The (Non-) Role of Race in Obama’s Victory -- Based on Analysis of State Exit Polls

[Time for change]

Last week I had a discussion of the recent election with a friend of mine who considers herself a moderate. She complained to me that Obama won because African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for him because of his race, and she didn’t think that was right.

I disagreed with her. In the first place, I explained, African-Americans in recent decades always vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate for President (although not quite as much as they did for Obama). They have a very good reason for doing that, as going back at least as far as FDR, the Democratic candidate has always promoted policies that are more favorable to most African-Americans – and most other people as well – than the Republican candidate.

And secondly, I told her that Obama probably lost more white votes than he gained black votes because of his race.

But what about the claim that Obama needed the African-American vote to win this election? I didn’t say anything about that because I didn’t know if it was true. Not that it should matter. African-Americans should have just as much right to decide an election as anyone else. But still, the claim that he needed the African-American vote to win, if true and widely publicized (which Republicans are certain to do), could serve to hamper his presidency by making him seem to have a narrower mandate than he really does.

So, I thought that these things were worth considering and looking into. To assess the claim that Obama needed the African-American vote to win the election, I looked at state exit polls for all 50 states. What I found I think is very interesting. But first let’s consider some historical perspective.


Racism in the old Confederacy

It occurred to me that Obama was probably hurt badly in the 11 states of the old Confederacy, due to persisting racist attitudes. The states of the old Confederacy have not yet fully thrown off the attitudes of their slave holding past. As explained by James Loewen in “Lies Across America – What our Historic Sites Get Wrong”, the southern landscape of the United States even today is filled with monuments and historical markers that celebrate and glorify the old Confederacy, with hardly a mention of the Union side of the Civil War, except in a very pejorative context. Worse yet, those monuments and historical markers do much to twist the facts, hide embarrassing events, and justify the “cause” that the Confederacy fought for.

Loewen’s book is full of examples of how historical markers in today’s South attempt to justify slavery. I had previously been aware of the many means by which slaveholders attempted to justify slavery, but until I read Loewen’s book I was unaware of the extent to which such self-deception continues even today, 143 years after the end of slavery. Here is just one example from Loewen’s book:

Historic markers in Tennessee honor Nathan Bedford Forrest above any other person in the state, with a statue, an obelisk, and 32 historical markers – more than the three former U.S. Presidents from Tennessee combined, and more than any other person in any state in our country. Yet, as Loewen explains:

In so doing, the landscape honors one of the most vicious racists in U.S. history. Forrest had been a slave trader before the Civil War and sold people brought in illegally from Africa half a century after Congress supposedly ended that trade in 1808. During the war, he presided over massacres of surrendered black troops… After the war he hired black convict labor, the closest thing to slave labor, for his cotton plantation near Memphis.

In choosing to honor such a man above all others, the authorities in Tennessee essentially are honoring and justifying the slave trade, slavery itself, war crimes, and the terror used to subjugate the Black race for several decades following the Civil War.


The White vote in the old Confederacy in the 2008 presidential election

So, I thought that it would be interesting to look at the white vote in the recent election. As I expected, in the 11 states of the old Confederacy, the white vote went overwhelmingly for McCain, with 10 of those 11 states delivering more than a 20 point White vote margin to McCain:

The White vote in states of the old Confederacy
Alabama: McCain + 78
Mississippi: McCain + 77
Louisiana: McCain + 70
Georgia: McCain + 53
South Carolina: McCain + 47
Texas: McCain + 47
Arkansas: McCain+ 38
North Carolina: McCain + 29
Tennessee: McCain + 29
Virginia: McCain + 21
Florida: McCain + 14

Florida was the only old Confederacy state that gave McCain less than a 20 point margin. Florida is different than the other states of the old Confederacy in that it contains a much larger percentage of transplanted Northerners – in other words, people without a hereditary link to slave owners.

By contrast, of the 39 other states, in only 6 did White voters give McCain more than a 20 point margin. Those states included the border state of Kentucky, plus five deep red states that haven’t voted for a Democrat for President since the 1964 Lyndon Johnson landslide over Barry Goldwater (Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, Alaska, and Idaho). Oklahoma’s White voters gave McCain the largest margin of those states – 42%.


