In today's New York Times, Whistling Past Dixie author Thomas Schaller examines whether Obama's candidacy alters his theory that Democrats are wasting their time trying to woo enough white vote to win Southern states.
Assuming that Obama continues to draw unprecedented black voter turnout, can he overcome the longstanding Southern deficit of white voters and win a chunk of Dixie?
Probably not:
Mississippi, the state with the nation's highest percentage of African-Americans in its population, illustrates how difficult Mr. Obama's task will be in the South. Four years ago, President Bush beat John Kerry there by 20 points. For the sake of argument, let's assume that Mr. Obama could increase black turnout in Mississippi to 39 percent of the statewide electorate, up from 34 percent in 2004, according to exit polls. And let's assume that Mr. Obama will win 95 percent of those voters, up from the 90 percent who voted for Mr. Kerry four years ago.If that happened, the black vote would yield Mr. Obama 37 percent of Mississippi's statewide votes. To get the last 13 percent he needs for a majority, Mr. Obama would need to persuade a mere 21 percent of white voters in Mississippi to support him. Sounds easy, right?
But only 14 percent of white voters in the state supported Mr. Kerry. Mr. Obama would need to increase that number by 7 percentage points -- a 50 percent increase. Mr. Obama struggled to attract white Democrats in states like Ohio and South Dakota. It strains credulity to believe that he will attract three white voters in Mississippi for every two that Mr. Kerry did.
When all is said and done, I actually think Obama could increase black turnout in Mississippi more than just 5% over Kerry. But even then, I agree that Mississippi is likely out of the question.
But what about Georgia? As Jonathan has documented, the Libertarian candidacy of Georgia-native Bob Barr could very much cut into McCain's vote.
More Schaller:
Mr. Obama can write off Georgia and North Carolina for the same reasons that Mississippi is beyond his reach -- although the math in those two states is slightly less daunting. Virginia, however, is the one Southern state that Mr. Obama has a reasonable chance of winning. And it's precisely because the home of Robert E. Lee, as NBC News's political director, Chuck Todd, has suggested, is seceding from the Confederacy.
I emailed Tom to ask what increase over Kerry's 2004 white vote in Georgia Obama would need - and Schaller says it's still a rather daunting 33%.
So perhaps we shouldn't be planning on Southern electoral votes quite yet (excluding Virginia). But as we've pointed out here before, the unique turnout abilities Obama brings makes the fight worth it, if only to put McCain on the defensive.
Update [2008-7-1 17:18:10 by Josh Orton]: Back in May, DavidNYC laid out the case for a glimmer of hope that Obama could pull the white vote needed to win a state like Mississippi:
However, one piece of data is cause for a (very small) bit of optimism. A SurveyUSA poll of the race (the only one that I'm aware of so far) already shows Obama getting 20% of the white vote against McCain (who pulls "only" 74% of it). There may well be something of a Wilder Effect going on here - it's impossible to say. But it's a start. (The SUSA poll, incidentally, shows McCain with a 54-41 lead. But the racial balance is 65-33, and Obama wins the black vote by 83-13, which, per my thoughts above, I think is pessimistic.)There's also the John McCain factor. Simply put, I’m not sure how well McCain will play in MS. The New Englander Bush strove mightily to portray himself as a son of the South – and with the press as willing lackeys, he succeeded. McCain can’t even pretend to pretend like George Bush did.
What’s more, McCain presents himself as the ultimate anti-pork crusader. But one man’s pork, of course, is another’s vitally important home-district project, beloved by constituents. And in few places is this view more prevalent in the deep South. In 2005, for example, Mississippi ranked second in terms of federal tax dollars spent in the state vs. revenue collected from the state. I’m not in favor of policies such as these, but that’s beside the point: The fact is, running against earmarks, while popular with an element of the wingnut base, is not going to be well-received in the Magnolia State.
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