African-Americans And the 2008 Primaries
by Chris Bowers, Tue Dec 05, 2006 at 11:18:52 AM EST
One of the conventional wisdom lines on 2008 has long been that Hillary Clinton would have the overwhelming support of African-American voters in the Democratic primary, and thus she was nearly a lock for the nomination. A new diary by Anthony de Jesus over at Dailykos pointed me to some interesting crosstabs on the latest national primary trial heat by Pew that offered the first bit of actual evidence I hae ever seen with which to test this piece of CW. A quick glance at the chart ont he right shows that it is both true and not true.
As you can see, even with Obama in the poll, Clinton does noticeably better among Black Protestants than she does among any other group in the crosstab. In fact, there isn't really any actual difference between Clinton's performance among any of the groups except that she does very well among African-Americans. However, he support among African-Americans is not some monolithic voting block that it is often made out to be. She does only have 54% of African-American support, and that is when she leads the field in name ID and before any actual campaigning has begun.
Since MyDD has basically just become a blog to talk about Obama now, these crosstabs show a couple of other interesting things. First, it shows that Clinton's lead on Obama might indeed be very soft, given that it is largely predicated upon a huge advantage among African-American Protestants, and presumably that would be a demographic where Obama could make up a lot of ground. Second, it shows that her current lead might be understated, since there is no way that African-American Protestants only compose 14% of the Democratic electorate (then again, considering the states that will choose the nominee, maybe it isn't understated after all). Anyway, isn't the notion that African-Americans would blindly line up behind one candiate no matter what a little um, condescending toward African-Americans? I imagine that as the primaries go on, African-Americans will be pretty much just as split over their prefence as any other demographic with the primary electorate.
Of course, the difference between the crosstabs appears to be so small, that we should once again be reminded the role that name ID plays in polls like this. Basically everyone, no matter their demographic, is just going with who they know. Yes, it is a little more complicated than that, but not drastically so. It is also interesting that among Republicans, white Catholics really like Rudy Giuliani. That probably has something to do with his base of support being in the northeast, where there are more white Catholics than any other region of the country.
As you can see, even with Obama in the poll, Clinton does noticeably better among Black Protestants than she does among any other group in the crosstab. In fact, there isn't really any actual difference between Clinton's performance among any of the groups except that she does very well among African-Americans. However, he support among African-Americans is not some monolithic voting block that it is often made out to be. She does only have 54% of African-American support, and that is when she leads the field in name ID and before any actual campaigning has begun.
Since MyDD has basically just become a blog to talk about Obama now, these crosstabs show a couple of other interesting things. First, it shows that Clinton's lead on Obama might indeed be very soft, given that it is largely predicated upon a huge advantage among African-American Protestants, and presumably that would be a demographic where Obama could make up a lot of ground. Second, it shows that her current lead might be understated, since there is no way that African-American Protestants only compose 14% of the Democratic electorate (then again, considering the states that will choose the nominee, maybe it isn't understated after all). Anyway, isn't the notion that African-Americans would blindly line up behind one candiate no matter what a little um, condescending toward African-Americans? I imagine that as the primaries go on, African-Americans will be pretty much just as split over their prefence as any other demographic with the primary electorate.
Of course, the difference between the crosstabs appears to be so small, that we should once again be reminded the role that name ID plays in polls like this. Basically everyone, no matter their demographic, is just going with who they know. Yes, it is a little more complicated than that, but not drastically so. It is also interesting that among Republicans, white Catholics really like Rudy Giuliani. That probably has something to do with his base of support being in the northeast, where there are more white Catholics than any other region of the country.
Tags: Democrats, Demographics, President 2008 (all tags)
-----------
myDD - skin
-----------
28 Comments