The White vote in other states

The contrast between the White vote in the states of the old Confederacy and most of the other states is tremendous. I was surprised to see the number of states in which Obama won the white vote, and the margins by which he won it:

States in which Obama won the White vote
District of Columbia: Obama + 74
Hawaii: Obama + 43
Vermont: Obama + 37
Massachusetts: Obama + 20
Rhode Island: Obama + 19
Maine: Obama + 18
Oregon: Obama + 17
Washington: Obama + 13
New Hampshire: Obama + 10
Wisconsin: Obama + 9
Delaware: Obama + 8
Minnesota: Obama + 7
California: Obama + 6
New York: Obama + 6
Connecticut: Obama + 5
Michigan: Obama + 4
Iowa: Obama + 4
Illinois: Obama + 3
Colorado: Obama + 2
Electoral votes: 222


How Obama could have won the Electoral College with just the White and Hispanic vote

With only White voters voting, Obama would have won approximately 222 electoral votes – quite a respectable showing. But Obama also heavily won the Hispanic vote (+ 36), the Asian vote (+ 27), and all other races combined (+ 35). When just the Hispanic vote is added to the White vote, Obama picked up several more states:

States in which Obama won a combination of the White and Hispanic vote
New Mexico: Obama + 10
New Jersey: Obama + 5
Maryland: Obama + 4
Nevada: Obama + 3
Electoral votes: 35

That would have given Obama a total of 257 electoral votes – just 13 shy of an Electoral College victory.

All of the above noted states very likely would have gone to Obama even without the African-American vote. In addition, there is one more state that he might have won without the African-American vote – Pennsylvania, with 21 electoral votes, which would have put him over the top.

With just the White vote, Obama would have lost Pennsylvania by about 3% according to the exit polls. When the Hispanic vote is added to the white vote, McCain’s lead would have been cut to about 0.7%. But with rounding errors and statistical variation, it could have gone either way. In addition, 2% of the Pennsylvania vote was accounted for by other races. The voting behavior of those other races in Pennsylvania was not measured, due to a small sample size. But they probably voted heavily for Obama in Pennsylvania, as they did nation-wide. That could have made up the remaining difference. So, Pennsylvania could have gone either way without the African-American vote. If it would have gone to Obama, that would have given him 278 electoral votes and the Presidency – even without a single African-American voting.


Race related attitudes

Only 9% of voters said that race was an important factor in their vote, and only 2% said that it was the most important factor. 80% said that it was of no importance at all. Furthermore, of those who said that race was an important factor, Obama won by 7%, whereas of those who said that race was not important, Obama won by an almost identical 6%.

This all suggests that race had little to do with the results of this election. But perhaps many people just weren’t willing to admit the extent to which race influenced their vote.

Another way to approach this question is to ask voters “In the next few years, race relations will…” Analysis of the answers to that question was very interesting, in that it showed a very strong correlation between voting for Obama and optimism about race relations in our country.

Race relations will….
Get much better: Obama + 49
Get somewhat better: Obama + 38
Stay about the same: McCain + 10
Get somewhat worse: McCain + 36
Get much worse: McCain + 55

That’s amazing. Though Obama and McCain voters split almost equally on the question of whether race was an important factor in their vote, voters who were optimistic about race relations in our country voted overwhelmingly for Obama, whereas voters who were pessimistic about race relations in our country voted overwhelmingly for McCain. Unfortunately, the answers to that question were not broken down by state. But if they had been, I would wager a lot of money that voters from the states of the old Confederacy voiced much more pessimism about race relations in our country than did voters from the other states.


Summary

Racism is still alive in our country, but it is much more evident in regions where slavery flourished into the mid-19th Century.

The reason for that is clear. Almost everyone has a great need to think of him or herself as a good person. Slavery was a brutal system that dehumanized its victims. How can a person think of himself as a good person when he brutalizes and dehumanizes other people for economic gain? The only way to do that is to tell yourself and make yourself believe that those whom you dehumanize are barely human to start with. Those were the attitudes that prevailed in the U.S. South during the slavery era.

