Democrats Vote Race and Gender
by Matt Varvaro
Issue 111 - July 9, 2008

Amidst the tenacious crusade by the liberal elite against the horrors of racial and gender prejudice, one can easily appreciate the irony in having observed possibly the most blatant example in this country's history of bloc voting along the lines of race and gender: the 2008 Democratic Primary.

The issue of race in the race for the White House heated up in South Carolina in late January, when former President Bill Clinton noted that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88.  And he ran a good campaign and Senator [Barack] Obama's run a good campaign here." Many who heard this comment interpreted it as an attempt to downplay Senator Obama's success in South Carolina by portraying him as the "black candidate" and suggesting that the only reason he would win the state was with the overwhelming support from African American voters. Whether or not these were actually Mr. Clinton's malicious intentions is a different issue entirely, but what is certain is that this assessment proved to be spot-on.

According to MSNBC's exit polls, Senator Obama finished with only twenty-four percent of the white vote in South Carolina, significantly less than Senator John Edwards' forty percent and Senator Hillary Clinton's thirty-six percent. Typically, this distant third place finish among white voters would guarantee any candidate a loss--except, miraculously, Senator Obama won South Carolina with more than double the amount of votes of the runner-up, Senator Clinton. The reason: Senator Obama carried an astonishing seventy-eight percent of African American voters. As the former president implied, Senator Obama indeed had the black vote to thank for his victory in South Carolina.

This unusual occurrence actually became a trend for the Illinois senator and became a driving force toward his nomination. After South Carolina, Senator Obama continued to win states like Missouri, Georgia, Delaware, Connecticut, Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland, and Mississippi, while losing the majority of the states' white voters. This had been made possible by the senator's absolutely dominating command of the black vote. In the states just mentioned, Senator Obama's support among black voters was, respectively, eighty-four percent, eighty-eight percent, eighty-six percent, seventy-four percent, eighty-four percent, eighty-six percent, eighty-four percent, and ninety-two percent. On top of that, Senator Obama won the majority of both black men and black women in literally every single contest.

At the same time, Senator Clinton enjoyed similar, though not quite as eye-opening, support among white women. She won the majority of this voting constituency in all but a handful of states, two of which were Utah (in which she and Senator Obama were even) and Illinois, Senator Obama's home state. Even in the Potomac Primary, consisting of Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, which Senator Obama swept in one of the most crucial moments of his campaign, Senator Clinton finished with about sixty percent of the white female vote.

Although white males did not throw their support behind a white male candidate (evidenced by the flare-out of the Edwards campaign), a very curious voting pattern developed within the Democratic Party: white women supported the white woman candidate and African Americans supported the African American candidate. Moreover, the rumored "black/brown" tensions appear also to be confirmed by Senator Obama's inability to attract Hispanic voters, in whom Senator Clinton found reliable support in states like California and Texas, in which she beat her rival by a two-to-one margin among this voting group. The statistics point to some pretty serious implications.

Predictably, this kind of talk hits a nerve among liberals in the media, who seem almost indignant at the mention of Democrats voting along the lines of race or gender, despite the overwhelming statistical evidence that proves it. For example, on the March 12th edition of Dan Abrams' show on MSNBC, analyst Keli Goff responded to Pat Buchanan's assertion that Senator Obama's race may have something to do with his enormous popularity among African Americans with this: "To just make this blatant assumption, this generalization that he was just winning all the black vote on the strength of being black is ludicrous."

I suppose that Ms. Goff attributes Senator Obama's success among this particular voting constituency to the senator and the black community's shared opposition to health care mandates. Unfortunately for Ms. Goff, this just doesn't seem to be the case.

It is clear that, when analyzing these primary results without any ideological impediments obstructing rational judgment, the numbers pretty much speak for themselves--and they clearly indicate that a disproportional number of Democratic voters voted their race, gender, or both. We can pretend otherwise and ruthlessly lambaste those who simply point to the ever-telling exit polls, but let us never forget the timeless truism of our nation's second president: "Whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Matt Varvaro is a high school student in Port Washington, New York.