Let me flesh out something I mentioned before, that the electoral coalition for all Democratic insurgents starts from the top of the education/income scale and works its way down, but that Barack Obama has worked his further down than most challengers. Back in the halcyon days of the New Hampshire primary, Granite Prof computed the "elite score" of many prominent Democratic contenders by comparing their performance in working-class versus "elite" areas of the Granite State. Crudely, a candidate with an elite score above 1.0 is a "wine track" candidate, while one below 1.0 is a "beer track" candidate. Here's the chart:
As you can see, yes, Obama is the wine track candidate, as are all insurgent challengers. But he is less wine track-y than almost all other challengers. Only Gary Hart had a better balance of working-class and elite support, and of course he nearly won the nomination. Which, along with the increasing upper-middle-class presence in the party and Obama's tremendous support among African-Americans, explains why he's able to fare better than the Bill Bradleys and Paul Tsongases of the world.
