Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Pa. primary results raise real issues of electability

With Hillary Clinton's win in yesterday's Pennsylvania primary come some real concerns about Barack Obama's ability to win over voters. Or rather his lack of ability. The Obama campaign's defense is that Clinton had a stronghold on Pennsylvania and so her win there should not be a surprise to anyone. My issue with that defense is that these voters are just the type that he will need to win over in the general election. And I'm not sure he can do it nationally, if he couldn't in Pennsylvania, where he outspent the Clinton campaign by a 3 to 1 margin.

Both candidates have their strong and very loyal base, and that's how the voting went. CNN has the exit poll data -- click there to read all the numbers. But to summarize, the results don't show me that Obama is making any inroads with the voters he will need to win the general election in November.

Obama won
Younger voters
Blacks
College grads
Philadelphia and suburbs
Independents
Liberals
Candidate quality: Change


Clinton won
Women and older voters
Whites
Church-goers
All regions except Philly area
Gun owners
Democrats
Moderates and conservatives
Candidate quality: Cares about people, experience, electability
Voters worried about the economy
Union members

But by far the most interesting result to me was this oddity (click to enlarge):



Does anyone want to explain that one to me? Because what I see is that only 79% of Obama's supporters believe he will be the Democratic nominee, and I find that stunning.

2 comments:

Mary Ellen said...

That chart was strange. What I found funny, in a very creepy way....the only quality the Obamabots could come up with was "change". It sounds so much like the right wingnuts who supported Bush and they could only say "pro-life". Single issue. But what's worse about the Obama following, they say change, but they have no idea what his policies are! If you ask them, they say it isn't important, he's going to bring change.Bush brought us change, too. It wasn't so hot.

Mauigirl said...

I think the Obama supporters feel that Hillary will somehow manage to pull it off by hook or by crook.