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How Hillary Clinton Lost the Black Vote. Twice. |
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| The End of the Dynasty Pt. II: If you're a Democrat, and it's post-1964, try really hard not to run against black people! | ||
 by Daniel Koffler, May 8, 2008 |
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From this Series
The surprising, spectacular, and deeply encouraging failure of populism to move Democratic primary voters is only part of the story of the long overdue demise of the Clinton dynasty in North Carolina and Indiana Tuesday night. Just as decisive, if not moreso, was the near-total collapse of Hillary Clinton's support among African-Americans.
I'm not talking about the familiar collapse of Clinton's black support after Barack Obama proved himself to be a viable mainstream presidential candidate by winning the lily-white Iowa caucuses. A second mass exodus of black voters away from Hillary Clinton made Indiana a statistical push, fattened Obama's margins enough to completely wipe-out Clinton's pyrrhic, pointless victory in Pennsylvania, and broke down the wall of bullshit sustaining the idea that the Democratic primary didn't end in February.
After Obama's win in Iowa, her surrogates' public musings about Obama's possible history of crack dealing, and Bill Clinton's now infamous trashing of the Palmetto State as a consolation prize for the you-know-whats, Hillary Clinton still managed to pull in about one fifth of the black vote in South Carolina. Yet from one Carolina primary to the other, roughly two thirds of Clinton's remaining black support dissolved, only slightly less steep a drop, proportionally, than her fall from this October poll in which she actually led Obama in black support, to the South Carolina exit poll. If she had maintained her South Carolina performance among blacks on Super Tuesday, Potomac Tuesday, Super Tuesday II, and this past tuesday, the net shift would have been more than 500,000 popular votes --- enough to shrink Obama's popular vote lead to near parity, and perhaps take the lead on not terribly extravagant assumptions about non-black liberals who were turned off by the Clinton tactics.
The African-American Vote: Between the CarolinasThe handy chart to the right tells the story graphically. (I've explained my methodology below.) Clinton's share of the black vote declined by about one sixth between South Carolina and Super Tuesday --- a period when national polling showed Obama's support rising across all demographics, and Clinton's falling --- and declined a bit more than another fifth between Super Tuesday and the Potomac primaries at the peak of Obamamania, when (again) all his numbers were improving and hers were going in the other direction. When either economic and demographic factors or Plagiarismgate, Goolsbeegate, and various other pseudo-scandals broke Obama's winning streak in Ohio and Texas, Clinton's black support rose slightly (by about one sixth) --- just like her white and brown support.
Then the Wrightmare struck, a thousand innumerate pundits were launched on a quest to prove that Obama's candidacy was undone before the slightest credible evidence emerged to support their case (they were stunningly wrong, as we now know), and Clinton was only too happy to embrace a wild long-shot electoral strategy of trying to stoke white resentment against a strange, dark, foreign, religiously suspect crypto-Communist who hangs out with sundry terrorists when not spewing elitist contempt for good, decent, ordinary folk. And what happened to Clinton's black support? It plummeted by a catastrophic 44.6 percent between the bookends of the Wrightmare (and nearly a full fifth just between Pennsylvania and Indy/NC), to the point where Hillary Clinton can barely attract half the level of black support of George Allen in his 2006 senate campaign (8.2 percent versus 15). Repeat: barely half the black support of George "Let's welcome 'Macaca' here to the real world of Virginia" Allen. All the while Obama's black support rose.
It's sort of incredible that this needs to be said, but future aspiring presidents, observe the ruins of the House of Clinton and take note: If you want to be the Democratic party's nominee, you will need some black votes, and 0 percent is worse than 5, which is worse than 10, which is worse than 20. So avoid basing your campaign on the argument that your party's most loyal constituents are worthless. They will (eventually) notice.
* * *
How I crunched the numbers: South Carolina is taken as a theoretical starting point, representing the performance among black voters Clinton could have managed even after the emergence of an electable black presidential candidate and her campaign's tactical decision to royally piss off a lot of black people. I track Clinton and Obama's subsequent performance on the four multiple-primary nights since South Carolina --- Super Tuesday, the Potomac Primary, Texas and Ohio, and Indiana and North Carolina --- by calculating the total number of votes cast by African-Americans on each election day and the share of the aggregate African-American vote each candidate received (that way, e.g., Obama's 86 percent in Delaware, 66 percent in Massachusetts, and 61 percent in New York, are weighted to reflected the tiny, medium, and huge populations of each state; for similar reasons as well as the distorting effects of political machines in individual states, I treat single-state primary days as statistical noise and ignore them). Figures are generated from the Real Clear Politics state voting totals and CNN's exit poll estimates of black turnout and vote shares. No caucuses were included since primary and caucus voting pools are incommensurate and too few caucuses had data on black voting to allow for a separate graph of black voting trends in caucus states. Likewise, the New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. primaries had no available data on black voters.
