I can't take it anymore. I can't take everyone assuming that Obama is doing really badly with certain sectors of white voters, when it's all based on lies.
For the following diary, I got all my exit poll data from allpolitics.com.
NOW is not the time to get complacent about Obama's chances, even though it looks like the Supers are flooding to Obama. If you agree with this diary, please call or email the undeclared Superdelegates with this information.
The list of them can be found here:
http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/...
There are two main points of analysis that have to be relayed to the mainstream media and to the Superdelegates.
The first point is that Limbaugh's Operation Chaos was successful in that it injected an entire pool of (mostly) white voters into our primaries who voted for Hillary Clinton, but who have no intention of voting for a Democrat in the Fall. This created a misimpression that Obama was doing worse among white voters than he actually was.
Before Operation Chaos began, there was no evidence of any organized effort for the Republicans to tamper with our primary process. Reviewing the open primaries that took place before Operation Chaos got into full swing, we can see that Obama beat Clinton among Republicans taking part in Democratic primaries (for which there is enough data to draw a conclusion) by an average of 32 points. Only in Alabama did Obama lose to Clinton among Republicans 52-45. (For the record the results among Republicans in open primaries were as follows MO O:75 C:21, WI O:72 C:28, VA O:72, C:23, SC O:37, C:20 (E:43), LA O:53 C:17)
It was in late February that Operation Chaos went full steam ahead. National radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, and Southern Ohio radio host Bill Cunningham openly urged their McCain-supporting listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries in order to prolong the process and "bloody up" Obama.
The correlation between the efforts undertaken in Operation Chaos and Obama's level of support among Republicans voting in the Democratic primaries is striking. Before Operation Chaos got started, the average percentage of the Democratic electorate (in open primaries) identifying themselves as Republicans was 6% and as we know Obama won those by an average of 32 points. After Operation Chaos began, Democratic primary voters identifying themselves as Republicans made up 10% of the electorate in those contests, and Obama lost them by an average of 18 points (MS C:75 O:25, OH C:50 O:50, TX O:53 C:46, IN C:54 O:46).
This correlation exists also in the "Independent" quotient of Democratic primary voters. Before Operation Chaos began, Obama defeated Clinton by an average of 30 points among self-identified Independents participating in open Democratic primaries. Following Operation Chaos, Obama defeated Clinton by an average of only 5 points among self-identified Independents participating in open Democratic primaries.
Prior to Operation Chaos, Obama even did well among Independents in states with those semi-open primaries in which he lost the overall vote badly to Clinton. His average margin of victory among independents in New York, New Jersey, and California was 15 points.
Because the vast majority of Republicans are white, this large temporary influx of white voters casting a ballot for Clinton adds to the clear misimpression that Obama doesn't do well among white voters. By a conservative estimate, 250,000 (mostly white) Republicans voted dishonestly for Hillary Clinton in Texas and Ohio alone.
If one takes away these votes, assuming 90% of them are cast by white voters, one sees that in a "fraud-free" election, Obama would have roughly tied Clinton among white voters in Texas, traling by less than one percentage point 49.6% to 50.4%. In Ohio, following the same process, Clinton's advantage goes from 64-34 among white voters to roughly 60-38. In Indiana, just removing white Republicans - and not Independents - who showed up fraudulently for Clinton, Obama's deficit among white voters in that state moves from 20 points to just 16. If one assumes that Operation Chaos is in fact the main cause of the enormous shift to Clinton among Republicans voting in Democratic primaries, by my conservative estimate (of Obama getting 60% of pariticpating Republicans in a normal, fraud-free Indiana primary), as many as 46,800 Republicans in Indiana showed up to vote for Clinton as a part of Operation Chaos.
One plausible response people might point to is the Wright controversy.
Please allow me two responses: Obama's numbers currently aren't any worse than before the Wright controversy. More importantly, Ohio, Texas, and Mississippi, occured BEFORE the Wright controversy and those are the primaries that showed his biggest drop in support among Republicans and also the biggest jump in Republicans actually participating in our primaries.
And while it is true that Clinton does have a slight edge over Obama among white voters, the advantage is small and is more than outweighed by Obama's large advantage among non-white voters. According to a Newsweek poll taken during a particular rough period in the Obama campaign, Clinton leads by just 6 points among white voters (47-41). http://www.newsweek.com/...
Apart from any of these primaries, of course, is the fact that Obama gets more support among Republicans and Independents when pitted against McCain than Clinton does. In poll after poll, this contention is supported. In the latest Bloomberg poll, for instance, Obama trails McCain among Independents by one point (40 - 41) while Clinton trails McCain among Independents by eleven (35 - 46). http://www.latimes.com/...
The second main point I would like the media and Superdelegates to understand is that Operation Chaos makes it appear that Clinton is closer to Obama in the popular vote metric than she actually is. Taking away just the dishonest Republican tamperers from the Ohio and Texas vote totals (by a conservative estimate) leaves Obama with a net gain of 250,000 votes.
Thus, the main points I am trying to make are that there is a strong and clear correlation between Operation Chaos and the strong increase of Republican voters voting for Hillary Clinton and her competitiveness in the popular vote metric. In a pure election season with no "strategic" voting it would be clear that Obama is doing far better among white voters and in the popular vote narrative.
In closing, in an unrelated matter, I would like to post this "time capsule" I found from MyDD a few months back. It's priceless:
Comment posted Sept. 30, 2007.
"Obama has not moved in the polls since last February. Obama's people are using his vast campaign war chest to organize their own polls to tell us how much we want him. Its so much easier then trying to convince Americans that he is the best candidate."