February 6, 2008

The "imaginary hip black friend" voting bloc

Shelby Steele argued that Obama can't win because he couldn't simultaneously be both a race man to black voters and an anti-race man to white voters tired of race. But Shelby is a lot smarter and more realistic than the average voter (or the average pundit, for that matter). Most people just believe whatever they want to believe about Obama. So, in reality, reality doesn't much matter.

So, what we've seen are blacks, after a long period of initial apathy, flocking to their tribal standard-bearer in large numbers; and whites voting for Obama as their "imaginary hip black friend." Obama thus does well in states with lots of blacks and in states with few blacks, like Idaho, (where he won 79% of the small number of Democrats), Alaska (75%), Kansas (74%), and Colorado (67%), but not so hot in-between. Audacious Epigone reports:
Blacks overwhelmingly backed Obama, Hispanics favored Clinton (with the anomaly of Connecticut, where, comprising 6% of the total, they apparently preferred Obama by a narrow margin [I presume that Obama looks like more like the typical Hispanic in Connecticut than the typical Hispanic in California), and the larger the black share of a state's voting population, the more likely whites in that state were to flock to Clinton. Looking at all the contests that have taken place so far, there has been an inverse correlation of .35 (confidence just a hair outside 90%) between the percentage of a state's voters who are black and the amount of support Obama garners among whites in that state.

That's quite rigorous actually, given that obliterations like Illinois are outliers that attenuate the statistical relationship. Further, the real relationship is likely stronger than that, as I computed the results of all contests thus far (including those before Super Tuesday) as though only Hillary and Obama were running--in reality, most of Edwards' (overwhelmingly white) supporters in the southern states would have gone to Hillary if it had been a two horse race at that point. And I gave all the white undecideds in Michigan to Obama (neither he nor Edwards was on the ballot there), so he looked better among whites in that 23% black state that he would've in reality.

In the eyes of whites, Obama is only the Black Candidate when there are lots of blacks rallying behind him.

Among Democrats, Hispanics and Asians appear so far to be resistant to Obama's mythos:
In California, the only state in either party with a sizable enough number of Asian voters to adequately report exit polling data on, Hillary outdid Obama by almost 3-to-1 (71%-25%). In New Jersey, extrapolating from the other racial categories, the best estimate for the Asian vote (which comprised 4% of the Democratic total) suggests 59%-41%, in Hillary's favor.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, Steve missed one of the most important aspect of the state-by-state results.

Those overwhelmingly white states that Obama won in landslides---which also included Minnesota and North Dakota---were states in which the voting was by public Caucus rather than secret ballot.

Basically, all the Obamabots tend to go around screaming that anyone who doesn't support their fabulous, stupendous guy has been unmasked as a racist. Since the white liberals who dominate Democratic primaries really, really hate to be viewed as racists, they mostly voted for Obama to prove that they weren't racists. That's also why Obama did so much worse in the actual results than in the exit and other polling.

Maybe we should change our actual elections to the non-secret-ballot versions used in North Korea or wherever in order to prevent "hidden racism" from corrupting the democratic process.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Steele is out to lunch about this.

The only chance the GOP has is to get as many non-blacks as possible to realize how, no matter what he says now, Obama is indeed a "race man." It would be especially worthwhile to try to capture as many "Son of Aladdin" voters as possible.

Anonymous said...

If what you're saying is true then Obama will lose his birth state, Hawaii, just as Clinton lost hers.

Anonymous said...

BTW, although I haven't seen the exit polls but Obama seems to have lost the Jewish vote also (or at least states where there are a lot of Jews-NY, NJ, FL, MA, CA)

Don't know if it was the Farrakhan factor or the middle name factor.

Anonymous said...

Re: the Asian and Hispanic vote and Obama: I just heard Andrew Levy comment on Fox's "Red Eye", which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite TV shows, that there is considerable ethnic tension between Asians and Hispanics and Blacks, due to the former groups' perception that the latter group is responsible for most crime. Amazing to see that in the MSM and kudos to Levy, whose deadpan delivery is hilarious.

Audacious Epigone said...

Anony-mouse,

Actually, the Jewish vote has been pretty inconsistent. In New York, Hillary beat Obama 2-to-1 among Jews (65%-33%). In New Jersey, her dominance was nearly identical, at 63%-37%. But in Massachusetts (48%-52%, Obama) and California (47%-49%, Obama), they split the Jewish vote, while in Connecticut Obama turned the tables with a nearly 2-to-1 victory, at 61%-38%.

It doesn't mirror the white vote, either. In NY and NJ, Jews were more supportive of Hillary than whites as a whole were. In Massachusetts, Hillary clobbered Obama among whites but narrowly lost among Jews. In Connecticut, she narrowly won among whites, but was clobbered by Obama among Jews. In California, the race was close among both whites and Jews, but Obama had the edge among Jews and Hillary among whites.

rku,

Delegates won thus far in primaries:

Hillary - 672
Obama - 621

Won thus far in caucuses:

Hillary - 91
Obama - 157

Also, notice the Super Tuesday caucus that Hillary did manage to squeak out--New Mexico. Almost half of her total support came from Hispanics there. They are probably less worried about looking like racists, since as brown people, that's an impossibility!

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the "Black People Love Us" site that makes fun of white people trying to be "hip" by expressing their undying love of all things African-American:

http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/

Anonymous said...

"Obama thus does well in states with lots of blacks and in states with few blacks"

So, the states where whites are more willing to vote for a black candidate are those states where whites are mostly unfamiliar with blacks. The important thing about an imaginary, hip friend, is that he remain imaginary - i.e. a resident only of the imagination - not of my actual neighborhood.

However, whites who are familiar with the politics of cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, Memphis, or New Orleans, may wonder exactly what kind of "change" Obama has in mind.

Anonymous said...

In Massachusetts, where the Clintons spend their summer vacations on Martha's Vineyard, the Jewish hausfraus from the wealthy suburbs of Boston backed Obama, just like they did the governor, who is also black, in the last election. The Irish vote, which is still pretty strong here, went for Hillary, driven by old racial issues of desegregation and busing in the 70's. You also can't discount the "Screw the Kennedys" vote, in spite of the fact that the Shamu of Hyannisport gets his ticket punched every 7 years, which is more a comment on the lack of useful Republicans here.

The good news is the guy who ran for Congress against Paul Tsongas' widow when the useless Marty Meehan left to take a cushy academic job was so heartened by his narrower-than-expected loss that he's already announced he's running against Kerry in the next Senate election. His name is Jim Oganowski, retired Air Force colonel and the brother of late John, the pilot of Flight 11 killed by terrorists on 9/11. Think he'll be soft on border protection?

Anonymous said...

Steve, nothing new here, I'm afraid. Too lazy to look but if I recollect rightly Jesse Jackson did rather better with Whites in lilly White states like N. Dakota, than experienced states like Illinois. I'd say the less you know the more there is to like is B. H. Obamas singular appeal in more ways than one.

Anonymous said...

Kansas has no shortage of blacks, that's for sure. The numbers are skewed because many of those who work and do their thing otherwise in Johnson County actually reside in Nissouri. But given the high sparseness of most of the state(the entire state west of Wichita has the population of a smallish city) Johnson County-Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, Lenexa, Mission, Mission Hills-developed by J.C.Nichols to dodge Pendergast in Kansas City, MO controls the state now.

Thats medium-to-bad for blacks, but great for mestizos, because they provide cheap support labor for the suburbanites. Yuppies are not threatened by mestizos.

Yet.

Audacious Epigone said...

Riot,

Are you from the KC metro area? Obviously you are familiar with it.