First time voters. These numbers are gross numbers not divided by race.
Total first time voters. Roughly 13,000,000
Obama won 69% to 30% = 5,070,000 vote difference. A very liberal estimate would put the African American portion of this at 25% equalling
1,267,500 additional votes.
Total Popular vote difference was 8,000,000 votes.
Youth vote. 18-29 year olds voter participation had bottomed out at 40% of eligible turnout in 2000. 2008 estimates are between 50 - 54%.
This voting group favored Obama 66% to 32%. Young voters made up a larger share of the electorate that voters 65 and older.
Obama performed better with white voters than Kerry did in 2004 Obama 43% to Kerry 41%. As a matter of fact over the past 40 years the Democratic nominee has averaged 40% of the white vote. Obama outperformed the average by 3%.
This tidbit comes direct from CNN.
A stunning 54 percent of young white voters supported Obama, compared with 44 percent who went for McCain, the senator from Arizona. In the past three decades, no Democratic presidential nominee has won more than 45 percent of young whites.
2 comments:
The reason I have gone into the racial breakdown is to debunk some suggestions out there some subtle others not so much. The suggestion are that the Obama victory was simply due to one of two things if not a combination of both.
1) He simply won the over the black voters.
2) He won as a result of white guilt. (if one means white guilt in that a white person is afraid of losing his job in this economy then I can agree).
I believe the facts listed in this post go a long way to dispel such simplistic explanations.
Good figures and stats. I think you are right that many uneducated people out there are just making up guesses as to why he won without regard for the actual numbers and stats.
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