Racially Motivated Voting Is Not Just For White People
Dave Weigel observes that extraordinarily strong support for his re-election among non-white voters seems to have left Barack Obama in a strong position for 2012:
Meanwhile, the Field poll in California has Obama outperforming Bush and Clinton, at this point in their presidencies, on the re-elect. The comparison captures Bush at his last big surge of support, during the start of the Iraq War, so it’s impressive. Look down at the Pew internals, though. Ninety-two percent of black voters want to re-elect Obama, as do 66 percent of Hispanics. Only one percent of blacks (!) and 16 percent of Hispanics want to vote against Obama. That’s the source of the positive re-elect number — break it down to white voters, and only 36 percent of them want to re-elect him.
Ezra Klein had more on this yesterday, showing that this isn’t just the usual black/white partisan gap. The Obama Era has led to an unprecedented level of racially motivated voting. And to state the obvious, it’s not just racially motivated voting by white people. Black voters have been solid Democrats for a while now, but they’re super-duper solid Obama supporters even though it’s not like Obama’s the most popular president in human history or anything.
- Original article
- Login or register to post comments
