OK, so what I did first was (again) list the states that have voted so far in order of
how well Obama did among white voters.
Then I looked up the census data from 2000 about the racial demographic make-up of each state.
How large was the African-American population?
The intention: to examine the proposed hypothesis that Obama's actually had an easier time winning white votes in "lily-white" states than in states "that are black enough to have some racialized politics".
Of course not all primaries are equal, which complicates direct comparisons. New York and Arkansas both directly represent home terrain for Hillary, while Obama has the home advantage in Illinois. And in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Florida, other candidates still took a fair chunk of the white vote. Hence why those states are listed in grey rather than black or orange rather than red (red and orange denote Southern states).
Still, the contrasts remain striking, with Obama getting:
- just around a quarter of the white vote in most of the Southern states;
- around a third in the earliest primary states, where he still had to share the votes with Edwards and others too, as well as in Hillary's backyard (NY, NJ);
- and anywhere between 37-57% in the rest of America, as well as the Southern exceptions Georgia and Missouri.
Now, to the right, there's the data on the size of the state's African-American population. So what can we see?
Is there a correlation?
First things first: there is obviously no 1:1 relation. Georgia, Delaware and Illinois have a sizable black population, yet Obama did well among whites there. Oklahoma has a small black population, yet Obama did badly.
Nevertheless, there does seem to be a rough pattern. Four out of five states where Obama did best among whites have small black populations, while the five states he did worst in among whites all have a black population of over 15%.
But is the size of the minority even a determining factor at all here, considering that there are other, possibly more obvious factors? All those five states he did worst in are in the South, for one; well, all seven states he did worst among whites in are. Regional cultural/historical elements are probably at play.
Yet the argument was merely that the more "racialised" local politics is, with long-standing black and white populations, the harder it might be for a black politician to reach out to white voters. And well, Alabama and Tennessee likely have pretty racialised local politics. In "lilywhite states," you might face just as much prejudice, but perhaps not the entrenchment in camps.
On that "lilywhite" note though: that's obviously not the right label. Some of the states that Obama did relatively well among whites in are very multicultural: California, New Mexico. Big Hispanic/Latino populations. So I tried doing a separate comparison, not juxtaposing the size of the state's
black population with Obama's score among white voters, like above, but the size of the state's minority population
overall. Interestingly enough, that made all semblance of a correlation disappear. While the above juxtaposition at least suggests some kind of relation, there was just randomness if you were looking at the proportion of minority populations overall.
