White Democrats and Obama: A startling statistic?

Exit poll data (as reported on the New York Times blog — Patterns of Distinction) has it that in New Jersey 71% of white Democrats, who said “race matters”, voted for Hillary. Am I getting this wrong or are these 71% of white Democrats saying that they voted against Obama because he is black (or for Hillary because she is white)? Will someone from among my few readers step up and correct me on this? If not, this is a pretty troubling bit, isn’t it?

Update: Of course it is possible that the number of white Democrats who said “race matters” is a miniscule percent of white Democrats in NJ. Which would make this not that horrifying, but still leave open the curiosity of why these people are Democrats… isn’t that what the Republican party is for? ;-)

[ Link ]

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.