What to look for in white women

I look for the golden tresses, refined bearing and slender ankles that mark the true flower of the Confederacy... <joke>

Seriously, though... Facts to know when looking at polls of white women:

Obama can afford to lose white women by a few points. If Obama ties among white women we cannot lose. It is actually impossible.

So when "white women" poll numbers are published, recognize that our break-even comfort point is probably losing white women by 2-3%. Anything over that is a win. (EXAMPLE: Latest CBS poll; Obama leads by 5% nationally and leads 47-45% among white women voters.) And even if Obama loses white women by 5-6% I think he would win, albeit with more suspense. It is even possible for Obama to win while losing white women by ten points, but that's a threading-the-needle turn-out driven scenario. (Kerry lost WW by 11% and it was still a close election.)

Having looked into this recently in response to some skepticism in other threads...

LBJ was the last Democrat to win the white vote. In winning whites overall he won white women, of course. (Goldwater was a walking gender gap.)

Nixon won white women in 1968. (And George Wallace got quite a few. He carried the deep south; a largely forgotten factoid.)

Nixon won white women by giant margins in 1972.

Ford won white women by a small margin, so Carter won.

Reagan won white women handily in 1980.

In 1984 the Dems put a white woman on the ticket. White women lined up around the block to vote for Reagan.

Bush won white women handily in 1988.

Clinton and Bush were close to tied among white women in 1992, which was enough for Clinton to win easily.

In 1994 Clinton won white women 48-43; the only clear win among white women we've had in the modern era, and not coincidentally the only time sine LBJ that a Democrat really whipped a Republican. (Even with Perot in the race Clinton beat Dole by 8-9 points.)

Gore lost white women narrowly and got a million more votes overall.

Kerry lost white women by ELEVEN points, but lost the popular vote by only 3 points.

So, as you can see, when we lose white women narrowly we get the most votes. (Carter, Gore)
Get half of white women and we win easily. (Clinton '92)
Actually win among white women and it's a landslide. (Clinton 1996)

ER: C'mon white girls! Vote Obama!

said a candidate can "afford" to lose the black vote, or the gay vote? Why are you marginalizing"white women" ? Everyone should be reaching out to everyone and all our constituency groups should count. We can't "afford" to lose anyone.

Guess what? McCain can afford to lose the black vote, the hispanic vote, the gay vote, and still win. And Kurt was NOT being dismissive or suggesting we shouldn't reach out to various constituencies.

1) There is so much media 'concern' over the WW demo
2) There is so much DU agitation about the WW demo, and
3) I have been pushed into looking into the historical issues in other threads, so I might as well share.

Only I can get slammed for posting Optimistic Pro-Obama happy-happy confidence posts.

them. I still maintain we need all groups and the "joke" at the top says a lot.

It's not about whether someone WANTS those votes. Obama is working over-time to fight that demo to a tie. He also tries to appeal to white men, despite knowing that we will loss that particular demographic in almost any scenario.

The joke is a play on Senator Theodore Bilbo's famous racist speech made while filibustering an anti-lynching law in the 1930s, and a comment on the ubiquity of MSM talk about what 'white women' are up to.

I don't expect everyone to find it equally funny.

I am a white male.

If you said Obama can afford to lose white males I wouldn't be insulted because I AM NOT CRAZY.

Obama will lose white men by at least 10%, so we better hope he can afford to lose white men.

that usually turn into trashing WW as racists, it gets old seeing the word white women in topic titles. Your post is a good one and maybe we could use the information to try and figure out what we can do to bring more WW into the fold instead of yelling that we don't need them because they're racists, not that you did that but just watch... Hope I'm wrong because it would be nice to see the Progressives that I've known all my life express some of that tolerance that we're famous for.

statistical cred behind it.

OF COURSE we can't afford to lose any significant part of any bloc of voters. But we can continue to do what we do, working for our candidates,and not let the media scare us out of doing that work.

We must win first, we can critique it all at leisure in the future.

Personally, as a white man, I can't understand why anyone whoud vote republican, but that's just me.

mark

.

The "joke" at the top is insulting as well.

She says she understands the reluctance of the O/B campaign to have to broach such a delicate subject and could even understand them avoiding it entirely; but she also said it was a winner. She didn't have a solution, but the fact that she discussed it was almost a bait to the MEDIA to discuss it and she pretty obviously was hinting that a 527 should.

It was pretty clear that she was going to keep the conversation going; she's been all over Troopergate more than anyone else.

She's smart and she knows how the media works; it was a really interesting bit. I think she knew precisely what she was doing.

"Billing the victim..."

Like a bunch of women get raped just so they can cash in on those free government rape kits.

It's an emotional issue... and thanks to CSI-type shows everyone knows what a rape kit is.

lighten the horrendous rape statistics in her state. The fact that Monagan tried to get more federal funds for fighting rape is the kicker for me. She didn't want the rest of the country to know how awful it is.

Because it would make NYC look bad in the national statistics.

Hadn't thought of that for YEARS.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the pollsters are just unable to accurately tap into all the movements this year. They are using methods that aren't adjusting to this year's trends and they are picking up on superficial volatility. IMO.

There are so many nuances, variations and unusual dynamics this election that i just dont believe the pollsters are getting it right. I just dont know what the implications are, although i suspect we're going to see strong disparities between turn-out and polling.

I'm not arguing that there's a huge "bradley effect" where folks say they will vote for a black candidate, but then dont actually do so. I'm saying that may be true in some demographics, but that the exact opposite may be true in others (i.e. folks won't really admit their commitment to obama).

In many ways, Obama is polling BELOW the democrats overall.

Why is that?

I think the explanation probably depends on the demographics being discussed. Obama is doing very well among SINGLE or divorced women, for example. In the end, tho, who will actually vote?


I believe we'll just have to wait and see.

I think we'll see surprising levels of voter turn-out among both democrats and some republican groups.

nt