I went thru the exit polls in the detail that were available from the 2 sources cited. The exit polls tell us is that President Obama got 39% of the "white" vote nationally, trailing Mitt Romney by 20 points. what I don't know if that is based on actual results or they were adjusted because only 31 states were canvassed on Election Day.
My irritation is that it is such a large demographic; 72% of those who voted in this election were white does a real disservice to understanding what is happening. So putting 3/4 of American on one grouping, potentially exasperates racial tension.
My analysis is below...
First of all the numbers cited in exit polls is that John Kerry won 44% of the white vote in 2004, Barack Obama won 43% in 2008 and 39% in 2012. Those are my benchmarks that I use along with the statewide exit polls whose source is shown below.
Below is a ranking of how the states measured against the national drop in the percentage of the 'white' vote.
The most significant finding is that state that where the President improved the best was .....Virginia. John Kerry got 32% of the white vote in 2004, President Obama got 37% of the vote in 2012. As the white vote the Dems got dropped by 5 percentage points that is a net change of +10
. What is more encouraging is the African American vote percentage did not change in those elections, staying at 20%. So its a myth that in Virginia, President Obama turned out the minority vote in greater percentages than the white vote. One of the reasons that Viriginia has turned blue is that BOTH minorities and whites are voting for the President in increased numbers than in the 2004 election.
Here's my analysis of the increase in white vote compared to 2004 as compared to how the national white vote percentage.
1. Virginia (32% in 2004, 37% in 2012, while pct of white vote went down 5 pts.) +10
2. North Carolina (27%, 31%) +9
3. Indiana (34%, 38%) + 9
4. Iowa (49%, 51%) +7
5. Colorado (42%, 44%) + 7
6. NH (50%, 51%) + 6
7. Wisconsin (47%, 48%) + 6
8. NY (49%, 49%) + 5
9. Conn (51%, 51%) + 5
10. Nevada (43%, 43%) + 5
11. Mass (59%, 57%) + 3. Kerry is Senator from Mass
12. California (47%, 45%) + 3
13. Pennsylvania (45%, 42%) + 2
14. Ohio (44%, 41%) + 2
15. Florida (42%, 37%) + 0
16. Arizona (41%, 36%) + 0
17. Missouri (42%, 32%) - 5
Takeaways
A number of northern states voted for Obama in the majority with no drop off of the support they gave to John Kerry.
The myth of Ohio is that Obama out performed amongst the white working voters doesn't seem to be true. The reason why President Obama won Ohio is that the % of the white vote dropped from 83% to 79% while the African American vote rose from 11% to 15%.
In Nevada, the white vote dropped from 77% to 64% in the past 8 years. Seemingly it was the jump in the Hispanic vote that flipped this state from red to blue.
I speculate that Missouri might be representative of many southern states. If so, then a reason for the drop off in the President's vote with whites nationally would be sadly attributable to those states in the south.
Has President Obama become a transformational President? He has flipped states that were thought to be solidly Rep to Dem? This will be answered in 2016 and 2020 when Obama is no longer on the ballot to see if those states revert back to prior form.
Lastly, I hope I worded everything correctly. I mean to give insight, not offense (which is exactly the opposite of the Republicans)
Below are two excellent exit polling links
http://elections.nytimes.com/...
http://www.cnn.com/...