From Huffington Post re: the 2008 election:
"Clinton got 83 percent of the black vote in 1992 and 84 percent in 1996; the third-party candidate Ross Perot probably sliced away some of Clinton's black support. Al Gore got 90 percent in 2000; John Kerry got 88 percent in 2004. Obama captured 95 percent in 2008, and 2 million more black people voted than in the previous election." From the Wall Street Journal re: Obama's 2012 win: "More fundamentally, the thing to keep in mind with analyses about which demographic group decided an election is that, given a small enough margin, victories can be attributed to a number of different factors. And that applies even to Obama’s seven-point win. For instance, it’s possible to make the argument that the election was decided by age instead of by race. Obama is 47, 25 years younger than his opponent. In November 2004, Kerry was 60, two years older than his opponent. Obama won the 18- to 29-year-old vote by 34 percentage points, and the 30- to 44-year-old vote by six points; Kerry’s margins among those two age groups were nine points and negative seven points, respectively. If voters in those two age groups had split among the two major parties in the same proportions as in 2004, and with all else equal, McCain would have won the election by a percentage point. Not to mention that a given voter’s decision may have nothing to do with his or her age, race or other demographic factors." ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : When Obama ran for his second term it seems to have been taken for granted, even by Republicans, that he would win. In that case, thought I at the time, wouldn't it have been a smart move to have Sarah Palin as the rival candidate. Why so? Well, if the candidate is going to lose regardless you don't want to sacrifice a plausible, high-profile contender. Why not throw Palin onto the funeral pyre? And, by having a woman as their choice, Republicans could claim ever after that they were the first party in US history to root for a female President. You want progressive politics? Go GOP. And - just as many voters opted for Obama simply because he was black - Sarah Palin would have been a wild card: many might have voted for her simply because she was a woman (though fibbing that they had voted for the Democrats). Apologies for giving you nightmares, but what do you think of my cunning plan?
