Hype about Obama breaking through with Hillary's firewalls in Virginia seems to be inaccurate [View All]

[jackson_dem]

Her two firewalls are Latinos and white working folk. Since February 12th there has been a lot of hype that Obama broke through those. This is based on Obama winning Latinos in Virginia and by the media neglecting to mention this wasn't a new thing. He won Latinos in South Carolina and Georgia too. Maybe he does well with Latinos in rethug states? Either way all three states have small Latino populations so it is hard to read much into them. In the national polls Hillary has always led with Latinos and she romped with them in every state so far which has a significant Latino population. On the heels of Virginia came an ARG poll touted as gospel for showing Obama down only 44-42 with Latinos. However, that looks like an outlier. The two other Texas polls have him losing 63-32 and 68-30. http://www.pollster.com/blogs/why_so_much_volatility_in_texa.php

The other "breakthrough" is white voters, white working class ones in particular. We can use white non-college voters as a proxy for working folks. This chart also shows Obama has lost the white vote in almost every state, contrary to popular belief. Remember this when Ohio votes. ;)



Virginia was apparently an exception. He didn't do any better in Maryland.

-snip-

Obama's share of non-college whites in Virginia was, as many assumed, higher than in any other state except Illinois, although his performance among this subgroup has been relatively consistent elsewhere. Obama's percentage of non-college whites in Maryland was similar to most of the other states. Also, as some have speculated elsewhere, his percentage of non-college whites was lowest in three Southern states: Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Somewhat surprising -- to me at least -- is the much larger variation across states among college educated white voters. Obama had large double digit leads among college educated white voters in Virginia, Missouri and Illinois but trailed by double digits among college whites in New York, New Jersey and Florida.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/exit_poll_data_education_and_r.php