But long-standing attitudes don’t just suddenly disappear when the stimulus that gave rise to them disappears. If the attitudes are deeply felt, they are transmitted down through the generations. Consequently, long after slavery ended in the South the former slaves and their descendents were marginalized, brutalized, discriminated against, and dehumanized – as evidenced by the proliferation of Jim Crow laws and lynchings in the South.

While racial prejudice in other parts of our nation receded, as evidenced by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it remained strong in the South. Not only did these events not change attitudes in the South, but they resulted in widespread migration of Southerners from the Democratic to the Republican Party, in retaliation against the Democratic Party, which most Southerners held responsible for these happenings. For example, following the 1960 election, all 22 U.S. Senators from the South were Democrats. By 2005, 18 of 22 U.S. Senators from the South were Republicans.

These attitudes were reflected in the 2008 Presidential election – as evidenced by White Southerners and those who are pessimistic about race relations in our country voting overwhelmingly for John McCain.

In marked contrast, White voters from other regions of the country voted for Barack Obama in large enough numbers that, by themselves they would have given him 18 states and 222 electoral votes. In 4 or 5 additional states, White voters voted for Obama in large enough numbers that, when combined with Hispanic voters they would have given him at least a total of at least 257 electoral votes, and possibly as many as 278 – enough for an Electoral College victory. The support of African-American voters combined with Whites and other races to give Obama 5 additional previously red states (Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, and Ohio, plus an electoral vote from Nebraska), for a total of 28 states and an electoral landslide of 365-173.

But it is a heartwarming testament to the decline of racism outside of the Southern United States that an African-American received so many White votes for president that he might have won a nation-wide Electoral College victory even without the votes of African-Americans. I have to admit that prior to 2008 I did not imagine that I would see an African-American elected President of the United States in my lifetime – even with the African-American vote.

[Every Man A King]

1. Who did your "friend" support ? n/t

[Time for change]

2. McCain, I'm pretty sure

She had told me earler that she didn't think Obama was qualified to be President because he didn't have enough experience.

She had told me that, as a Buddhist, whe was strongly anti-war. So, I tried to explain to her that McCain is a warmonger. But she wasn't impressed. Obama's inexperience was presumably more important to her. :shrug:

[noiretextatique]

13. maybe she voted for him because he's white

:shrug: nah, she's probably a lot smarter than all us black people who voted for obama just because he's black :sarcasm:

[Time for change]

16. That's possible

She's not white though. She was born in Sri Lanka, and she's of East Indian descent.

That doesn't mean that race wasn't a factor in her vote. But I think it's more likely that she bought the argments made by many in our corporate media of Obama's so-called radical left leaning views -- and that scares her.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. So what if Obama had won with black votes only? Blacks have lived with pres voted in by whites

Reagan, Bush, etc. won with overwhelmingly white votes. Does that make their presidency less legitimate? That's what I'd say to your misinformed friend

[Time for change]

4. As I said in the OP

"African-Americans should have as much right to decide an election as anyone else".

[Alcibiades]

5. Obama wouldn't have won without the womens' vote

or the GLBT vote, or the Hispanic vote, or the union vote, or the poor vote, or the youth vote, or the Catholic vote. This is just another way of carving us up. Obama won the American vote.

So what if African Americans wanted to vote for Obama. They have had to vote for white candidates for years. If this lady thinks the Republican Party is unattractive to African Americans, then maybe the problem is that the Republicans ought to run on a platform that consists of more than tax cuts for millionaires and eternal war.

[Time for change]

6. Your response makes it sound like I agreed with her

I thought I made it clear that I didn't agree with her.

In any event, your statement that Obama would not have won without all those votes is not correct. His support was so broad that he would have won without any of those individual groups by themselves. He would have won without the women vote, and he would have won without the men vote. He would have won without the white vote, he would have won without the Hispanic vote, and he might have won without the black vote.

My objective in this OP was to emphasize the very broad, across the board support that Obama had in this election, not to minimize the importance of any particular group. If I gave that impression I'm sorry.

