Obama rolls in last Deep South primary
Tom Baxter
Editor, Southern Political Report
March 11, 2008 —
Race mattered in Tuesday’s Mississippi Democratic Presidential Primary, and it mattered more to Barack Obama than it did to Hillary Clinton. White voters went to Clinton by a 3-to-1 margin, while African-American voters went to Obama by 9-to-1, according to exit polls. When the question was put directly, 62 percent of those who said race was an important factor in their decision (30 percent of all voters) voted for Obama. Interestingly, 68 percent of those who said gender was an important factor (27 percent of the total) also voted for Obama. That spelled the difference in a primary in which the two races voted about equally. The percentage of voters who were African-American actually fell from the 2004 primary, to about 48 percent. But that could have resulted from a heavier white turnout: 13 percent of voters told exit pollsters they were Republican, while 17 percent said they were independents. The only age quadrant Clinton won were those voters 65 and older. She won the Republicans, while Obama won majorities of Democrats and independents. Obama’s victory in the last Deep South primary was expected, but it could help Obama regain some of the momentum he’s lost since the Texas and Ohio primaries. For Clinton, the only good news about the omnipresent Elliot Spitzer story was that it drowned out some of the political chatter around this defeat. The Mississippi vote inaugurates the longest dry patch in the presidential nomination campaign: it’s six more weeks before the Pennsylvania primary.
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