White Voters, Obama, and The 15% Nation

Jeff Chang

White Voters, Obama, and The 15% Nation

Originally published on cantstopwontstop

Riffing on this great post from Ferentz…

This past Monday before the Penn primary, Roger Simon @ Politico.com cited a convo with an unnamed Republican leader who put a number on the effect that racism would have on Barack Obama’s candidacy: 15% of white voters would not vote for him because he’s Black.

Simon cited an AP poll that revealed the striking coincidence that 15% of voters thought he was Muslim. He also noted that the same poll allowed that 8% of whites admitted they'd never vote for Obama because he was Black. Simon figured that the number could have been underreported--by half.

Turns out that Republican's number--15%--might be just about on point.

After Hillary's big win last night, the NY Times reported this:

The results of the exit poll, conducted at 40 precincts across Pennsylvania by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press, also found stark evidence that Mr. Obama’s race could be a problem in the general election. Sixteen percent of white voters said race mattered in deciding who they voted for, and just 54 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election; 27 percent of them said they would vote for Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama was the Democratic nominee, and 16 percent said they would not vote at all.

So there it is. The numbers are consistent with the AP Poll--about 8% of white voters told exit pollers they would switch to McCain or stay home rather than vote for Obama. Exit polling, of course, is also subject to underreporting.

Assuming the general election is at least as racially fractious as this past month has been, we now know not only that Obama must overcome, we know roughly what the number is that he has to overcome--it's no less than 8% and possibly up to 15%.

Posted at 8:49 AM, Apr 23, 2008 in Elections | Permalink | View Comments

Comments

i believe the racial divide in political elections is greater than an 8% - 15% range and it has little to do with party affiliation. the demarcation of political parties as democrats and republicans creates an illusion, when it comes to race, that one party is more liberal and accepting than the other. what they have in common is that they both have sacrificed the interests of black folks since 1877, if not before. what distinguishes them, if such a distinction has any real meaning, is that the democratic party's illusion of racial sensitivity and representation has been both less disdainful of the constitutional guarrantees of freedom and racial equality than republicans and has, therefore, offered black folks greater hope. when one looks at the historical record, democrats may have done more for black folks over the years. however, one could argue rather persuasively that might be a function of the "trickle down effect" and not the conscious actions of a truly inclusive and representative political party. what we can also glean from the past 131 years, is that both parties have been consistently prepared to sacrifice the interests of black folk when current conditions threaten the more valued interests of white folks.

in this current presidential nominating process, we have seen the clinton's, the democratic parties standard bearers for racial inclusion, signal to white democrats that it is not only acceptable for them to use race as a decision-making factor, but that it may be essential that they do so in order to ensure the party's return to prominence. that the clinton's have used the coded language of race to speak to white democrats, and republicans as well, suggests that it is impossible to estimate the power of race in these democratic party nominating contests or in the general election, if obama is the democratic party nominee. the clinton's have been the symbol of the promise of america in racial terms, even if it were an illusion, and their willingness to join the reagan-dixie democrats and the white working-class in their collective antipathy to black equality is indeed a "bitter" pill to swallow. white folks have never been held accountable for their personal or collective racial preferences which blinds them to the extent to which they harbor and exercise both. no poll can effectively calculate the state of entrenched racialism in this country--democrat or republican--if we can no longer count on the clinton's to approximate the courage to accept the possibility of losing--even to (or especially to) a black man.