USA Presidential Race

[Dave Land]

On Jun 9, 2008, at 5:32 PM, jon louis mann wrote:

>> Is the implication that voters must either vote for Obama or be
>> bigots, iow, the only reason anyone would not vote for Obama is
>> because he is black and they are racist?
>> . . . ronn! :)
>
>  i am voting for obama BECAUSE he is black; many more will vote for  
> mc cain to prevent a black man from winning...

Here's an interesting Flash visualization of voting in the Democratic  
primaries by gender, race, age, income, and education (unfortunately,  
only one at a time):

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/politics/20080603_MARGINS_GRAPHIC/margins.swf

Or

http://url.ie/fim

As you step through each of the demographic groups, squares  
representing each of the fifty states shift left or right and stack up  
to represent each state's relative support for Obama vs. Clinton. As  
you step through income levels, you see a slight skew towards Clinton  
at the lower levels, towards Obama at the top, but all of this happens  
in pretty much normal bell-curve near the center of the graph. Same  
thing with education: less leaned towards Clinton, more towards Obama.

The most striking thing of the whole visualization comes when you  
click "Blacks" and the whole chart -- all fifty states -- suddenly  
slams itself against the Obama side of the chart.

It would seem that the group that is most voting by race is blacks, at  
least in the data gathered and displayed here.

Gender didn't even come close. Age, income and education level showed  
small, but interesting moves, and the "Whites" chart looked pretty  
much like any other.

Dave