Date: 11/12/2008 6:40:01 PM
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...jrXjQD9490TB80
Minorities, single women, young whites back Obama
By ALAN FRAM - 6 days ago
WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama's formula for victory included a
coalition of unmarried women, minorities and young whites and coaxing
more votes from them than Democrats did in their 2004 presidential
defeat, according to national exit polls of voters.
Obama also relied on one of politics' oldest truisms - it's hard to lose
if you outnumber 'em.
In a year that consistently showed his supporters more enthusiastic than
those backing Republican John McCain, four in 10 voters were Democrats
while a third were from the GOP - the biggest partisan gap in exit polls
dating to 1992.
For good measure, Obama won among independents. Exit poll results showed
his core supporters also included moderates, liberals, people with
postgraduate degrees and those who seldom attend religious services.
Looming above all else, of course, were the lumbering economy and the
unpopular President Bush. No matter who they were, people troubled by
the economy or unhappy with Bush were likelier to back Obama.
The man who will be the first African-American president got the votes
of nearly all blacks and two-thirds of Hispanics. That was an
improvement on 2004, when Democrat John Kerry won nine in 10 blacks and
just over half of Hispanics.
While 56 percent of women backed Obama, the Democrat did even better
among unmarried females. Seven in 10 of them voted for Obama, 8
percentage points better than Kerry.
Obama's performance with single women included winning six in 10
unmarried white women, also surpassing Kerry.
Two-thirds of voters under age 30 voted for Obama, another improvement
from four years ago. He won 54 percent of whites under age 30, bettering
Kerry by 10 percentage points.
Also backing the Democrat were working women, women with children,
voters from union households and people earning under $50,000 a year.
Most new voters supported him, and in a reflection of disaffection with
Bush, so did about a fifth of those who voted for him in 2004 and a like
number of conservatives.
In a cautionary note for the triumphant Obama, the survey showed he made
little headway in prying two vote-rich groups from the GOP.
Obama trailed John McCain, the Arizona senator, by 18 percentage points
among whites who haven't finished college, a modest improvement from
Kerry four years ago. The Illinois senator also lagged McCain by 14
points among suburban whites - virtually duplicating Kerry's 2004
numbers.
Overall, whites preferred McCain over Obama 55 percent to 43 percent, an
improvement for Obama on Kerry's 17-percentage-point shortfall. In exit
polls dating to 1972, Democrats have never carried a majority of the
white vote.
Whites who backed Obama tended to be urban residents, Easterners, Iraq
war foes and people without guns.
Besides whites, Republicans and conservatives, McCain's solid voters
included those over age 65, white evangelical and born-again Christians,
and those who often attend services. He won strong support from
Southerners, married people, gun owners, veterans, small-town and rural
residents, and supporters of the Iraq war.
The complete results were from exit polling by Edison Media Research and
Mitofsky International for The Associated Press and television networks
conducted in 300 precincts nationally. The data was based on 17,836
voters, including telephone polling of 2,407 people who voted early, and
has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1 percentage point for
the entire sample, larger for subgroups.