Someone who normally votes Republican but is very sensitive to racial issues is probably the most logical explanation for this sequence.
Wouldn't some like that be more likely to vote for Obama than Gore or Kerry, though? Or am I misunderstanding what "very sensitive to racial issues" means...
No, you've got it right, that voter would probably rather like Obama. It's a hard list to explain in a logical fashion.
The odd thing about many of these types of threads is that it is rare to actually have individuals that talk about their own voting history, and the motivations behind their decisions.
Generally, it is more like "in theory this a XYZ voter living in a certain state/region from a certain socio-economic category and then maybe because they are part of a cultural minority (Religious/Sexual Preference, environmentalist....) that for whatever reason this explains the voting patterns.
Yes, this is one of the most tiresome things to see in these threads -- people trying to come up with theories based on stereotypes about why certain demographic groups vote the way they do.
Well, in terms of individuals, the answer is rather easy: someone who votes, as many people do, using personal characteristics and has eccentric taste. That's not very interesting. Coming up with a demographic that might've done so is more challenging and more interesting, especially on a forum dedicated to electoral demography.