[Alcibiades]

10. No no no no no

I was continuing to disagree with her, and agree with you.

The point that Obama would not have won without the support of all these groups is exactly the same as the point you're making, which is that his support was broad enough to transcend interest-group politics, though I do think you take it a bit far in asserting he could have won without the women's vote-the math just doesn't add up, given that they are a majority of the electorate. Anyway, when I wrote that Obama won the American vote, my intention was to make the same point you made, and also to expand a bit on it to infer that, instead of carving people up into different groups, the electoral process should be regarded as a source of legitimacy essential to the democratic governance of a pluralist society.

In other words, I completely get your point about Obama's broad base of support. I'd like to say that our Democratic voters and activists here in Durham made all the difference in swinging NC to the Democratic column, bu the truth is that the job was done in communities all across our state, even in the rural and mountain areas where the whole point of the exercise was to keep McCain's margins there low.

Her point about monolithic voting by black folks has its historical antecedent in my native state of North Carolina, where Jesse Helms used to use the phrase "bloc vote" as a code for the black vote. The implication is that it's somehow antidemocratic for any group to overwhelmingly favor one political party. Of course, this line of reasoning completely invalid, because it is always made by folks who themselves seek to gain political power by appealing to the politics of racial resentment. It's astounding that Republicans expect support from black voters while simultaneously appealing to the racism of whites.

[Time for change]

12. I'm glad to hear that

I was afraid I had offended some people.

My friend's main point was not so much that blacks are a "monolithic" voting block, but that they voted for Obama just because he was black. My main answer to that was that I believe that a lot more whites voted on the basis of race than blacks (And also that blacks always in recent decades have voted Democratic for president, whether the candidate is black or not -- and with good reason). I think that the data that most supports that theory is the data that shows that those who were pessimistic about race relations voted overwhelmingly for McCain. I believe much of that was the white racist vote.

What I meant by saying that Obama would have won without the women vote, or any of those other votes is this: It's true that women voted very heavily for Obama. Without women, there would be only men voting, and they too voted for Obama over McCain, but by a much smaller margin. I didn't look at that by state, so it's possible that he might have lost the Electoral College if only men had voted. But probably he would have won with just men.

His support was very broad -- The only Democratic candidates for President to have that much broad support in the last 100 years were LBJ in 1964 and FDR.

[Alcibiades]

14. You're right on all counts

Though usually in these counterfactual situations we wouldn't simply leave out one group (i.e. what would happen if they stayed home), but speculate on what would have happened if they voted slightly differently--for example, what would have happened if Hispanic voters voted for McCain by the same margin they chose Clinton over Obama, which did not wind up happening, much to the surprise of some folks.

Anyway, I don't know if your friend is a racist, or if she's just been listening to racists, but she did not cook up this idea on her own. This criticism of the "black bloc vote" is an old, old theme in the politics of white supremacists in America.

"There’s no reason to let any one group call all the shots in this state. And you know the militant black bloc vote in this state, if they take over, it’s going to control politics for the next 50 years in Alabama, and I know you are not going to let that happen." George Wallace, 1970

That there are still folks out there in 2008 who sound like Wallace in 1970 shows how profoundly ignorant of history we as a people have become. Folks hear these old, recycled ideas and they parrot them, but most wouldn't do it if they knew where these ideas came from in the first place.
:shrug:

[TygrBright]

7. Interesting analysis. You make a lot of cogent points.

>>The reason for that is clear. Almost everyone has a great need to think of him or herself as a good person. Slavery was a brutal system that dehumanized its victims. How can a person think of himself as a good person when he brutalizes and dehumanizes other people for economic gain? The only way to do that is to tell yourself and make yourself believe that those whom you dehumanize are barely human to start with. Those were the attitudes that prevailed in the U.S. South during the slavery era.

