As the Clintons and some media observers have been busy qualifying Barack Obama's landslide victory in South Carolina, I've been thinking about the demographics of SC. Yes, a third of the state's population, give or take, is African American. BUT that percentage is not distributed evenly across the state. Almost all of the voters in some counties, especially in the SE corner of the state, are African American, whereas other counties have much lower African American populations.
If the South Carolina vote was merely the result of race politics, Obama would have won where black people are concentrated and not in the whiter counties. HE WON 44 of 46 counties. Obama prevailed in ALL except two counties (John Edwards took Oconee, where he grew up, and Hillary Clinton took Horry, where Myrtle Beach is located). Obama did not prevail only in places like Orangeburg and Kingstree and Jasper County.
He took Greenville and Spartanburg. He took Lexington County, one of the whitest and most republican counties in the state. He took all but one of the counties in the upstate, which are demographially more similar to North Carolina that the lowcountry of South Carolina. The NY Times has a map showing the margin of victory and prevailiong candidate by county. In Nevada and NH, Obama took substantial geographical areas of the state. The maps for Iowa, NH, and NV show that Obama and Clinton both took a good number of counties. The map for SC, with its great expanse of green (Obama's color on the map) reveals what a landslide this was for Obama. (As a side note, the Republican map looks almost evenly divided between McCain and Huckabee - the democrats were more unified than the republicans were last Saturday.)
I wish the media would focus on the votes and not the exit polls. All of this talk about the black vote is based on polls. Remember the polls in NH? How about the exit polls in the 2000 presidential election? Why are the exit polls in SC going unscrutinized?
Further, I am sick and tired of Bill Clinton's attempts to make this election all about race. For him to compare Obama's win to Jesse Jackson's wins in the 80s is nonsense. For one, Jesse Jackson was a native son, like John Edwards. Jesse Jackson took only 10% of the white vote, whereas Obama took almost a quarter of the white vote. Funny that Bill didn't mention that he won the SC democratic primary. That seems like a better comparison to me.
Do you remember when all of the talk was about whether African Americans would even support Obama? It wasn't that long ago. Some people said it took Iowa to convince African American voters in SC that Obama could win white votes. The results show me that he can and did win those white votes. Instead of looking at SC as a whole, and dismissing the results, because other states don't share it's demographic profile, I think we should look at the counties. I think we would find that some of the counties, especially in the upstate, are reasonably similar to to the February 5 states.
The fact that Obama won SC overwhelmingly, in all areas of the state, tells me all I need to know about his success from here on out. Remember, also, that he won in IOWA, a place with very few minorities. There is room in this tent for everyone, regardless of race, who is more concerned about the issues than partisan politics.
Comments are closed for this post.
