Demographics, Religion, and Income in the 2008 US Election: Analyzing Obama's Win - Prof. , Papers of Political Science

Download Demographics, Religion, and Income in the 2008 US Election: Analyzing Obama's Win - Prof. and more Papers Political Science in PDF only on Docsity! Emma J. Wilson 905274893 11/10/08 E.C. #3: PSCI 1014 Following a lengthy and historic presidential election, Democratic candidate Barack Obama was chosen as the next United States President. His victory not only meant that he would become the first African American president, but he also broke other barriers by carrying previously solid-Republican states and many former Republican voters. Exit polls conducted after the election help determine Obama’s strong points, as well as areas where Senator John McCain was victorious. Demographic aspects such as age, religion, race, income, and social issues were all included during surveys conducted by Fox News, ABC, and the Associated Press. Obama broke a major record when he turned Virginia blue for the first time since 1964. Fox News declared the Democratic victory in Virginia came from a large percentage of young voters in that state; young people counted for 21 percent of the total vote, which favored Obama by nearly a two-to-one ratio. “The Obama campaign targeted Virginia hard with its voter registration efforts and young voters were a significant part of that targeting,” (Fox, 3). Voters under age 40 seemed to favor Obama, but he and McCain tied for voters aged 40 to 64, and McCain carried the senior citizens by a decent margin (ABC, 5). Although Obama easily carried voters under 30, the “youth vote” did not seem to be the single greatest factor in his victory. Fox News stated that the highly anticipated youth vote was not significantly higher than previous years. “So much attention has been paid to young voters during this election…but did they make up more of the electorate today than in the past? Not really. People under age 30 were 18 percent of all voters, up from 17 percent in the past three presidential elections and down from 21 percent in 1992,” (Fox, 3). The religious right voted heavily in favor of Senator McCain, 74 percent to 24 percent, but D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist, mentions younger evangelicals moving towards Senator Obama, probably due to their disapproval of President Bush, (Fox, 1). “While younger white evangelicals did not vault en masse to Obama, the Democrat made significant inroads. Exit polls showed the proportion of white evangelicals under age 30 who backed Obama this year was double the 16 percent who supported Kerry in 2004,” (Fox, 1). This is very significant because it shows that Obama has moved into the typically conservative Republican base, and this migration by the young religious voters could continue to grow in coming years. Race played a very key role in this election, because a minority candidate was running to become the first African American president. Ninety-five percent of African American voters supported Barack Obama, considerably higher than 88 percent for Kerry in 2004, (Fox, 3). “In this historic election of the nation’s first African American president, black voters made up 13 percent of the electorate,” says a poll conducted by Fox News, (Fox, 3). Though the national percentage is much lower than that of the Caucasian vote, Obama’s great lead among African Americans certainly bolstered his popular vote. Of course, race may have played a role in John McCain’s success among deep Southern states. According to the same Associated Press poll on Fox News, 90 percent of white voters in states like Alabama and Mississippi went for McCain. In other states such as South Carolina, Georgia and Texas, at least 75 percent of whites voted for McCain, (Fox, 2). In Virginia, the Huffington Post questioned voters on how race