But long-standing attitudes don’t just suddenly disappear when the stimulus that gave rise to them disappears. If the attitudes are deeply felt, they are transmitted down through the generations. Consequently, long after slavery ended in the South the former slaves and their descendents were marginalized, brutalized, discriminated against, and dehumanized – as evidenced by the proliferation of Jim Crow laws and lynchings in the South.<<

I agree that attitudes can persist over generations, but I think there is much more at work here. Humans love pecking orders. We crave pecking orders as a method of effective social organization that allows groups to establish conditions where individuals can thrive and reproduce. All social creatures rely on pecking orders to organize their social groups. Outside the higher mammal orders, pecking orders are often biologically based, with morphological distinctions between superior and inferior ranks in the pecking order. But among higher mammals, we establish pecking orders on a socio-cultural basis.

The history of human attempts to codify pecking orders into viable forms of social organization and government is the history of political and cultural development from primitive oligarchy, monarchy, theocracy, through more advanced conceptual constructs like "law" and "Constitutions." We strive to create pecking orders that allow the group to get the most from the talents and capabilities of its members, and allow members the maximum protection and benefit from the group to develop those talents and capabilities. That's the conscious intent, anyway.

But on the reptile-brain level, we still need pecking orders as a way of establishing our identity, of individuating and developing our ego based on status. It's as strong, and as primitive, a need as sex and food.

And when you're at the bottom rungs of a pecking order, under a seemingly-impenetrable barrier of higher orders that require stuff you don't have to advance upwards, your only comfort is in keeping someone under you in the pecking order.

After the victory of the Union over the Confederacy, a lot was done wrong in trying to reconstruct the South and redress the wrongs of centuries of slavery. Whites in the South were booted to the bottom of the pecking order and sat upon with economic and political barriers established to keep them there. The notion that there remained someone "below" them in the pecking order-- easily identifiable by a physiological characteristic-- offered them the only apparent "out" for retaining any kind of ego-viability.

IOW, it is poverty and marginalization, as much as generational transmission of historical attitudes, that is responsible for the entrenched racism of whites in the South. And in other areas of the nation. The need for those who perceive themselves to be in the bottom ranks of the pecking order to have someone below them is the crack into which would-be oligarchs drive wedges to protect their own, higher place in the pecking order. Hence it serves those upper ranks to perpetuate the racism and other factors that set low-status individuals against each other based on superficial characteristics of race, gender, geography, ethnicity, etc.

The best we can do is to continually struggle against such stupidity and maintain constant vigilance against the attempts from above to divide us against those with whom we should be making common cause.

philosophically,
Bright

[Time for change]

9. Yes, I agree that the need to feel superior to people is a good part of it

I'm not sure though what you mean by the statement that Whites in the South were booted to the bottom of the pecking order.

When I took history in high school I learned -- as most people did -- that reconstruction was a failure because of excessive aggression and corruption of the "carpetbagger" Northerners. I don't know what people are being taught in school about that subject these days, but I've read a lot about it in the last few years, and there has been a reassessment of the subject by a lot of historians. One of the main purposes of reconstruction was to protect the newly freed slaves, especially with respect to ensuring their rights under the newly passed Constitutional Amendments, which provided them with civil and voting rights, in addition to illegalizing slavery. That effort failed mainly because Southerners were dead set against it, so a great deal of policing was needed to get them to accept it. The result was an epidemic of violence against the recently freed slaves, to prevent them from reclaiming their rights under our Constitution. I don't think that Northerners can be blamed for that, unless the criticism is that the federal government was not aggressive enough in enforcing law and order in the South. The violence against the freed slaves went largely unchecked and resulted in several more decades of their subjugation.

I very much like your last sentence: "The best we can do is to continually struggle against such stupidity and maintain constant vigilance against the attempts from above to divide us against those with whom we should be making common cause".

That is the truth. I believe that a lot bigotry in this country is perpetrated by people who aren't so much bigoted themselves, but who seek to divide the rest of us, so as to perpetrate their wealth and power. That's what Karl Rove and his ilk are all about, and the sooner we wise up the better off we'll be.

[TygrBright]

11. The economic aspects of the Reconstruction effectively...

...booted white farmers, shopkeepers, craftspeople, etc. to the bottom rungs. It was not intentional, but there was little or no "macro" thinking on the part of those deciding economic and social policy for the Reconstruction. The war had virtually destroyed the South's economic infrastructure. Everything-- EVERYTHING-- from the most basic food production to roads for transport to equipment for carrying out any kind of craft or manufacturing-- was destroyed or damaged. It produced devastating levels of poverty among the white population as well as the newly-freed black population.

