One bitter, working class white vote for Obama - Updated

By Libby

I woke up this morning as I have for the last several months, hating both candidates, but today was different. Today, I had to vote. For a number of reasons, I can't make it to the polls on Tuesday so this was my last shot at early voting. I almost didn't make it but arrived with about 7 minutes to spare. That was lucky. The woman ahead of me told me she had come by an hour earlier and the line was way down the street. I was one of the last 25 voters they let in so the wait wasn't long.

The woman I was talking to was older than me, middle class and well informed. I'm thinking she probably voted for Clinton. But fully 75% of the people in line were black.The guy just in front of us was wearing an Obama pin. Privacy was a joke. You could easily see what circles people were filling in as you walked past and the ballot is fully exposed when you put into the scanner. I know it's impolite to look, but I did anyway and all the ballots I glimpsed, from both black and white voters were for Obama.

Which brings me to this NYT piece on whether Obama can win the white vote.

The question is this: Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much.

On the other hand, black Democrats’ opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period).

While a favorable opinion doesn’t necessarily translate into a vote, this should still give the Clintons (and the superdelegates) pause. Electability cuts both ways.

For a number of reasons, I may or may not detail in another post, I voted for Obama. The bottom line is I think he's the more electable. One can analyze and model and spin the demographics endlessly, but he's the one that has energized the most new participants in the process. And while it's true that a favorable opinion doesn't necessarily translate into a vote in November, it's a sure bet that unfavorable opinion definitely won't. In the end, it's as simple as that.

Update: To be clear, I live in a small semi-rural town that has essentially become an exurb of the Raleigh-Durham Triangle. Thanks to people like me, it's gentrifying rapidly but it still has a large and solid base of working class locals who grew up here when the roads were still unpaved.

Update Two: For the demographic fans, here's some stats from 2005.

Males 48.7%, Females 51.3%
Average median income $56,025
Traditional family households 73.3%
White population: 15,772
Black population: 3,967
American Indian population: 79
Asian population: 144
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander population: 1
Some other race population: 253
Two or more races population: 328

Most of those numbers will have gone up a bit in the last three years but the porportional distribution is about the same over the last eight.

Comments

[Pug]

Someone should poll white "elitist" voters like me. I'm thinking she must be down to about 3% favorable in that demographic.

The media, as usual, is missing the story. While Hillary Clinton goes after unreliable, white blue collar Democrats(?) she is completely trashing her (and Bill's) reputation with black voters, the most reliable Democratic voters in the U.S. She can't win without them.

[carol]

good point pug.

Thanks for the "insiders view" of Indiana Libby- greatly appreciated as the rest of the country continues to hang on the edge of our seats. When . . . will. . . this . . . end . . . for the love of all that is holy?

[Libby]

The elephant in the room Pug...

Carol, I'm actually in North Carolina.