Nate Silver: How Obama Really Won the Election

[babylonsister]

How Obama Really Won the Election

In his new Esquire column, The Data, statistical analysis guru Nate Silver reveals for the first time the secret behind November 4, 2008.

By Nate Silver

Illustration by Pitch Interactive

Source: Exit-poll data


If Bill Clinton was the first black president, then Barack Obama might be the first urban one. He is the only American president in recent history to seem unembarrassed about claiming a personal residence in a major American city. Instead, presidents have tended to hail from homes called ranches or groves or manors or plantations, in places called Kennebunkport or Santa Barbara or Oyster Bay or Northampton. There were times, certainly, during the course of the presidential campaign when Barack Obama seemed less than proud of his Chicago heritage. Indeed, Obama treated Chicago as little more than a bedroom community during parts of his presidential bid, choosing to launch his campaign downstate in Springfield instead, and not holding a major public rally in the city until his climactic event in Grant Park on November 4. As John McCain's commercials yapped about the "corrupt Chicago political machine," Obama seemed as though he was worried about bumping into Bill Ayers at Manny's Deli or Tony Rezko at the Frontera Grill. As Rudy Giuliani — the former mayor of the hamlet called New York City — tried to portray Obama as an out-of-touch elitist, Obama seemed to strain to avoid the caricature.

Like many incoming presidents, Barack Obama was elected partly in reaction to the failures of the previous one, a president who was dogmatic, insecure, white-bread, and — at least ostensibly — rural. By contrast, Obama is unmistakably urban: pragmatic, superior, hip, stubborn, multicultural. But Obama's election may also represent something more — if not a sign that America's psyche has changed then at least that its demographics are on the move. We may still romanticize some of the more familiar, rurally oriented narratives of presidents past: the Ronald Reagan frontiersman caricature (which both Sarah Palin and John McCain tried to co-opt at various times) or the Bill Clinton born-in-a-small-town shtick (see also: Edwards, John; Huckabee, Mike). Fewer and fewer of us, however, have actually lived those experiences. In 1992, when Bill Clinton won his first term, 35 percent of American voters were identified as rural according to that year's national exit polls, and 24 percent as urban. This year, however, the percentage of rural voters has dropped to 21 percent, while that of urban voters has climbed to 30. The suburbs, meanwhile, have been booming: 41 percent of America's electorate in 1992, they represent 49 percent now (see chart).

In other words, if you are going to pit big cities against small towns, it is probably a mistake to end up on the rural side of the ledger. Last year, Obama accumulated a margin of victory of approximately 10.5 million votes in urban areas (see chart), far bettering John Kerry's 3.6 million. Obama improved his performance not only among black and Latino voters but also among urban whites, with whom he performed 9 points better than Kerry. Obama also won each of the seventeen most densely populated states, a list that includes such nontraditional battlegrounds as Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana. (One hidden advantage of urban areas: They're easier to canvass to get the vote out.) By contrast, for all their bluster about small towns, John McCain and Sarah Palin beat Obama by just 2.4 million votes in rural areas, actually a bit worse than the 4.3-million-vote margin that Bush racked up in 2004.

With the votes that he banked in the cities, Obama did not really need to prevail in the suburbs. But he did anyway — as every winning presidential candidate has done since 1980 — bettering McCain by 2 points there. Indeed, among the many mistakes the McCain campaign made was targeting the rural vote rather than the suburban one, as Bush and Karl Rove did in 2000 and 2004.

more...

http://www.esquire.com/features/data/how-obama-won-0209?src=rss

[AtomicKitten]

1. Nate Silver is worth his weight in gold. n/t

[ejpoeta]

4. nice pic. whenever i see that, i can't help but think of if bush had done that.

shiver!!! uggh. well, at least i can thank bush for one thing.

[AtomicKitten]

8. I think it might look something like this:

[babylonsister]

13. Bwhahaha!

:rofl: Was that before or after he wet himself? :rofl:

[Cha]

12. I loved checking

him out during the election! Good times.

[ErinBerin84]

2. does Nate Silver have a book deal yet?

I'm sure his "How Obama won" would be more interesting than Chuck Todd's "How Obama won". Though, it was pretty funny when Chuck Todd was going on and on today about how the Republican party has become the Southern White Man party, and that anti-elitism has melded into anti-intellectualism, and he looked at Pat, and Pat said "What do you want me to do about it?"

[camera obscura]

10. He got two book deals, I heard in the neighborhood of six figures...

the guy deserves every penny.

[ErinBerin84]

11. I thought so. Thanks.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. So, if you win the suburbs you win the office ???

(not counting Shrub stealing it)


that graph has the 'burbs "picking" the winner every time in the last 6 contests.

[bunkerbuster1]

5. I reflexively went to 538 dot com and couldn't find this...

so mister hot-shot fancy pants has a gig writing for Esquire now, huh?

He's changed, man! He used to be about the music! Sellout!

[babylonsister]

7. LOL! He probably likes this paycheck better. nt

[Bicoastal]

6. Republicans today seem REMARKABLY intolerant of cities.

The larger and more ethnically diverse, the less the conservatives like em--even their love affair with NYC ended after 2004.

If you can go on FreeRepublic and find a good word said about ANY large city outside of Texas , I owe you a dollar.

[AtomicKitten]

9. soon their entire base will be able to fit into a single Walmart