WP, pg1: Shifting Loyalties; Cracks in Clinton Coalition May Mark a Turning Point

[DeepModem Mom]

THE VOTERS
Shifting Loyalties
Cracks in Clinton Coalition May Mark a Turning Point
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 13, 2008; Page A01

For more than a month, the grand coalitions of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama battled to a draw: women, rural Democrats and the white working class pairing almost evenly with African Americans, young voters and affluent, educated whites.

Then came Virginia and Maryland.

Obama's thrashing of Clinton in the two states yesterday raised the possibility that her coalition is beginning to crack, three weeks before she reaches what will probably be more friendly territory in Ohio and Texas. Obama won among men, among women and among union voters. He won big among the affluent, educated voters in the District's suburbs, but he also won convincingly among rural voters and small-town Democrats.

Celinda Lake, an independent Democratic pollster, noted that the class divide that once demarcated the Obama-Clinton battle lines was obliterated in Virginia and Maryland. In Virginia, Obama carried the vote of those earning less than $50,000 by 26 percentage points. In Maryland, the gap was 24 percentage points. Clinton still pulled more votes from white women, but that advantage was neutralized by Obama's popularity among white men. Even Latinos, who helped deliver Nevada and California to the senator from New York, split about evenly between Obama and Clinton -- although the number of Hispanic voters was much smaller. "Certainly he broadened his coalition," Lake said. "The question is whether that's a one-state phenomenon or a broader phenomenon, because it definitely changes the landscape."

The Clinton campaign has been banking on working-class Ohio and Texas, which has many Hispanics, on March 4 to stop Obama's momentum. But Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.) cautioned yesterday that Texans never thought their primary would make much of a difference, so they are only now starting to tune in. And Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said neither Clinton nor Obama has had to really contest a struggling industrial state in which voters are focused almost wholly on the economy.

"Voters in my state will not care about who won Iowa, New Hampshire, or this Washington Post-created Potomac Primary that is supposed to be a microcosm of America," he said. "Political momentum doesn't much matter to a middle-class family that's struggling." But Obama supporters saw the Virginia results in particular as a turning point in the standoff between their candidate and Clinton. "It looks to me like the more Senator Obama wins, the broader the ranks of people who are supporting him are," said Rep. Rick Boucher, a conservative Democrat from western, rural Virginia. "He has been crossing the categories ever since Iowa, and he's doing so more and more."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/12/AR2008021203196.html