obama: January 2008 Archives

Folks, here’s what happened in South Carolina and why Obama crushed Hillary: All the polls leading into Saturday had Obama leading Hillary by 4-6 points, with Hillary capturing 90%of the white vote.  In the end, Obama did much better than expected because most polls only poll what they refer to as “likely voters”, meaning voters who have voted in the past 3 elections.  These polls did not pick up all the young voters that had never before voted who were energized by Obama, many of them white. 

Polls likewise underestimated young and first-time voters in Jesse Ventura’s 1998 victory [which no poll showed him winning], as well as badly underestimated Ross Perot’s eventual 19% of the vote in 1992 for the same reason.

The negative attacks against Obama by the Clintons, as well as Hillary’s ability to drag Obama into a pissing match during the debate may have been effective in bringing down Obama’s support among white voters.  However, the Clintons hadn’t counted on the young white voters who had never before voted, and had no emotional ties to Bill Clinton, as most white Democratic voters did. 

Bill Clinton’s response to the crushing 2-1 defeat “No big deal, Jesse Jackson won South Carolina too” is another attempt to marginalize Obama as another typical “black” politician [in this case Jesse Jackson, who still remains very unpopular with white voters].  As a result of this quote, expect the Clintons to dig further into the gutter with more personal attacks against Oasma  regarding Obama’s controversial church, some of his questionable business dealings, and some of his bizarre votes in the Illinois state legislature.