You can download the spreadsheet here and double-check me, or if you're curious and industrious, plug in new values in the C, D, and E columns and track the voting trends of any demographic group.
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zbird
I wonder how this could affect the general election
Apparently Bush was helped in 2004 by the fact that he got double the percentage of blacks that Republicans usually get. Somehow I doubt that result will be repeated.
--Z
Anonymous
(No subject)
Anonymous
Wow.
Maybe next you'll want to point out how Obama's support among whites is plummeting, which btw, has a much, much more ominous message for the Democrats' hopes in the GE than does Hillary's support among AAs. And while AA voters represent a large percentage of the Democratic primary vote, the percentage they represent in the GE is much smaller. I'm sure I don't need to point out to you that in the GE, Obama doesn't have the possibility of greatly increasing the total pool of AA voters given that the vast majority of them are already Democratic voters.
So, consider that NC and VA are almost identical in terms of racial demographics -- in VA's primary held on Feb. 12th, Obama got 75% of the vote, in NC he won 56% -- which is a pretty enormous drop especially considering his increased spending. The upshot? The better voters get to know Obama, the less likely they are to vote for him.
I guess your next post on the subject will be titled "How Obama Will Lose the White Vote ... Again"?
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/5/7/192845/4889
Using exit poll data from the NY Times:
The conclusion:
Obama lost ground among all but black women:
What to take from it:
The voting demographics:
White male: VA 28%, N.C. 27%
White female: VA 35%, N.C. 35%
Black Male: VA 13%, N.C. 13%
Black Female: VA 17%, N.C. 20%.
Daniel Koffler
Armandologic! Hooray!
Speaking for me only
Okay, I don't think it's very fruitful to respond to Armandologic, but let me point out: a) you have to get the general election to win it, b) you can't project primary results on to the general election, c) your numbers on Virginia are off, d) I'm not comparing individual states to individual states in a vacuum, which is not very informative, and e) Obama's aggregate share of the white vote increased during the Wrightmare
Anonymous
"white vote"
Obama sure seems to be doing pretty damn well with the white superdelegate vote.
I'm pretty confident.....
Anonymous
Care to provide some proof?
Care to provide some proof that the VA numbers are off? And not just to me, but the NYTimes, who provided the figures? And while it is true that it is difficult to make projections for the GE based on primary election results, it is also true that you can most definitely see a candidate's demographic strengths and weaknesses from primary results, especially when those results include the vote from 50 states (that's right, 50 not 48 -- just like what will be counted in the GE).
No matter what you want to believe about Obama's share of the white vote, since what you call the "Wrightmare", his total share of the white vote continues a downward trend from the beginning of the primary process until now.
And as for being confident that Obama has the white SD vote locked up (which I'm not sure is true, perhaps you'd better check your SD demographic chart again), that's great if your final goal is winning the Democratic nomination and nothing beyond that, because Obama's problems with white males in the population are growing, even among those who self-identify as Democrats.
<blockquote>Obama's support among white male voters, the most tightly contested bloc over the primary season, has slipped. He did well early on in states such as Virginia, where he took 52% of the white male vote to Clinton's 47%. But this week, Obama lost, 58% to 42%, among white men in Indiana and 55% to 42% in North Carolina. He has won majorities of white male voters in 10 states since January, but Clinton bested him in 13 others, including the critical northern battlegrounds of Ohio and Pennsylvania.</blockquote>
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-race10-2008may10,0,5432711,full.story
You've told me that the NYTimes figures are wrong, and the told me that Obama's share of the white vote is actually increasing (again, with no offer of proof, or citation of any kind), are you now going to tell me that the LATimes is similarly misguided? Are you, like Karl Rove, the only person who understands the real math?
Daniel Koffler
The Armandologic is something to behold
Speaking for me only
Virginia is an outlier. It's simply not informative to compare Obama's single best primary performance to others, nor do such non-informative comparisons constitute evidence of a decline. However, Obama's aggregate share of the white vote has increased over the last two months. See if Armando can explain that.
in VA's primary held on Feb. 12th, Obama got 75%
No, Obama got 63.7% of the vote. Source: New York Times.
it is also true that you can most definitely see a candidate's demographic strengths and weaknesses from primary results
No, that only goes for other primaries against the same opponent, otherwise you can't.
Obama is now running ahead of John McCain in national tracking polls. He can win the election without winning crazy people who listen to
Jim JonesArmando and Jeralyn.that's right, 50 not 48 -- just like what will be counted in the GE
Ask Harold Ickes why the Michigan and Florida straw polls don't count. Or call the wambulance. Maybe Taylor Marsh will give you a hug in exchange for help drafting a phony resume. I just don't care though.
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