President Obama's "Base" - Democratic Underground

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President Obama's "Base"

Who are they?

Voter Polls Find Obama Built a Broad Coalition

Senator Barack Obama, the first African-American nominee for president, drew more support in Tuesday’s election than any recent candidates of the Democratic Party among a broad range of demographic groups, including several that typically favor Republicans.

Promising change to a country now in recession, Mr. Obama built a coalition that included majorities of women, independent voters, political moderates, Hispanics, African-Americans, people of most income groups and education levels and voters under age 45, according to nationwide surveys of voters leaving the polls on Tuesday and telephone interviews of some people who had voted early.

The Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, won majorities of a few groups that make up his party’s staunchest supporters — white men, older Americans, evangelical Christians and conservatives.

Mr. McCain won a majority of all white voters, both men and women. But Mr. Obama.... did better among white voters over all than a string of Democratic nominees, including John Kerry and Al Gore.

Mr. Obama outperformed Democratic nominees of the past eight presidential elections among women, blacks, young voters, moderates and independents.

Among the Republican-leaning groups that moved into the Democratic column for Mr. Obama were mothers and Catholics. Rural voters split their votes, with a bare majority supporting Mr. McCain, while Mr. Obama built on recent Democratic Party gains in the once reliably Republican suburbs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05poll.html?ref=us

The African-American Vote

The possibility of an African American achieving the highest office in the nation was, for the vast majority of African Americans, a watershed moment and a manifestation of the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists. Exit polls reported that 97 percent of African Americans voted for Obama.

The Female Vote

According to MSNBC, women were one key to Obama’s success. Women are normally “crucial to a Democratic victory” and, according to exit polls, Obama “was pulling 55 percent of votes, compared with 43 percent for McCain.” Women also made up a larger portion of the electorate than men, exit polls showed.

The Hispanic Vote

Prior to the election, the Obama campaign said it was spending $20 million to recruit the Hispanic vote by means of “get-out-the-vote efforts and Spanish-language media.” The campaign translated Obama’s 30-minute “infomercial” to Spanish and broadcast it on Univision in just one effort to sway Hispanic voters and communicate Obama’s economic message, which proposes tax cuts for middle-class Americans. the Hispanic voter percentage of Obama supporters—67 percent.

The Jewish Vote

Despite late-in-the-game tactics by the McCain team that attempted to paint Obama as unsupportive of Israel, Obama was still able to recruit Jewish voters in great numbers. He was spurred by get-out-the-vote support by volunteers and Jewish celebrities like Sarah Silverman, who organized a “Great Schlep” to Florida to convince Jewish parents and grandparents to vote for the Democrat.

Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, citing exit polls, reported November 5 that Obama “received about 77 percent of the Jewish vote.

The Asian-American Vote

John Nichols of The Nation, reporting on Obama’s “many majorities” Nov. 5, put the number of Asian supporters for the president-elect at 63 percent, just slightly less than the Hispanic voter percentage of Obama supporters—67 percent.
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/politics/2008/November/Obama-Victory-Sealed-by-Minorities--Women.html

The Youth Vote

Between 22 and 24 million young Americans ages 18–29 voted, resulting in an estimated youth voter turnout (the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast a vote) of between 49.3 and 54.5 percent, according to an exit poll analysis released Nov. 4 by CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research center at Tufts University. This is an increase of 1 to 6 percentage points over the estimated youth turnout in 2004, and an increase of between 8 and 13 percentage points over the turnout in the 2000 election. The all-time highest youth turnout was 55.4 percent in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential election.

Sixty-six percent of young voters cast their ballot for Barack Obama, the largest-ever showing for a presidential candidate in this age group. Young people preferred Obama to John McCain by a two-to-one ratio.
http://www.thetartan.org/2008/11/10/news/elections

Election slice for Barack Obama in Percentage

RACE

White (incl. Hispanics)
45

Nonwhite
90

Non-Hispanic white
44

Nonwhite (incl. Hispanics)
86

Black
99

AGE

Under 30 years
61

30 to 49 years
53

50 to 64 years
54

65 and older
46

EDUCATION

College
55

High school
47

Grade school
67

Postgrad
65

POLITICS

Republicans
7

Democrats
93

Independents
51

Conservatives
23

Moderates
63

Liberals
94

RELIGION

Protestants
47

Catholics
53

Seldom/Never attend
62

MARITAL STATUS

Married
44

Not married
65

Married men
42

Married women
47

Unmarried men
63

Unmarried women
66

LABOR UNION

Union families
64

GUN OWNERSHIP

Owner
36

Non-owner
63

http://www.gallup.com/poll/112132/Election-Polls-Vote-Groups-2008.aspx

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.

It may also be that suburban voters are starting to look — and behave — more like their urban brethren. According to a poll by the National Center for Suburban Studies, 20 percent of suburban voters are nonwhite — not much behind the national average of 27 percent — and 44 percent live in a racially mixed neighborhood (versus a national average of 46 percent). Suburban voters are just as likely to be concerned about the economy as other voters are and just as likely to know someone who has lost a job. Moreover, many suburbanites who do not live in cities may nevertheless be thoroughly familiar with them; according to the Census Bureau, at least eight to nine million persons commute into urban areas each day. As a result, urban bashing isn't what it once was at the height of white flight and the Reagan revolution. Whereas in 1980, according to the biannual General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago, 24.4 percent of Americans thought that the government was spending too much money to solve the problems of big cities, nowadays that number is down to 12.8 percent. The suburbs are immune to neither urban America's problems nor its promise.
http://www.esquire.com/features/data/how-obama-won-0209

“Young people came out to vote this year because for the first time in history, they were actually paid some attention to. Since so much time and energy was focused on us, it was expected that we’d go out and vote,” stated Rebecca Hirsch, a sophomore political science major and secretary of College Republicans, via e-mail.

Although she voted for McCain, Hirsch understood why so many of her peers supported Obama.

“Being young and charismatic, Obama would naturally appeal to young people more,” she stated. “Obama also put a huge amount of time, energy, and money into reaching out to young people, a historically forgotten demographic of voters.”

Other students agreed that the majority of voters in the youngest demographic often vote Democratic.

“I think polls show college students are more liberal but that doesn’t mean some won’t support McCain and Palin, ” said Katie Bergman-Bock, a senior policy and management major, in Rangos on election night.
....
Perkins said she supported McCain because of his positions on issues that were of primary importance to her, specifically his opposition to abortion and support of the war in Iraq.

“I thought McCain had more experience than Obama, and I didn’t like how far to the left Obama was before the campaign. McCain aligned more with my views because he was a moderate conservative,” she said.

Despite McCain’s defeat, Perkins is optimistic about the future of the United States.

“If Barack Obama does succeed, it will be good for the country,” she said. “I don’t feel bitter about it.”

Hirsch echoed Perkins’ views.

“I agree with John McCain on such issues as the economy, the Iraq war, and social issues. I primarily vote for a candidate based on the issues, not on the appeal of the person,” she stated.

Hirsch said she was “disappointed” with the election outcome, but “every American, regardless of who they voted for, should support our next president.”

Of the respondents in the Declare Yourself survey, 61 percent said they will be more active in politics in the future, while only 2 percent said they would be less active; 37 percent said they will participate the same amount.

“The economy has to improve, and people need to feel part of the campaign,” Johansson said. “If people feel they’re included, they will feel more active in politics. If Obama does a good job of involving youth, they will continue to be involved.”
http://www.thetartan.org/2008/11/10/news/elections