Obama's New Majority: The "Race" Factor
Posted Nov 26, 2008 at 10:00 AM by Maurice Berger
One thing is certain about Election 2008: if Obama had depended on white voters for victory, McCain would now be president. Indeed, the Democrat did no better than most presidential candidates of his party with white voters. The final racial breakdown of the election is sobering: among white voters, McCain received a whopping 55% of the vote, Obama did not better than 43%. An important article in the Miami Herald, puts Obama victory in perspective: he won because many white people stayed home and minorities voted in record numbers for the Democrat: "Barack Obama's 8.5 million-vote margin over John McCain was fueled by a more than 20 percent surge in minority voting, a new analysis of exit polling data suggests. While Obama won a lopsided number of electoral votes, his popular-vote margin was increased by an outpouring of minority balloting as the number of whites who cast ballots declined overall. 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. Separate opinion polls and election results themselves indicate that an overwhelming majority of African-Americans and Latinos backed Obama . . . Based on exit polling data, Project Vote estimated that the nationwide African-American vote rose by 2.88 million, to 16.3 million, accounting for 13 percent of the ballots compared with 11 percent in 2004. The Latino turnout increased by 1.5 million to 11.3 million, accounting for 9 percent of the total ballots, up from 8 percent, the group said." For the full article click here.
