Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Not about Asher: about his future.

Of note about last night's election:

The presidential election provided empirical evidence countering fears of election fraud like rigged electronic voting machines and voter purging. Polling averages really didn't get any states wrong. In fact, fivethirtyeight.com projected Obama winning with 348 electoral votes and 52.3% of the popular vote. As of this morning's count, Obama has 349 electoral votes and 52% of the popular vote. Election day fraud would be a possible explanation for a results that diverged from polls. There wasn't any.

63% of voters said the economy was the most important issue for them, six times more than cited the war in Iraq (10%), health care (9 %), terrorism (9 %) or energy (7 %). Eight in 10 said they were worried the economic crisis would harm their family’s future, while about half said they were “very worried”

Why He Won

• Half of voters said they "strongly disapproved" of Bush and about eight in 10 of those voters backed Obama

• Latinos gave Obama a margin of more than 25 points, much better than Kerry's return. Among young Hispanics, he won by more than 50 points

• Obama won among every age group except for voters 65 and over

• Obama grew the African American vote by two percentage points in terms of the total electorate

• Obama won among new voters by more than 30 points

• Obama won among the poorest voters; he tied among voters whose total family income is more than $50,000

• Obama won union voters by 22 points; he won among those with members of unions in their households by 19 points.

• Obama won 84 % of Democrats who backed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton




Where he lost

• Obama performed slightly worse with white women (39% of the electorate) than Al Gore did in 2000. McCain won the votes of white women, 53 to 46 percent

• Obama won 43 % of white voters, equal to what Bill Clinton won in the three-man race of 1996 and only 4% points below Carter’s performance in 1976. He won 54% of young white voters

• Obama lost non-college-educated whites by 19 points. That said, this was a marked improvement over the 26 point lead Bush had in 2004

• Obama lost white college graduates (35 % of the electorate) 51 to 47 percent; but again, this was roughly a 3-point gain over Gore’s 44% in 2000

• Suburban voters, who were half of the electorate, split between Obama and McCain. Rural voters, who went for Bush by 19 points in 2004, leaned to McCain by 8 points

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