Sen. Kay Hagan is already running for reelection in North Carolina for what she clearly sees as a tough hold in 2016 2014. She will be a freshman senator running for reelection for the first time -- the most vulnerable point for any elected official. If the economy and political climate haven't improved by then -- and there's no guarantee that they will -- Hagan's road to reelection will be a tough slog. And she won't have Obama's coattails among African Americans to pad her numbers.
Without that black vote, she's got a much more difficult path to reelection. She lost the white male vote 67-32, and didn't fare much better with white women, 62-38. Given that the white vote was 72 percent of the total, and that she lost it 64-35 (with a significant chunk of that 35 percent being young voters), it doesn't take a math whiz to figure out who delivered the knockout blow. It was brown voters.
Per the exit polls, African Americans were 23 percent of the vote, and Hagan won them 95-5. The four percent who were Latino and Asian were too small for statistically valid data, so their results are not included, but their pro-hagan margins were similar.
Four percent of the 4.1 million votes cast in the race is 165,000 votes. Hagan's margin of victory in 2008 was about 360,000. So sure, Hagan could've won without that vote, but there are more Latinos in North Carolina now than four years ago -- growth that will be a big factor in North Carolina gaining a House seat during reapportionment. And Hagan won't have the benefit of running against absentee celebrity senator Elizabeth Dole again, in the best pro-Democratic climate since forever.
When your winning coalition includes ethnic and racial minorities and young voters, and you face the voters in a non-presidential year that would bring out those low-performing groups, you have two approaches you can take -- you can try to win more of that white vote, even though no Democrat has managed to pull it off in a southern state, or you can tap into the growth demographics and make sure they stay highly motivated and engaged.
North Carolina's rapidly growing Latino population will be a big factor in the state's expected gain of an extra House seat during reapportionment. They, along with a growing Asian community, could potentially be a key component of her reelection coalition.
Instead, she just took a baseball bat to their kids, opting to be an asshole rather than do the right thing.
The DREAM Act vote may have failed, but it was very helpful -- now we know who the true assholes are in the Democratic Party -- and it's too bad to see Hagan among them.
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