What Will We Do Without the White Vote? [View All]

Since the media and some very worried DUers have been expressing their "concern" over Obama's weakness in claiming the white vote, I thought I'd do a little checking on some of our past presidential elections to see how our other nominees did in claiming this all important demographic.

Oddly, it seems John Kerry had his own problems in getting the whites out to vote:

Kerry 41%
Bush 58%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004#Voter_Demographics

But that's just an anomaly, right? I mean Kerry lost the popular vote. So let's check on the last Democratic popular vote winner, Albert Gore.

What? It looks like Al couldn't quite do it either:

Gore 42%
Bush 55%
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_00.html

Amazing! But then it was "close enough to steal" I suppose. But At least good old boy Bill Clinton knew how to talk to the white voters. His wife keeps telling us about it. So I'm sure he got a majority in 1992.

Clinton 39%
Bush 40%
Perot 20%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1996#Voter_demographics

WHAT?! He didn't win a majority of white voters? Only 39%, less than anyone else? It must be due to Perot taking away all the white voters he would have gotten so let's check 1996.

Clinton 43%
Dole 46%
Perot 9%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1996#Voter_demographics

Huh! Well I'll be jiggered. It looks like Democrats haven't won the white vote in at least four elections even though we won the popular vote in at least three of them.

I wonder why the media and our own "concerned" DUers haven't mentioned that? :shrug: