Matt Yglesias reports on a poll — via Andrew Sullivan and Jon Chait — that offers some interesting insight into where Barack Obama’s support comes from or doesn’t, as the case may be. The poll shows, or purports to show, that race and ethnicity play into the decision voters will make about Obama — and possibly about Clinton down the road.
The numbers:
The focus has been on race, but as Yglesias says, the poll can be read differently:
conservative views about race don’t seem to be nearly as big an influence on anti-Obama sentiments as are conservative views about national security — it’s the “fight for U.S. right or wrong” crowd that’s really heavily represented in the anti-Obama coalition. It’s also fascinating to see that Democrats who agree that “men make better leaders” have a net negative view of Obama; apparently that kind of retrograde cultural conservatism sufficiently correlates with anti-Obama sentiments that even running against a woman doesn’t turn those people into Obama fans.
This could be viewed as being bad news for the Democrats, regardless of who gets the nomination, because the chief alternative to Obama is a woman. But, I want to point out that these are probably the kind of voters who self-identify as Democrats but who were not likely to vote Democrat in November.
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Hank Kalet 