If Obama has a problem with white voters...

[Landslide Lyndon]

...then how did he carry four of the five whitest states?

Maine (96% white)
Vermont (95%)
New Hampshire (95%)
Iowa (93%)

[Speed of Sound]

It's a matter of race and culture. New England white voters are a sort of bloc of their own (to paint with a broad brush), and lord knows Southern/Bible belt/Coal Country white voters are too (and different yet from Southern black voters). There just happens to be a ton more of the latter, basically.

[Devils30]

New England white voters are maybe the least religious in America- even rural ones. Completely different culture than the south, little history of racial tension and nothing like coal to make Obama toxic.

[justfollowingtheelections]

nahh... white voters in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon, even Idaho and Montana) are less religious.

[Lief 🗽]

Romney's margin with white voters is a little deceptive. He ran up the score with whites in states that weren't competitive (Appalachia, the Deep South), but did significantly worse than Bush with whites in most of the swing states (especially Iowa, Wisconsin and New Hampshire).

[The Free North]

New England white voters are maybe the least religious in America- even rural ones. Completely different culture than the south, little history of racial tension and nothing like coal to make Obama toxic.

Yup, New England is really in a league of its own politically....yet those same states used to be republican strongholds in the early 1900's

[All Along The Watchtower]

New England white voters are maybe the least religious in America- even rural ones. Completely different culture than the south, little history of racial tension and nothing like coal to make Obama toxic.

Yup, New England is really in a league of its own politically....yet those same states used to be republican strongholds in the early 1900's

They were also more religious  and WASPier back then. And besides, Yankee Republicanism is/was quite distinct from the modern "movement conservative" brand.

[Speed of Sound]

'Tis also worth noting, of course, that Obama's got a problem with no voting bloc anymore...

[politicallefty]

Romney's margin with white voters is a little deceptive. He ran up the score with whites in states that weren't competitive (Appalachia, the Deep South), but did significantly worse than Bush with whites in most of the swing states (especially Iowa, Wisconsin and New Hampshire).

That's what really distorts the white vote. I never bought that Obama had a white problem. If anything, it's that Democrats have a Southern white problem (or vice versa for that matter). Keep in mind that Obama won non-Southern whites in 2008. Although I doubt Obama did the same this year, I have to wonder what the numbers were.

[minionofmidas]

So, in short, Obama's problem is not due to these voters' Whiteness.

[Averroës Nix]

Media commentary has really glossed over the extent to which this regional problem. Obama won 46% of the white vote outside of the South and Appalachia. That's not great, but it's hardly catastrophic. He did fine among white voters in the Northeast, the Midwest, and most of the West.

Ignoring this misses a big part of the story about polarization in US voting patterns. Their racking up >70-80% of the Southern and Appalachian white vote explains, to a large extent, the apparent Republican electoral college disadvantage.

[Zioneer]

Where's opebo? Maybe he could explain this to us.

[opebo]

Where's opebo? Maybe he could explain this to us.

Yes, I hardly think it is necessary, but as Lewis alluded above - not all white voters are racists.  Or, rather, they are racist to a much lesser degree than, for example, white voters in the South.

[Northeast Rep Snowball]

Where's opebo? Maybe he could explain this to us.

Yes, I hardly think it is necessary, but as Lewis alluded above - not all white voters are racists.  Or, rather, they are racist to a much lesser degree than, for example, white voters in the South.

Congradulations!!!

[Zioneer]

Where's opebo? Maybe he could explain this to us.

Yes, I hardly think it is necessary, but as Lewis alluded above - not all white voters are racists.  Or, rather, they are racist to a much lesser degree than, for example, white voters in the South.

Okay, then why were you insisting that voters would reject a black president for a second term for months?

[LastVoter]

Where's opebo? Maybe he could explain this to us.

Yes, I hardly think it is necessary, but as Lewis alluded above - not all white voters are racists.  Or, rather, they are racist to a much lesser degree than, for example, white voters in the South.

Okay, then why were you insisting that voters would reject a black president for a second term for months?

Slight miscalculation. I don't think math is his strong suit.

[wdolson]

Hi, I've been looking at the site for years, but this is the first time I'm jumping in and participating...

Back in 2008 Nate Silver had an analysis of white voting patterns in the Democratic primaries and he was able to predict Obama's percentage of the vote in the primaries based on two factors if I recall correctly. 

