In the Gray area
Local political consultant Jonathan Gray of Strategy Inc. offered the following analysis of the results of Saturday's presidential primary voting in South Carolina.
"Looking back at the exit polls from South Carolina, there really isn’t a lot to be garnered, so this will be short and less interesting than past reviews.
No question that Hillary was beaten, and overwhelmingly. The Clinton’s will smartly write this off as a blip on the map, but if they cannot do better with the A-A vote and the female vote, they are definitely in for a long primary and a fight on the convention floor.
This is what the media will paint, but if this had not been South Carolina, home state to John Edwards, Hillary would have been a lot closer.
The A-A vote was stronger than most predicted, and the inability to separate A-A/White voters for each of the different questions renders them generally useless. With the compounded problem of large defeat and large turnout from one block voting demographic, there is not much we can draw from the exit polls. There are however a few items worth pointing out, including several consistencies from New Hampshire and Iowa.
Here is the link for the best set of numbers:
Obama continues to draw better from the highly educated (which is lower as a percentage of total voters in South Carolina). Of course in this election he drew a majority from every level of education.
Edwards drew more white voters than Clinton. One could argue that this hurts Clinton, but if one has predicted that Edwards will team up with Clinton in the end as a VP running mate, then this strategy makes sense. It gives the anti-Hillary voters someone other than Obama to vote for, and in the end those delegates will go to Hillary in exchange for the Veep.
The 'top candidate quality' desired by Dem voters is a candidate that can bring about change. Obama won this by 75% with Hillary drawing only 15% of these voters. If the Dems have framed this as the election to bring about change, she is not the poster child.
She wins out on experience, but only 14% find that to be the leading candidate quality.
Older people voted for Hillary more than Obama and Obama was more likely to appeal to under 40 voters.
Everyone says that Iraq is one of the top three issues in their vote decision (third behind the economy and healthcare), but in three states (Iowa, New Hampshire and SC) we have seen those wanting a staggered withdrawal (as opposed to an immediate), voting for Obama – which is contrary to his position. Clinton is certainly the more hawkish of the two.
It’s my opinion that Iraq is less and less of a factor as we go forward, to the point that people don’t know the details on the candidates' differences beyond the general perception that Republicans will create war, Democrats will not. (not that I agree with this perception, but it is the public’s perception according to national polls).
Can’t really tell anything on the economic numbers because of the large block votes.
Obama cleaned up with the church crowd. SC is a BIG religion state, Dems and Repubs both. The more that people went to church, the more they voted for Obama. This indicates that Obama did a better job of working the black churches and that their support is not as debatable as Clinton would have had us believe. (note – obviously Obama won every category of the crosstabs here, but we only draw interest from those where he drew greater than his margin of victory).
Twenty-one percent of those who think Clinton is the most likely to beat a Republican Nominee, voted for Obama. This is similar to what was seen in previous elections, so it’s not a block vote anomaly. I think that this is Clinton’s negatives driving people to vote for a candidate that they don’t think can win the general, or who might even be less qualified (as a result of polling data) rather than vote for someone they do not like.
Even with 61% of the voters in SC female, it is interesting that the voters felt the U..S was ready to elect an A-A president more so than they were ready to elect a female president ... the numbers for definitely and probably are reversed and I find this very interesting.
Twenty-three percent are dissatisfied if Clinton wins the nomination while only 16% are dissatisfied if Obama wins … continued problems from negatives for Clinton.
What keeps standing out to me is the effect of Clinton’s negatives. Outside of the large block vote, it is very interesting that a lot of people are voting for Obama even though they feel that Clinton might be better at something. Compound this with the unite the country questions, the lack of understanding on Obama’s position with Iraq, and the 'who attached unfairly question' (where more felt Clinton attacked unfairly than felt Obama did), Obama is getting a pretty big boost from Clinton’s negatives.
The question that’s missing for me is which disenfranchised candidate's voters would be more likely to vote Republican than vote for the other Dem in the general election?
The Obama result in SC is what I had expected to see happen as we rolled into the South. With these numbers, the messy/confusing voting schedule in Mobile (which will hurt the white Dem vote more than organized A-A) -- and my knowledge of who is working to get out the vote in Alabama, I expect to see A-A vote exceed that of 1998.
I expect that Obama will win Alabama in the Dem. Primary. Depending how much goes to Edwards and how much A-A turn out exceeds 1998, the margin could be 3-7%."
