Importance of white blue collar voters versus black voters

[Gaius Baltar]

Just a quick observation: There's been a lot of talk in the media about what it means that Obama can't beat Hillary among white working class voters. Very little talk of how much he traunces her among black voters.

The thing is, white working class voters usually vote republican anyway. Whereas blacks are the Dems' most loyal constituency -roughly one in five of all democratic votes come from black people.

Shouldn't the scrutiny be put more in Clinton in terms of electability than Obama? Bluntly speaking, blacks are more important to Democrats than blue collar whites. So in that sense, Clinton is the most electorally risky.

Just seems the coverage is a little skewed -which could possibly be related to the Clintons' impressive spin machine and how they influence the news agenda. Who knows.

[ManOfReason]

There is no media conspiracy here. Black voters will vote Democratic or stay at home. White blue collar workers will vote democratic, republican but only stay at home in the good times. Also white blue collar voters are large voting blocks in states that can go either Democratic or Republican - the swing states, whereas black voters are most influnential in states that usually to the democratic candidate regardless of the level of black voter turnout.

[FutureTaoiseach]

Just a quick observation: There's been a lot of talk in the media about what it means that Obama can't beat Hillary among white working class voters. Very little talk of how much he traunces her among black voters.

The thing is, white working class voters usually vote republican anyway. Whereas blacks are the Dems' most loyal constituency -roughly one in five of all democratic votes come from black people.

Shouldn't the scrutiny be put more in Clinton in terms of electability than Obama? Bluntly speaking, blacks are more important to Democrats than blue collar whites. So in that sense, Clinton is the most electorally risky.

Just seems the coverage is a little skewed -which could possibly be related to the Clintons' impressive spin machine and how they influence the news agenda. Who knows.

The problem is that African-Americans are only 12% of the electorate. The Democrats don't necessarily need to win a majority of the White vote - they have lost it for the past 40 yrs to the Republicans. But they can't win if they fall below say 40% of it. That was the % of it that John Kerry got to 60% for Bush. 67% of the population are non-Hispanic whites , and a lot of the Hispanics are white anyway. If the African-American vote had been enough then the Democrats wouldn't have lost 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections. African-Americans have voted 90% for the Democrats since the 1960's because Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Even in 1996 when Clinton won his second term, he lost the White vote to the GOP 46-43, with 9% voting for Perot. The problem for the Democrats is that there won't be a strong third-party contender this time, meaning that the % of the White vote they need to win is going to be higher than for Clinton in 1992 or 1996.

Now, looking at the latest Rasmussen poll, McCain has a lead among Whites of 12%. If that happened on election day it would break down in McCain's favour roughly 56-44, while among Hispanic voters Obama leads 58-35. It is questionable if he can beat McCain on those figures because the Electoral College disproportionately represents states with homogenous White populations in the mountain states that are always going to vote Republican, while Southern whites are 70% GOP voting in the presidential elections anyway.

[odie1kanobe]

Few states have a sizeable black population to make a difference where as all states have a huge white population that does.

Winning all the black vote and 30% of the white vote gets you nothing.

[FutureTaoiseach]

2 Rasmussen polls today from 2 Southern states with 20-25% Black populations:

Virginia:
McCain 47%
Obama 44%

North Carolina:
McCain 48%
Obama 45%

[fergalr]

Eric Cartman:

Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.

Hillary Clinton:

Race War's on everybody! It's going down! Sh1t is going down!

[Universal_001]

I see the posters of this site are still making their ill informed wildly early and very inaccurate predictions about the 2008 election.


Tell me about how Obama was in [size=7]FREE FALL[/size] after the Wright thing and was never going to recover and how Clinton was a shoe in as a result?
Tell me about that again

The general election campaign hasn't even started yet, and your already predicting the big bad racist feulled landslide for McCain

[NeilW]

2 Rasmussen polls today from 2 Southern states with 20-25% Black populations:

Virginia:
McCain 47%
Obama 44%

North Carolina:
McCain 48%
Obama 45%

Er, any reason you're not quoting the McCain / Clinton numbers from the same polls? Could it be because they directly contradict your oft-repeated view that Clinton is more electable than Obama?

[Kerrygold]

2 Rasmussen polls today from 2 Southern states with 20-25% Black populations:

Virginia:
McCain 47%
Obama 44%

North Carolina:
McCain 48%
Obama 45%

Hmm, both polls are withing margin of error and NC is clearly in play.

[popper]

McCain is an excellent bet at 13/8 and bigger for any of you who like a flutter.