporters.

2. In some of the states, Edwards had a large amount of support: IA, NH, SC, FL, OK. Keep this in mind as you look at the maps.

3. The demographic groups are not uniform nationwide. This is most important for the category of race: for example, while Latinos in one area may be primarily first and second generation Americans with family in South America, in another the community could well-established, going back many generations to before the territory was part of the United States.

Now, onwards:

Many of the stories I've read about the primaries and the exit polls have been very careful about how they word things. That's fine, but even accurate wording ('Clinton had strong support from such-and-such a group') could easily be internalized by the casual reader as 'all such-and-suches vote for Clinton.' Indeed, it seems that this has happened and a number of these statements have become Conventional Wisdom. These Conventional Wisdom Myths suffer from oversimplification and generalization. They are sometimes used in destructive and reductive narratives about voting behavior and cultural biases. But more importantly, they cover up a truly impressive fact: the breadth and diversity of people who are voting for Clinton or Obama.

Myth: The incumbent rule is in effect, as Clinton is effectively an incumbent.

(See the map in the introduction.) I've seen this several times, that we should assume undecideds break for Obama because he is essentially a challenger. This is actually true if you're looking at voters who are undecided several weeks ahead of the election, but in most cases the most recent polls are taken just a day or two before the election. In this case, we want to know how those who make up their mind at the last minute vote. And the results say: about an even split between Obama and Clinton, with an advantage for Clinton most of the time. Some notable exceptions are Arkansas (Clinton's home state), Florida (where Obama did not campaign), and Utah.

Myth: White women all vote for Clinton.

In most states, large majorities of white women voted for Clinton, but Obama won this category in several exit polls, and, one would assume, many of the states where Obama had a landslide victory, such as Idaho, Alaska, Kansas, etc. And as the map shows, even if Clinton won this category, you still have about 30% of white women voting for Obama in many states. That's a lot of votes.

Click to enlarge.

Women have been a crucial part of Obama's coalition. Not only that, when you look at women altogether, he has actually won more votes from women than Clinton in 9 states with exit polls (and remember, this doesn't count the probable victories among women in WA, NE, KS, MN, ME, ID, AK, CO and ND).

A few interesting tidbits about women's support for Obama:

Without the votes of white women, Obama would have tied Clinton in Alabama.

Without the votes of latina women, Obama would have lost New Mexico by 12 points.

Without the votes of white women older than 60, Obama would have lost Missouri by a few points.

Myth: Latinos won't vote for Obama, and Blacks won't vote for Clinton.

The narrative out of the Potomac primaries actually did a good job busting the Latinos won't vote for Obama myth. However, I would like to emphasize that Clinton still has a substantial amount of African-American support. It might not sound like much, but when she gets 20%, that's 1 out of 5 people. You can't dismiss 1 out of 5 people. Without the votes of Black voters, Clinton would have tied Obama in Tennessee. Also keep in mind when looking at the map below for white voters, I didn't include the states without exit polls where Obama pulled off overwhelming victories in very melanin-challenged states. Finally, there is one case where a generalization is almost excusable: Obama won 98% of the vote of African-American men in Illinois.

Click to enlarge.

Myth: Old people vote for Clinton, young people won't.
Well, yes, older people vote for Clinton, but a large number vote for Obama as well - sometimes the majority of them. And young people vote for Clinton too. Without the votes of those under age 30, Clinton would have lost California by 6 points.

Click to enlarge.

Myth: Jewish voters won't vote for Obama.
Actually, even in Clinton's home state of New York, a third of Jewish voters voted for Obama.

Click to enlarge.

Myth: The working class votes for Clinton; latte sipping elites vote for Obama; or, all the smart people vote for Obama

First, more highly educated does not necessarily mean smarter. Don't get me started.

Let's take a look at some trivia:

Without the votes of those who earn less than $30,000 a year, Obama would have lost Iowa.

Without the votes of those who earn more than $100,000 a year, Clinton would have lost Massachusetts by 19 points.

Without the votes of those with postgraduate degrees, Clinton would have lost Arizona by 11 points.

Here's the maps:

Click to enlarge.

Clinton does tend to get more support from those who are poorer and less educated, and Obama does tend to get more support from those who are better off and more educated. We do have to be careful though: race, income, and education are linked together. States where large proportions of the Democratic electorate are African-American do not usually show a relationship between income or education and voting tendencies. This makes it hard to say things like "Obama cut into Clinton's working class support in the Potomac primaries" without first doing a good solid analysis of income and education by race in VA, MD, and previous contests.