The Reconstruction did not take a broad-based approach to rebuilding the infrastructure per se, it divided up the territory and appointed northern overseers to accomplish two things: One (as you correctly note) was to attempt to bring Southern blacks into economic participation ("forty acres and a mule") and the other was to restore some form of political infrastructure that would produce manageable political returns and keep social order. ("Manageable" meaning "controllable/manipulable" representatives to Congress.) The recommended means for producing this second goal was identifying a small class of "community leaders" to empower via government contracts and handouts. Ostensibly for economic development, restoration of farmland, factory capacity, etc., but in effect patronage pseudo-jobs for families and friends that created a new southern elite not much different from the antebellum elite.

While there was no deliberate intent to create a marginalized and impoverished class of whites in the South, such results followed naturally from the botched and carpetbagged "reconstruction." Well-meaning attempts to preserve blacks from the hostility of their white neighbors and provide them with a base for economic survival, coupled with complete neglect and marginalization of whites who weren't part of the elite, produced a potent environment for racism to flourish. It's hardly surprising that whites nurtured in that environment turn to the pecking order and establish themselves "above" someone to bolster a sense of worth.

IOW, we have a confluence of factors --the natural human 'pecking order' impulse, coupled with the powerful economic and social environment post-Civil War-- that potentiated racism to an entrenched pathology in the South. It might have yielded to the march of history far more than it has done to date, without that confluence.

expositionally,
Bright

[Time for change]

17. No doubt there is a confluence of factors -- And as you say, pecking order mentality

certainly accounts for some of the problem.

But I don't know about poverty in general. Nation-wide, voters making under $15,000 annually voted for Obama by a 73-25 margin. That's a much greater margin than Kerry got from poor voters. Certainly they are at the bottom of the pecking order. I'm sure that a lot of them were black. But still, looking at white voters making under $50,000 (They don't break down more finely than that), McCain has only a 4% margin, whereas he has a 13% margin among whites who make more than $50,000. So, it doesn't seem like poverty stimulated much racist voting in this election. On the other hand Sourthern white voters as a group voted overwhelming for McCain in this election, as you can see from the OP.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Excellent important information well presented. Thank you. Definitely K&R.

[Time for change]

15. Thank you

[Swagman]

18. is it just me ??..or do others feel the same ?. What is the feeling in

the USA ?. I live in Australia..I can't describe how excited almost eveyone here is with the election of Barack O'Bama.But as each day goes by I feel like I'll wake up and it's all been a dream....the longer away from the election the more it sinks in what a fundemental change the USA has gone through. Do Americans know that almost the entire world was praying for this result ?

[Time for change]

19. It's not just you

Many of us are elated about this for many reasons.

We have just undergone 8 years of the worst president in our history, and we feel that another 4 years of Republican rule could finish the job of ruining our country and the world.

As late as a year ago, I would never have believed that a Black person could be elected President in our country in my remaining life time (which isn't all that long, but who's counting?). So -- as the numbers in this OP point out I think -- we now have evidence that White people in large parts of our country outside of the South are eager to accept a person of a different race. That is a major breakthrough. I also firmly believe that if Obama has a successful presidency, that will go a very long way towards diminishing racism in our country, as I believe that one very big component of racism is ignorance/lack of familiarity with people of other races.

On the other hand, I am not letting myself get too overjoyed about this, since I don't know for certain that Obama will have a successful presidency. He certainly will have some very serious challenges. I feel certain that he will be anywhere from an average to a great President. But a lot of average presidents have had very unsuccessful presidencies. My main fear about Obama is that he will be too cautious, or too overly sensitive to public opinion. If he is, he may get trapped into a warlike posture that could mean disaster. Maybe, as our first Black President, he'll feel that he has to be extremely cautious, and thereby continue too much along the lines of the status quo. But if he does that, I think it will be a very bad thing for our country.

So, I'd sum up my feelings by saying that I'm cautiously optimistic.