Friday, May 23, 2008

Obama and Appalachia

Many have wondered why it is that Obama has a problem with working class white voters. As I said in the comments earlier, he doesn't -- what he has is an Appalachian problem. Obama has carried -- by substantial margins -- such lily-white states as Idaho, Maine, Nebraska, Washington, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. He has in many if not most of those states, carried the <$50,000 income bracket.

Where he has been blown out, from the potomac primary to last week, has been in appalachian counties (and also the Ozarks), even when he ultimately carried the states, as in MD and VA. Here are some illustrative maps from DKos:This map is the region defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission as "Appalachia."This is an weighted color-coded map of county-by-county primary results (weighted by results, not population). Red is Hillary, blue Obama, green Edwards. You can see that her strength is in that broad band from upstate NY down through Tennessee and Northern Alabama, and across to Arkansas. (Initially, I had written off the huge Hillary win in AR as being due to her roots in that state. It surprised me, because I didn't think she was terribly popular there, but it seemed plausible enough. Now I think it just may have been the first example of the larger regional trend.)This map represents (pre-may 20) the counties which Hillary won by >60% -- the blow-out counties. Again, all Appalachia and Ozarks.

So, Obama has a regional problem, not a white-working-class problem. I suspect this is a race-driven phenomenon, though I don't have any hard data to support that.

1 comment:

James Parsons said...

My guess is that in the suburban and rural poor & working class white communities where Obama won, the vast majority of poor & working class whites (and probably most of the racists, if you want to throw that in there) vote Republican. In states where more of that demographic have maintained their historic Democratic affiliation, which possibly equals Appalachia, those voters went with Hillary, but in the general I think it's a distinct possibility that Obama would handily lose many states that he handily won in the primary.