Barack Obama Carries Key Demos in Wisconsin

A very interesting trend in the 2008 Democratic party campaign was underlined Tuesday night as Senator Obama won the Wisconsin primary by gaining a 63% to 34% advantage in white male voters.

The trend emerging? White men won't jump to Hillary.

Meanwhile, Obama is splitting the vote amongst women.

Add the two demographics together and you have a very serious trend that could lead Senator Obama right to the Oval office.

Here is the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel news story on the primary:

Illinois senator garners key demographics

By CRAIG GILBERT
cgilbert@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Feb. 19, 2008

Drawing support from a wide swath of voters in an ultracompetitive Midwestern battleground, Barack Obama soundly defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday in the Wisconsin primary, giving him nine straight victories and a powerful upper hand in their struggle for the Democratic nomination.

Along with winning a majority of the state's 74 pledged delegates, Obama also demonstrated the kind of broad appeal that will be critical in the big showdown states ahead, especially Ohio on March 4.

That coalition included groups that have backed him in past contests: young voters, independents and the college-educated.

But in a brief, sharp-edged campaign in Wisconsin, Obama also made inroads among women and blue-collar voters, who have more typically backed Clinton.

He won more than half of all voters without a college degree - about 60% of the Democratic electorate. He won more than half of those with family incomes under $50,000. He dominated among white men - 63% to 34%. He won union households by 9 percentage points. And he battled Clinton to a draw among women.

All of these groups were components of an overwhelmingly white electorate (87%) with a grim view of the economy. It also was an electorate hungry for change, an impulse that exit polls showed decisively favored Obama.

"All across the country, people are standing up and saying it is time to turn the page," Obama said at a rally in Houston, thanking Wisconsin voters for their civic pride and fortitude.

"In Wisconsin, when you go to vote, it's 5 degrees outside," he said.

Obama was leading Clinton by about 58% to 41%.

As expected, Wisconsin's open primary proved to be a boon to the Illinois senator. Independents (28%) and Republicans (9%) together made up more than a third of the Democratic primary electorate - almost the exact same breakdown as in the state's 2004 primary.

Obama carried independents by about 30 percentage points, according to the exit polls.

But Obama's performance was striking in other ways that will help him make his case in upcoming states and to the party's powerful bloc of unpledged super delegates.

One, his victory was big and broad, exit polls suggested.

Two, it came in a 50/50 battleground - the closest state in the country in 2004 - that is a virtual must-win for Democrats in November.

Three, it came in the kind of environment that Clinton herself has said provides added legitimacy - a big-turnout primary, rather than the kind of low-turnout caucuses that Obama has dominated this year by out-organizing his opponents.

With the vote totals not quite complete, it appeared that Wisconsin had generated at least the third-highest turnout rate of any Democratic contest this year, after New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

"I think there's evidence, at least in Wisconsin, there are some cracks in the Clinton coalition," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who doesn't work for either candidate and has polled in Wisconsin in the past.

Mellman said Obama's performance here doesn't guarantee success March 4 in Ohio and Texas, but "he's demonstrating he can win the kinds of voters he needs to take Ohio and Texas."

Gov. Jim Doyle, Obama's highest-profile supporter in the state, said Tuesday's victory shows that "he can compete for any group (of voters) at all."

Clinton held a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Tuesday night, telling her supporters that this was "about picking a president who relies not just on words but on work, on hard work to get America back to work."

With its big independent vote, its same-day registration so amenable to students and first-time voters and its shared border with Obama's home state of Illinois, Wisconsin was a source of worry for the Clinton campaign throughout the run-up to Tuesday's primary. Her aides worked so hard to keep expectations low that at times they seemed to be conceding the state.

As of Monday morning, 24 hours before the voting started, Clinton had not done a single event outside the Milwaukee media market. One reason was a Sunday storm that postponed a planned fly-around. But the main reason was her tardy arrival in the state.

She got to Wisconsin four days later than her opponent, campaigning last week largely via surrogates, TV ads, phone and satellite. She launched the first exchange of negative ads between the two in the 2008 campaign. Exit polls suggested she fared poorly in that exchange, with more voters viewing her attacks as unfair than his. She also was outspent more than 3-to-1 on TV in the state.

Her efforts to pressure Obama into a Wisconsin debate, a key message of her ads, weren't helped by the fact she was making her case from Ohio and Texas.

"We've always said we think Wisconsin is challenging," Clinton strategist Mark Penn said Tuesday. "There's a very substantial independent vote that is very favorable to Senator Obama."

But while the state's open-primary system favored Obama, its demographics were in some ways good for Clinton: white, relatively Catholic and blue-collar - all features that had worked to Clinton's favor in many other places.

"Oh, that there was more time," said Lt. Gov. Barb Lawton, a Clinton supporter, who added that Ohio and Texas are now "larger than life."

Doyle said Tuesday that he thought the Clinton campaign appeared to have trouble deciding how to approach the state.

"They were worried about losing, so they didn't want to make it look like they were trying very hard," he said. "If Hillary Clinton can't come in and win in (a state like) Wisconsin, she's not going to get the nomination."

Wisconsin voters turned out in frigid single-digit temperatures, almost one-fifth of them voting in their first presidential primary, according to the exit polls.

While 46% of the voters in the Democratic primary termed themselves liberal, an additional 40% described themselves as moderate and 14% as conservative. Obama carried all three groups.

The economy was rated the top concern by the largest number of voters (more than 40%), followed by the war and health care. Nine of 10 voters rated the economy "not so good" or "poor."

Those attitudes, a state that is unusually dependent on manufacturing and the looming Ohio contest help explain why the campaigns of both Clinton and Obama took a populist turn here, debating their records on trade and their plans to bolster the economy.

Obama faced a last-minute controversy, drawing heavy discussion on cable news and the Internet, over rhetoric that he borrowed from friend and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Clinton aides charged plagiarism. But in dozens of interviews with Journal Sentinel reporters at polling places Tuesday, the issue almost never came up.

Asked to say what quality about the candidates mattered most to their choice, about half said it was the ability to bring about "needed change," and they broke heavily for Obama. Far fewer (about a quarter) cited the "right experience," and they voted overwhelmingly for Clinton.

Among the few demographic groups carried by Clinton: white women (narrowly), voters 60 or over, and white Democrats.

Young voters clearly boosted Obama's margins. Those between 18 and 29 years old accounted for 16% of the vote, up sharply from the 2004 primary, when they were 11% of the vote. Obama carried that group, 70% to 26%. Obama carried African-American voters 91% to 8%, but they made up only 8% of the electorate.

Obama was dominant in the state's two major Democratic counties, Milwaukee and Dane, winning them by roughly 2-to-1 margins.

But he also carried what was clearly a geographic battleground in the race, the Fox River Valley - areas including Brown (56% for Obama) and Outagamie (59% for Obama) counties that are heavily Catholic and mostly middle-class and blue-collar.

"Green Bay and down through the Fox Valley is always very important for Democrats in this state," Doyle said. "A Democrat should do well in Milwaukee, and should do well in Madison. But many of these races really do get decided in the Fox Valley."