There's plenty of interesting things to see in the exit polls, I think, as long as we're extra careful to remember that even when one candidate wins a certain chunk of the voters by a large amount, there's still a substantial and important minority voting for the other candidate.

PS If you like election results maps, see this diary with results by county.

Cross posted at DailyKos.

A Complete Theory On Blogosphere Candidate Support Before Iowa

Chris Bowers — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:47:07 GMT

One of the questions I was most frequently asked about the online aspect of the Democratic presidential nomination campaign during 2007 was why the progressive blogosphere had such clear differences in preference than Democrats as a whole. Or, more specifically, I was often asked to explain why Hillary Clinton did so poorly in straw polls at Daily Kos and MyDD, even though she usually had a comfortable lead most national and state polls.

My first theory was based mainly on demographics. Almost every single one of Clinton's worst demographics is over-represented in the progressive blogosphere relative to the Democratic Party as a whole. Men are something like 55%-60% of the progressive blogosphere, while they are only 40%-45% of the Democratic electorate. Seculars are something like 40-45% of the progressive blogosphere, while they are only 20% or so of the Democratic electorate. Those with post-graduate degrees are something like 40-50% of the progressive blogosphere, and only around 15% of the Democratic electorate. The median annual income of a progressive blog reader, at about $75-80K, is much higher than the Democratic electorate as a whole. Self-identified liberals and progressives make up 80-90% of the progressive blogosphere, and only 50-55% of the Democratic primary electorate. The average progressive blog reader is about 12 years younger than the average Democratic primary voter. And so on. For a long time, these were Clinton's six worst demographics relative to Obama, and the progressive blogosphere was overloaded with them.

While good for a partial explanation, the demographics of the progressive blogosphere were always inadequate as a full explanation for the outcome of straw polls at Daily Kos, MyDD and other blogs. For example, at Daily Kos, Clinton would receive around 8-9% support, Obama would be in the mid-twenties, and Edwards would be in the mid-thirties, practically inverting the standings nationwide. The relatively small African-American population in the progressive blogosphere, about 5% compared to 20% in the Democratic electorate as a whole, can partially explain this, but not fully explain this.

Another piece of the puzzle is that one needs to consider the blogosphere the equivalent of a state like Iowa or New Hampshire. Like residents of early states, blog readers pay much more attention to the process early on (only we do so intentionally instead of having it forced upon us). As such, it should be pointed out that the more focus the candidates gave to a state, the less presidential preference in that state looked like national polls. In particular, during 2007 Iowa was the most-focused upon state, and it often showed a three-way campaign, and sometimes a four-way campaign, that looked very different from national polls. Iowa is also a useful comparison because, as a caucus, it tends to draw a higher percentage of activists, die-hard partisans, and ideologues than would a primary. In fact, if one looks for blogosphere demographics in the Iowa exit poll, Clinton usually finishes third. Clinton came in third among men, the "somewhat liberal," those who make $75K or more, and those under the age of 45. Also, note that Edwards won boomers in Iowa, and that the average age of a progressive blog reader is 42, right at the tipping point between boomers and Gen X. So, among its demographic cohorts in Iowa, the progressive blogosphere actually held pretty similar presidential preferences.

From that point, what little variation that remaned can simply be chalked up to the different campaign messages and the differing quality of their blogosphere outreach. It seems perfectly reasonable that running on anti-corporate platform should be appealing to people who consume large amounts of independent media, as every regular participant in the progressive blogosphere does simply by a matter of definition. It also isn't surprising that the idea of unity, post-partisanship and post-ideology will not be as appealing to people who participate in an overtly progressive medium because they are disgusted by the supposedly bi-partisan, non-ideological news outlets that already exist (if "bi-partisanship" means Hannity and Colmes, as it did in just about all media back in 2002, then count me out). And, it is even less surprising that a message of a "experience" will do even less well than "bi-partisanship" in a grassroots medium that was founded because of repeated failures of Democratic elites on impeachment, the 2000 stolen election, the Iraq war, and much more. In other words, the progressive blogosphere is a form of largely non-corporate, small business, and hobbyist media that was founded because of the perceived failure of experienced Democrats to stop conservatives from taking over the country, and which thrived because of the lack of progressive voices in other media. As such, should anyone be surprised that an anti-corporate message did better online than a message of "experience" or "unity?" I'm not. These are messages that run to the very heart of the progressive blogosphere as a medium, and do so in very different directions.

