If Barack Obama wins Maine by the current margin of 17 points, including contests in some towns that Clinton needed to win, can we end the fiction that Barack Obama has a "problem" attracting the votes of lunch-bucket, working-class white Democrats?
It's true that Obama's political coalition starts from the top of the education and income distribution and works down, while Hillary Clinton's starts from the bottom and works up. But outside of Massachusetts, New York, and California, Barack Obama has fought to electoral parity among voters earning $50,000-$75,000 per year and those with some college education but no degree [I'm excluding Southern States because the African-American populations make it hard to figure out what's going on]. With the exception of Barack Obama's margin among African-Americans, and Clinton's among working-class white women, neither candidate has had any sort of insurmountable lock on any particular demographic.
No new data, but MSNBC called it for Obama.
Posted by: DivGuy | February 10, 2008 at 06:44 PM
Haven't you heard, caucuses don't count?
Posted by: John | February 10, 2008 at 07:13 PM
Where was there such a rumour?
Posted by: Crissa | February 10, 2008 at 08:27 PM
Yeah, let's end that fiction. It's getting pretty annoying.
Posted by: ikl | February 10, 2008 at 11:08 PM