Driving Mister Obama

Here's the racial breakdown from the exit polls:

African-Americans	Whites
Obama 81%	Edwards 39%
Clinton 17%	Clinton 36%
Edwards 1%	Obama 24%

Edwards' advantages elsewhere probably won't be as strong as in his native South Carolina, but these numbers show how it helps Obama to have a Southern white guy chauffering him through Southern primaries. With Edwards reducing Clinton's share of the white vote, Obama can win off of massive black turnout.

Comments

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Even if you give all the Edwards voters to Clinton, he still would have won.

That said, Edwards presence changes the story line from "narrow margin considering huge African-American population" to "total blowout".

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

Yeah, and I think this bodes well for Obama in the rest of the Southern primaries.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Oh certainly. In addition, there's the phenomenon where the less dense the African-American population is, the less racial antipathy exists. So as the percent of black voters goes down, Obama's share among whites will probably go up.

The real test is going to be Tennessee, 17% African-American and 20% Bachelor's degree holders. If he can win that, it means he'll probably win Virginia (20% African-American and 30% bachelor's degree holders), in which case he's going to romp in the post Feb-5th elections.

[ikl]

Yeah. Go John. Though I don't think that we can generalize this result to non-Southern primaries, this is still reason to believe that Edwards can help Obama on Super Tuesday if he doesn't collapse in the polls by taking white votes in the south.

Obama still has to improve in the polls quite a lot to survive Super Tuesday though.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Not that much. He needs to go from his current 10 point gap to 6 points, which seems doable, especially if the press reports this as a total blowout with a biracial coalition. If he's within 6 points, he'll be about 80 delegates down, which is a reasonable margin.

[ikl]

I hope that you are right, but some of the individual state polls for Feb. 5th are pretty ugly right now - national polls could overstate Obama's support on Feb. 5th. On the other hand, if SC is any guide, polls could be understating Obama's likely support in the South (or maybe in open primaries as well - I haven't seen a good breakdown of SC by race and political affiliation, but there is a good chance that white independents helped Obama yet again).

Also, my survey of websites of major news outlets reveals that some play up the racial divide angle (grrr!) while others do not and mainly report the Obama landslide angle. Both CBS and NBC seemed to have an undercurrent of hostility toward Bill (not that I blame them considering his behavior recently) and play the story as Obama vs. the Clintons which I have to think is not very helpful for HRC on several levels.

[jncam]

Neil! Where have you been!

Yes, I agree with you. Although, I prefer a different analogy. John Edwards mentioned that he played high school football on Leno. I suggest that he puts on his pads and blocks for Obama until the convention. His role as Obama's fullback would be historic.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

Neil! Where have you been!

Singapore.

Edwards was a linebacker, as I recall. Which makes for a somewhat more complex analogy... Edwards is going to blitz white voters so that a hurried throw will result in an Obama interception? I don't know.