Will Baird wants to know about Obama's “Latino problem.” The short answer is that he doesn't have one. His majority in Virginia only demonstrates what we already knew, after he got 41 percent of the Latino vote in Arizona and a majority in Connecticut.
Of course, the race is far from over. Hillary is ahead in Ohio (by quite a lot, actually) and Texas is up for grabs. After all, as I shout from the rooftops to any Anglo who will listen, there isn't any reason to believe that Mexican-Americans in Texas will vote like Mexican-Americans in Arizona, let alone Puerto Ricans in Connecticut.
That said, here's a good sign. Music doesn't get much more all-American than this:
Conceded.
In Cali he got very little of the Latino vote or so it appeared. A lot of the stats the talking heads broguht up seemed to confirm it. You're far more plugged in than I, sooo...I asked. :D
Turns out, it was talking heads yammering nonsense.
My bad for listening.
Posted by: Will Baird | February 13, 2008 at 09:17 PM
There was a similar myth about Asian voters from the California results. And then, Washington State.
I think what this says is, California is different. My guess is, various Democratic machines in California were in the Clinton camp (this isn't the guess part) and this is closely correlated with the observed ethnic patterns of voting (this is).
It's striking to me that in the Northeast, the state with a broken Democratic GOTV machine -- Connecticut, from the Lamont/Lieberman thing -- Obama won.
Posted by: Carlos | February 13, 2008 at 10:38 PM
"California is different."
amen. O:)
Posted by: Will Baird | February 13, 2008 at 10:56 PM
Hm. The cross-tabs for Ohio's Quinnipiac poll are rather out there: two-thirds of likely voters women, three-quarters of likely voters 45 and older, three-quarters of likely voters having a high school degree or less, 36% of blacks not voting for Obama.
Of course, tweaking the numbers to something more in line with previous primaries still keeps Clinton in the lead, but it looks a lot less striking.
With Rasmussen -- fairly similar to Q's numbers -- you have to pay to see those cards, which means they're a bunch of useless mofos. (It's cute how they excise the information which might enable someone with a high school knowledge of algebra to figure out their cross-tabs from their reports.)
Posted by: Carlos | February 15, 2008 at 03:35 AM