I wanted to roughly analyze whether racism has been/will be an issue in the fall election. So I combed through CNN's exit polls, and pulled the following data for the question "Is race an important factor in your vote?" Note that this includes "Yes most important factor" and "One of several factors" together. Below is all the states for which the question was asked. I should also note that this obviously is data pulled from the Democratic primary. A general election universe of voters would obviously be more conservative.

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UPDATE: CNN EXIT POLLING JUST RELEASED UPDATES FORTHCOMING.

Some interesting numbers being reported.

65% say the economy is the #1 issue.

NC:

*Clinton Supporters who will support Obama if he is the nominee
    45%

*Obama Supporters who will support Clinton if she is the nominee
    70%

INDIANA:

*Clinton Supporters who will support Obama if he is the nominee
     48%

*Obama Supporters who wil support Clinton if she is the nominee
     59%

RACE/GENDER DIVIDE
Black voters are going overwhelmingly for Obama, which comes as no surprise.  

Awaiting further poll numbers.

UPDATE: Another disturbing number for Obama Supporters

Nearly half in both states say Wright an issue

Wright Issue

IN DISTURBING NEWS FOR THE DEMOCRATS

Red/blue divide shows in North Carolina

Culture Divide

UPDATE: Rural and Suburban Indiana voting for Clinton

Clnton Winning Rural and Suburban Indiana

UPDATE: OBAMA Projected Winner in NC

Numbers Forthcomng

UPDATE: CLINTON Projected Winner in Indiana (CBS News)

Clinton Wins Indiana

White working-class voters stick with Clinton

UPDATE: Late deciders go for Clinton

Late Deciders Go to Clinton

UPDATE: The Age Divide

Age Divide

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I picked up a few facts (from Wikipedia) relating to the US Population Cencus

White People  73.9%
HispaniLatinos  13.7% (ignore black)
Black and AA's  12.4%

The thing that baffles me is that Barack Obama has more delegates than Hillary Clinton when everyone knows that Clinton holds a clear majority among Whites.

So I thought I would look at the exit polls and found this really cool site

http://www.theperfectworld.us/cg/exitpol lsum.htm

where there is a breakdown of the exit polls. Aha! Eureka I thought. If (as the exit data says) Obama gets 83.69% of the Black vote...then how come he is winning if that is just 83.69 percent of 12.4%. I know, there are a few assumptions here, but they are at least reasonable assumptions.

1.    The Democratic Party mirrors the population of the US
2.    The Exit data is even approximately correct

Lets take this a stage further. If Clinton won 62.04% (from the exit poll data) of the White vote*, then that is 62.04% of 73.9%.....wow, she gets 45.8%. I have summarised in the table below

** This %age concurs with the Pennsylvania poll, funnily enough

                       Clinton        Obama
Whites                 45.8            28.1
Hisp/Lat               9.4              4.3
Black                   2.0             10.4
                         ------           -----
Total %age           57.2        42.8

So if the Primaries mirrored the US population and the exit polls are correct then Hillary Clinton would secure 57.2% of the Democratic vote against Barack Obama's 42.8%. According to the Exit polls HC only got 52% of the vote, so do my calculations infer that Obama managed to rally a disproportionate %age of his supporters? Does it also infer that the result of the Primaries cannot be sustained in a general election?

We all know that Obama has more delegates and we know that he got more of the popular vote, so there has to be something wrong here. Can this really mean that the democratic will of the people has been used, abused or corrupted? Is someone lying to us?

Whoever it is, is being quite successful.

PS. If the table turns out bad,  sorry

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Some pundits(including Tim Russell at MSNBC) try to distort the exit poll results to minimize the impact of Hillary's victory saying that recent events (SC victory for Obama, so-called negative campaigning by Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy's endorsement...etc.) have created some difference because Obama and Clinton "ties" among those who DECIDE thier choice recently.

Let me advise you to read carefully the exit polls unless you just want to distort the truth like MSNBC.

The poll question was "When Did You Decide Who To Vote For?" not "when did you vote?". About 40% said they decided within last Month and Obama got about 3-5% more than Hillary in this category except for those who decided today. (As you can see, Hillary got 4% more from those who decided today.)