The bottom line is this: the progressive blogosphere had very similar presidential preferences to its demographic cohorts in the Iowa caucuses, and what little difference remained can easily explained by the reaction of campaign messages to the fundamentally outsider, partisan, and anti-corporate nature of the progressive blogosphere.

Intra-Party Coalition Questions

Chris Bowers — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:55:10 GMT

Looking at exit polls from Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan, I am left with several questions about the coalition many of the candidates seem to be building:

In all three states, Clinton lost the under 40 vote, but won the over 60 vote. Considering the amounts involved in these swings, sometimes as much as 30%, age is shaping up to be an even bigger divide in the Democratic primary than gender. Why do older and younger Democrats have such sharply divided preferences of Clinton and Obama?
In all three states, McCain has done better with voters who say they are either "dissatisfied" or "angry" with the Bush administration. He has lost those who are "satisfied" or "enthusiastic" with the Bush administration in all three states. If McCain has really made his comeback on the surge, then why are his voters so unhappy with Bush? Also, he has also virtually swept newspaper endorsements. Would McCain have any chance at all without the established media?
Ron Paul does much better among younger voters, and among those who are "angry" with the Bush administration. In fact, if you are a young Republican who is "angry" with the Bush administration, you seem almost guaranteed to be a Ron Paul supporter. Is there a new generation of Republicans coming through the ranks that is very different from the current generation?
There does not appear to be any divide in the Democratic primary between union members and non-union members. As such, do union endorsements mean anything outside of the resources they provide for campaigns?
There is simultaneously an income gap, education gap, and race gap in the Democratic primary. Lower income, lower education voters prefer Clinton, while African-American voters prefer Obama. This means that Clinton is really racking it up among low-income, working class whites. Why is this, and why isn't Edwards doing better among this group?

Anyway, I have to run, but these and other questions about the emerging coalitions in the primary are very interesting. A lengthy primary campaign should provide us with continuing insights to the intra-party coalitions for both Democrats and Republicans, something we have lacked for quite some time the recent string of primary season blowouts.

Clinton--The Unlikely Economic Populist

Paul Rosenberg — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:26:16 GMT

By the two most common measures--family income and education--Hillary Clinton appears to have eeked out her narrow victory in New Hampshire by taking a populist advantage, according to exit polls. Although it certainly wasn't the overt thrust of her campaign, it certainly was a distinct, if not overwhelming result, while Edwards, he did run an overtly populist campaign, showed no appreciable class difference, and Obama skewed wealthier and more educated:

Vote By Income
Family income:	% Total	Clinton	Edwards	Obama
$15-30,000	9	51	14	30
$30-50,000	18	44	16	32
$50-75,000	23	33	19	40
$75-100,000	16	36	18	42
$100-150,000	17	33	17	44
$150-200,000	6	46	15	34
$200,000 or More	6	37	12	43

Vote By Income
Family income:	% Total	Clinton	Edwards	Obama
Less than $50,000	33	47	15	32
$50,000 or more	67	35	17	41

Vote By Education
Last grade of school completed	% Total	Clinton	Edwards	Obama
No High School	3	61	9	28
High school graduate	17	46	17	31
Some college / associate degree	27	40	16	40
College graduate	29	38	18	37
Postgraduate study	24	31	16	43

Vote By Education
Last grade of school completed	% Total	Clinton	Edwards	Obama
High school graduate or less	19	49	16	30
More than high school grad	81	37	17	40

As Chris noted:

Over the last twenty-four hours, there were media character assassination attempts against Clinton because she showed emotion, or something. That simply must have been what put Obama over the top. Seriously--nothing else really happened in the last twenty-four hours, so that must be the cause. Looks like that attempt to take Clinton down completely backfired.

These are the people who are most familiar with the unearned humiliation and contempt that was heaped on Clinton with such evident glee, and they are the ones who gave her the edge. I am not a Clinton supporter, but I totally get the logic of their vote, and fully sympathize. Maybe the best possible outcome of this election would be a series of different, unexpected blows against the Versailles punditalkcrazy and their "conventional wisdom."