February 6, 2008

Obama's Super Tuesday Demographics

A reader has made up a handy table of Democratic Demographics on Super Tuesday. For convenience, I'll excerpt just the Obama numbers, along with what % each minority makes up of the Democratic voters in that state:


 Obama's Share
 of Vote
% of Dem. Voters
State White Black Hisp.
Black % Hisp. %
Georgia 40 87

51
Alabama 25 84

51
Tennessee 26 77

29
Delaware 40 86

28
Illinois 57 93

24
New Jersey 31 82 30
23 12
Missouri 39 84

17
Arkansas 16 74

17
New York 37 61 26
16 10
Connecticut 48 74 53
9 6
Arizona 38 79 41
8 18
California 42 78 29
6 29
Massachusetts 40 66 36
6 5
Oklahoma 29


6
New Mexico 55
36
3 34
Utah 55


2 7







Simple Avg. 39 79 36



The "Simple Average" is the mean not weighted by size of state.

A reader points out that Obama's California exit poll numbers are inflated:
Unless I made a mistake with my calculator, these exit polling numbers for Obama aren't correct, i.e. they don't match his actual vote count, being a few points too high.

Normally, they'd be "adjusted" to tie-out with the final results (that included a huge number of mailed ballots), but I'd half suspect that the media was reluctant to lower the initial (inflated) non-black numbers which they'd shown.

Since his Hispanic and Asian numbers are already pretty low, I'll bet his white numbers are the inflated ones. They should probably be about 7 points lower.
Perhaps the other states are too?

Also, keep in mind that exit polls' figures for a demographic group's share of the vote are, by necessity, largely rigged. The polling company guesses ahead of time that Hispanics will cast X % of the vote, so they decide to hire Y Spanish-speaking pollsters and conduct interviews in Z Hispanic-dominant precincts.

For example, I doubt that Hispanic voters outnumber black voters 29% to 6% among Democrats in California. Perhaps Hispanics were less likely to use absentee ballots, which have become hugely popular, and more likely to show up at the polls and thus be exit poll-interviewed?

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

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6 comments:

  1. Antioco Dascalon2/6/08, 10:40 PM

    I'm surprised at how little attention the gender imbalance is getting. In most democratic primaries, women outnumber men by about 10-13 points, and women favor Clinton by over 10 points, so it really adds up. And a good 1 out of 5 people say that gender is important and most of these, of course, choose Clinton. In California, Obama won the male vote but lost overall by ten points!!
    Put another way, Clinton got more than half a million more women to vote for her than Obama (1.3 for Clinton and 760,000 for Obama), which is about equal to all the Latinos who voted for Obama.
    Clinton will win by mobilizing the silent majority in every state: baby-boom women (and latinos who don't like blacks, which is a lot, apparently).

    BTW, the strongest demographic factor was not black and male (80% voted for Obama) but over 60 and Latino (81% voted for Clinton). Interestingly, the over-60 Latinos essentially neutralized the under 30 whites. Now, which group gets more attention? It shows that college students are way, way overrated and perhaps someone should be interviewing Mexican great-grand fathers rather than 27-year-old white girls. (speaking of, did you see that Obama Girl didn't make the effort to vote on Tuesday?)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2/6/08, 11:23 PM

    Yes Amber Lee Ettinger, aka Obama Girl, was too "sick" to vote in her Native New Jersey, but made it to a Manhattan party that day hosted by a Vodka company. She'd been at the Superbowl (nice work).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous2/6/08, 11:25 PM

    Off-topic, but Steve, there was a posting about the connection between subprime crisis, NAMs, and "non-discrimination" -- where did it go?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous2/7/08, 12:40 AM

    Try this:

    http://www.nypost.com/seven/02052008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_real_scandal_243911.htm?page=0




    TH said...
    Off-topic, but Steve, there was a posting about the connection between subprime crisis, NAMs, and "non-discrimination" -- where did it go?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous2/7/08, 3:42 PM

    I am Lugash.

    Romney drops out.

    Now, why do I have this gut feeling that McCain's skeletons are about to be pulled out of the closet by the media?

    I am Lugash.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous2/7/08, 7:14 PM

    It seems that Obama is in trouble, no matter what the media would have you believe. He can only compete if the voters are mostly black or mostly yuppies, and there are few of those states left. Women, hispanics, and apparently asians vote heavily against him. Given that there is a clear majority of women voters in the dem primaries, and those other factors I think the odds are against him. Obama's luckiest break so far is that Michigan and Florida which are big states are denied delegates- and he lost bigtime in both places.

    As for Obama girl not bothering to vote I think that is a distillation of many of his supporters. Empty headed yuppies who support him like they trendily follow the spring apparel collection from European designers. Thick on the ground perhaps, but thin in their knowledge and convictions.

    ReplyDelete

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