The result for this question only tells you that Obama's support was not there in Florida and formed recently. You can also tell that, as most of exit polls in other states tell you, Obama's support is not as extremely loyal and solid as portrayed in the media. Those who support Obama just made their mind in last month possibly because he got constantly favorable media coverage from the MSM.

On the other hand, Hillary' support seems very solid. They decided to vote for her months before and did not change their mind. They heard all the stories about negative campaigning, they watched "inspirational" Ted Kennedy's endorsement and they showed up to vote for Hillary TODAY!

The question of when did you DECIDE who to vote for would measure "loyalty" not "growing popularity". You can ignore absenttees saying that they did not have a chance to change their mind. That can make sense. If I work for Obama, actually this result can be troubling because it might imply that Obama's support can be altered relatively easily.

I do not care whether Hillary wins or not that much because I think both will be acceptable to beat Republicans. But I just do not understand this crazy media bias against Hillary, which almost make me want to support her.

See the exit poll with your own eyes. DO NOT BELIEVE anything MSNBC tells you about the exit poll.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primari es/results/epolls/#FLDEM

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Despite the fact that the data do not support the conclusion that a more mobilized religious base was the key to George W. Bush's win in 2004*, it still remains a commonly held assumption by the political media. So it should not come as a surprise then that both The New York Times and The Washington Post run stories today trumpeting the supposed importance of Democratic gains among religious and Evangelical voters in the party's win in Tuesday's midterm elections.

The Post's Alan Cooperman, writing on the front page of Saturday's paper, is a particularly egregious offender, citing numbers that don't really prove his thesis that "faith" voters were key to the Democrats' win. Cooperman writes that Democrats "sliced the GOP's advantage among weekly churchgoers to 12 percentage points, down from 18 points in 2004 congressional races" and that while "in 2004, 74 percent of white evangelicals voted for Republicans and 25 percent for Democrats, a 49-point spread ... This year, Republicans received 70 percent of the white evangelical vote and Democrats got 28 percent, a 42-point spread."

Both of these sets of figures sound really impressive -- until you look deeper at their actual meaning. When comparing results between elections, it is not only important to look at absolute numbers but also relative numbers: How a specific subset of the electorate moves from one election to another relative to the change in the electorate as a whole. Although vote totals in districts have not yet been finalized, making it difficult to tabulate the exact national popular vote for the House, it appears that the nation voted a net 10 points more Democratic in 2006 House elections than it did in 2004 (a move from a Republican advantage of about 49 - 46 to a Democratic advantage in the ballpark of 53 - 46). So for a group to have disproportionately helped the Democrats take the House this year, it would have to have increased its net support for the Democrats by more than 10 points -- which none of the groups cited by Cooperman actually did.

So which groups did noticeably boost their support for Democrats over the past two years? As I noted on Wednesday, Latino voters backed Democrats by a net 28 more points in 2006 than they did in 2004, as did those without a high school diploma. Jewish voters upped their net support for Democrats by 21 points. Those earning $200,000 or more per year voted a net 19 points more Democratic in 2006 than they did in 2004.

Looking at vote broken down by church attendence, Democrats gained a net 13 points from those who never attend church, 10 points from those who attend church a few times a year, 16 points from those who attend monthly, 8 points from those who attend weekly and just 2 points from those who attend more than weekly. Even discounting for the fact that voters who say they attend church at least one a week increased as a share of the overall electorate by about 3 points over the past two years, it's overwhelmingly clear that the Democrats gained many more votes from less churchgoing voters than from more churchgoing voters.

Now I wish that a closer look at this data would cause political reporters and Beltway pundits to second-guess their beliefs that religious voters were key to Democrats' wins in 2006, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.

Yet more importantly, Democratic strategists need to come to the realization that religious voters, specifically White Evangelicals and/or those who attend church weekly or more often, are not a part of a Democratic majority coaltion and aren't going to be any time soon. In fact, secular voters are significantly more important to the Democratic base than more observant voters. This isn't to say that Democrats shoudn't talk about their values or even try to reach out to the "faith voters" or "values voters." But if the Democratic Party wants to maximize the returns from its efforts in bringing out its strengths among the broader electorate, it would be much better served by targeting its own base, including those who rarely if ever attend church, rather than trying to win over a rather small small set of votes from the Republican base, most notably the "churched" and Evangelical Christian communities.

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