1) The percentage of blacks in a state
2) The percentage of white Southern Baptists in a state

I think he may have also had a correlation with the percentage of people who list "American" as their primary ethnic heritage on census forms.  (Very common in Appalachia, but rare outside of that region.)

For a Democratic primary, if the black population in a state was larger than something like 18%, the Democratic black vote would overwhelm the Democratic white vote and he won.   If the population of blacks was below something like 9%, white Democrats tended to have little prejudice about blacks and Obama's message appealed to them.  In states with 10-17% blacks, Hillary tended to win because there were not enough blacks to dominate the vote and whites tended to have more prejudice than in states with low black populations.

Geographically he identified the area of the country where Obama would have the most resistance among whites was an arc from central Pennsylvania down to Oklahoma.  The area covered most of the South and Appalachia.

I heard something that this time around one of the Romney super pacs was running dog whistle ads for the whites who may have some discomfort with blacks who voted for Obama last time.  It basically gave them "permission" to vote  for Romney.

I think Romney's white totals in that arc identified above probably did go up a fair bit, but it made no difference to the EV total (except possibly for NC) because most of those states were already safe territory for Romney.  In most of the states that counted in this election, whites were less likely to have any embedded prejudice Romney could mine so his totals among whites were probably not much stronger than McCain's in 2008.

I think Silver's articles are still up on his old site.

Bill

[opebo]

Where's opebo? Maybe he could explain this to us.

Yes, I hardly think it is necessary, but as Lewis alluded above - not all white voters are racists.  Or, rather, they are racist to a much lesser degree than, for example, white voters in the South.

Okay, then why were you insisting that voters would reject a black president for a second term for months?

Slight miscalculation. I don't think math is his strong suit.

Math has nothing to do with it, Seatown.  It was a cultural surmise, and I was wrong in that I assumed the worst about people - I was proven wrong in Ohio, Wisconsin, and perhaps Virginia and Florida.  However even when I was predicting an Obama loss, I always said - check my posts - that he would win New Hampshire, Colorado, places like that.  Nothing about my predictions indicated that I thought that all whites were so racist that they would vote accordingly.

[LastVoter]

Where's opebo? Maybe he could explain this to us.

Yes, I hardly think it is necessary, but as Lewis alluded above - not all white voters are racists.  Or, rather, they are racist to a much lesser degree than, for example, white voters in the South.

Okay, then why were you insisting that voters would reject a black president for a second term for months?

Slight miscalculation. I don't think math is his strong suit.

Math has nothing to do with it, Seatown.  It was a cultural surmise, and I was wrong in that I assumed the worst about people - I was proven wrong in Ohio, Wisconsin, and perhaps Virginia and Florida.  However even when I was predicting an Obama loss, I always said - check my posts - that he would win New Hampshire, Colorado, places like that.  Nothing about my predictions indicated that I thought that all whites were so racist that they would vote accordingly.

I think you didn't really grasp the demographics(math part) of Virginia. The whites there are the mot racist on average among the swing states, but they are also polarized, so they can't outvote the rest of the electorate because there are a lot more minority and  voters than in other swing states, as well as a small but important group of northern non-racist whites in NOVA.

[opebo]

Math has nothing to do with it, Seatown.

I think you didn't really grasp the demographics(math part) of Virginia. The whites there are the mot racist on average among the swing states, but they are also polarized, so they can't outvote the rest of the electorate because there are a lot more minority and  voters than in other swing states, as well as a small but important group of northern non-racist whites in NOVA.

Your claim is totally revisionist, Seatown.  I would go back and look at my posts but I'm too lazy.  I remember there being dozens that evince the contrary of your claim.  'The math' is hardly complex - all one needs to do is take a look the on the census website.

[Northeast Rep Snowball]

Math has nothing to do with it, Seatown.

I think you didn't really grasp the demographics(math part) of Virginia. The whites there are the mot racist on average among the swing states, but they are also polarized, so they can't outvote the rest of the electorate because there are a lot more minority and  voters than in other swing states, as well as a small but important group of northern non-racist whites in NOVA.

Your claim is totally revisionist, Seatown.  I would go back and look at my posts but I'm too lazy.  I remember there being dozens that evince the contrary of your claim.  'The math' is hardly complex - all one needs to do is take a look the on the census website.

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[Stirring Wolf🥣🐺]

^ http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html