Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics is looking at the Nevada entrance poll data, and has noticed some interesting trends, particularly in comparison to Iowa and New Hampshire results. Jay's looking at entrance/exit poll data because it's the only data available for all primary states- Nevada didn't even report a vote count, for example. The poll data Jay is using is available from CNN here, here, and here, for Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, respectively. Jay's assessment of why Hillary won Nevada is:
...Clinton won in Nevada because she retained the voting coalition that she formed in New Hampshire... as she won the vote by a larger margin in Nevada than she did in New Hampshire - it stands to reason that she expanded upon this basic voting coalition. |
So let's look at who is voting for Hillary in Nevada (from the CNN entrance poll), and try to figure out what the components of this coalition for Hillary are.
As Jay says:
- Once again, Clinton carried a strong majority of female voters, who also constituted an overwhelming majority of caucus-goers. She won them 51% to 38%, and they made up 59% of the vote. This basically mimics her success in New Hampshire.
- She cut into Obama's share of the male vote. Obama defeated Clinton among men by 11 points in New Hampshire. In Nevada, he beat her by just 2 points.
- She did well among Hispanic voters, winning them by 38 points. But Obama won African Americans by 69 points. Interestingly, Hispanics and African Americans both constituted 15% of entrance poll respondents. So, Clinton's win among Hispanics was more than matched by Obama's win among African Americans. |
In other words- different state, different demographics. In earlier primaries, Obama's advantage among black voters stood alone. In the Sun Belt, it's mostly offset by Hillary's advantage among Latinos, allowing Hillary's lead with women voters to determine the overall outcome.
Let's look at the Nevada crosstabs of gender by race.
No big interaction effect here. The Obama advantage among males and non-white voters act independently and additively, so his best showing is with non-white males, and his worst is with white females. Hillary got 55% of the white female vote, just as Obama got 55% of the non-white male vote- the difference in the overall results was that there were a lot more white females than there were non-white males.
Religious Affiliation and Income
According to Jay,
- She expanded her lead among Catholic voters. In New Hampshire, she won them by 17 points. In Nevada, she won them by 27 points. In Nevada as in New Hampshire, Obama and Clinton split Protestants.
- She won voters who consider the economy their top concern by 9 points in both Nevada and New Hampshire. She once again won a solid victory among voters who make less than $50,000. In New Hampshire, it was by 15 points. In Nevada, it was by 12 points. |
So- bottom line- what's the emerging coalition, Jay?
Once again, it appears that Hillary Clinton won by turning out a traditional Democratic voting coalition: Catholics, women, and "downscale" Democrats. This time, she added to this coalition with strong showings among Hispanics, whites, men, and "upscale" voters. |
So, as we go into Super Tuesday, and the other Sunbelt states, the emerging coalition is lower income, women, Hispanic voters going strongly for Hillary, with recent shifts showing Hillary largely canceling out Obama's earlier advantage among upper-income white males. Should be interesting ;-)
On a related note, it turns out that what shapes the election results is... turnout. Hillary learned her lesson in Iowa, and out-Obamaed Obama in Nevada. Look at this story in today's Las Vegas Sun:
The Nevada caucus turned Iowa on its head. There, Clinton hit her original goal but was deluged by the Obama turnout. Here, the turnout was nearly double the 60,000 forecast -- standing at 115,800 late Saturday with 2 percent of precincts yet to report.
One precinct in a middle-class Las Vegas neighborhood showed the success of Clinton’s effort.
State Sen. Steven Horsford, a supporter of Obama, said the vote goal in his precinct was 29. Obama surpassed it easily with 45.
Clinton had 58.
...
(Hillary's Nevada State Director Robby) Mook had set the much higher target because he was picking up signs of increased interest in the caucus.
The signs were clear to anyone watching: Democrats eager, even desperate to take back the White House, running a strong roster of candidates with talented field organizers. And December polling in Iowa and New Hampshire showed close races.
But not everyone was so savvy. The campaign of former Sen. John Edwards, for instance, was using a turnout model of 45,000 total voters, according to a campaign official.
|
And, also from the same story, a little inside politics to explain why the Hillary victory in the at-large caucuses on the strip wasn't such a big surprise to Hillary's team- they had been persuading the union members all along, while the union bosses stalled and played politics ;-)
Aside from heavy turnout, the Clinton camp made another smart strategic move that was aided and abetted by a strategic blunder: Although the Clinton team won’t admit it publicly, the campaign had been working Culinary Union members hard and organizing them for the past year. The effort recognized that because the union was waiting so long to make an endorsement decision (it didn’t come until 10 days ago), the campaign could peel off members and get them committed and working while the union dithered. The result was a surprising victory at seven of the nine special Strip caucus sites. |
And therein lies the lesson. Less than two weeks after deriding union leadership as a "special interest" in a fund-raising email, Obama cut a deal with the leadership of the culinary union, and secured the leadership's endorsement. The leadership apparently viewed the union members as so much political ballast, to be shifted on a whim to ensure smooth political sailing.
They should have listened to Hillary. Hillary said "no woman is illegal" when she visited a Hispanic Las Vegas neighborhood last week, and the people there know what she means by that. Hillary understands the motivations and yearnings of our newest citizens for a better life, and has policy proposals to ensure their hard work will not go unrewarded. The culinary union workers who voted were mostly immigrants and their children. These were the immigrants who took the initiative and risked a lot to immigrate to this country, get a job, and go through the punitive process of securing citizenship and voting rights. "America" isn't just a word to them. They busted their butts to create the opportunity that America represents for themselves and their families. They didn't fight this long and this hard to be told how to vote.
Take a look at Hillary's immigration policy if you haven't already, and see why her campaign enjoys such high support among Hispanics.
Hillary has advocated for policies to help smooth the transition of legal immigrants once they arrive in the U.S. so that they can add to our economy and culture.
* She championed the Legal Immigrant Children's Health Improvement Act, which would give states the option to provide federally funded Medicaid and SCHIP benefits to low-income legal immigrant children and pregnant women.
* She wrote the Access to Employment and English Acquisition Act to meet the growing demand for English language courses and other job skills.
* She strongly supports the DREAM Act, which provides a path to citizenship through military service or higher education for children who were brought to the U.S. by their parents.
* She offered an amendment to make family reunification the guiding principle of our immigration system.
|
If you wish, you can contribute to Hillary's campaign through the unofficial flying monkey bundling link here.