Skip to main content

Race and the 2008 Democratic Primaries

As an avid supporter of Barack Obama, I have been offended by suggestions that Obama would not have had this much success had he not been black. Even though I can't deny my bias and affinity towards him because of his race (and mine), many people as well as myself have a conviction that he is a man of great vision and intelligence who can usher this nation to greatness and credibility.

The main subject of this blog is to provide some statistical basis to debunk (or support) the notion that being black is the main reason Barack Obama is the frontrunner in the 2008 democratic primaries. So, how much has race helped Obama? For that, I went looking for data about the racial constitution of the democratic electorate. I find just what I wanted here.

RACE: In 2004, 70 percent of Democratic voters in these states were white, 17 percent black and 8 percent Hispanic. This year 63 percent have been white, 19 percent black and 13 percent Hispanic. Clinton has led in contests so far among whites, chiefly white women, but has faded in recent primaries. She has won strong support from Hispanics, while Obama has had huge margins among blacks.
Further down, you see that the "data is from exit polls in the same 15 states in 2004 and 2008: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin." For my purposes, I believe this data to be sufficiently illustrative of the racial make up of the democratic electorate of the whole nation..

Some other stats to factor in:

White vote split roughly 57/43 favoring Clinton
African-American vote roughly split 85/15 favoring Obama
Hispanic vote roughly split 65/35 favoring Clinton
Other 5% split 50/50 amongst the candidates.

This would mean Clinton's 50% share of the voters from the democratic electorate come from 36% Whites, 3% African-Americans, 8.5% Hispanics, and 2.5% from other races. For Obama, these numbers would be 27% Whites, 16% African-Americans, 4.5% Hispanics, and 2.5% from other groups. Whites and Hispanics give Clinton a +9% and +4% advantage, respectively, while African-Americans give Obama a +13% edge. All other factors being equal, this effectively means whatever advantage Clinton is getting from the White and Hispanic voters is being cancelled by Obama's overwhelming edge amongst African-Americans.




WhiteAfrican-AmericanHispanicOtherTotal
Clinton36%3%8.5%2.5%50%
Obama27%16%4.5%2.5%50%
Differential+9% Clinton+13% Obama+4% Clinton2.5%50%

The actual popular vote to date (March 14, 2008) shows Obama with 49.5% to Clinton's 46.9%, according to RealClearPolitics.com.
Popular Vote Total
Obama (13,280,770, 49.5%)
Clinton (12,577,044, 46.9%)
Advantage (Obama +703,726, +2.6%)
If we exclude other candidates and focus on the two only, those numbers would be 51.3% for Obama and 48.7% for Clinton, which are close enough to our numbers. All in all, my back-of-the-envelope calculation demonstrates my point which is, other things being equal, Obama benefits as much from being black as Clinton does from being white. So, to say that Obama is where he is because of his race is senseless. Two other points I would like to make:
  1. Obama should be commended for being able to get a respectable portion of the white votes -- that is a testament to his appeal and message, not his race.
  2. If any other minority had a clean, credible, and capable candidate, it would support one of its own with the kind of numbers that African-Americans have supported Obama.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Slow Acroread Startup in OpenSuSe 11.0

It takes more than 30 seconds for acroread to load on my Opensuse machine the first time and the startup time gets shorter in subsequent attempts. Why? This is not the first time I have come across this problem of slow application startups in OpenSuse. Apparently a lot of people had encountered this problem and they found a simple solution - uninstalling the version of acroread that comes with OpenSuse and installing one from Adobe site yourself. Fortunately, that prescription seems to have solved the problem. My acroread startup time is a few seconds now. Why does a very good Linux distribution like OpenSuse with its wide support and following make so many of these mistakes?!?! Over the years, I have seen Suse/OpenSuse sending buggy distributions that make you wonder if they do much testing before releasing their distro. Here are a few bugs I have come across: The extremely slow startup of Openoffice in OpenSuse 10.0 was one of the reasons I switched to Fedora Core for a while...

The Pervasive Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux Analogy

I'm sure everyone has seen the Mac vs. PC ads on TV where the Mac appears to be confident while th PC is in denial about its deficiencies. Missing from that picture is Linux which is robust, but seeks no attention because it has no commercial ambitions. This Mac vs. PC vs. Linux model can serve as a analogy for many things/phenomena. I would like to make a list of those analogies here. For example, The New York Times recently characterized Hillary as a PC and Obama as a mac on the basis of the design of their websites. The analogy would also work if you think of Hillary as the status quo much like Windows, and Obama as the new thing with great promise, cachet and appeal like the newly reborn mac. It is not obvious who would play the role of Linux, but my choice would be Ron Paul. He has some bold and independent ideas along with a very loyal following even though he has no chance of winning. PC Mac Linux Candidate Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Ron Paul States Northeast West Co...

Movies for the Idle Mind

Wondering how I fill my idle hours and days? Among other things, I watch a few movies here and there. Here is a list I downloaded using Bittorrent and am watching at the pace of a movie non-enthusiast. The rating for the movies I have already watched are shown while it is left empty for the others. Woody Allen:: # MOVIE MY RATING ( /10) 1 Annie Hall 10 2 Manhattan 8 3 Hannah and Her Sisters 9 4 Love and Death 8 5 Deconstructing Harry 6 6 Match Point 5 7 Antz 8 8 Play it Again, Sam 8 9 Husbands and Wives 10 The Purple Rose of Cairo 11 Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask OTHER:: # MOVIE MY RATING ( /10) 1 Citizen Kane 7 2 Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind 9 3 The Pursuit of Happyness 6 4 About Schmidt 5 5 The Royal Tenenbaums 10 6 Rushmore 7 7 The Big Lebowski 9 8 Monty Python and the Holy Grail 7 9 Ed Wood 8 10 Broken Flowers 8 11 Basketball Diaries 8 12 Crash 13 The Clockwork Orange 14 City of God 15 The Science of Sleep 16 La Dolce Vita 17...