Check it out this graph. Basically, the author tries to figure out whether racism really did suppress Obama's vote in 2008. No one admits to it in polling; other issues completely drown it out in noise; and there were plenty of non-racist reasons people might have voted for McCain or vote for Romney. But Google is an amazing thing:
I performed the somewhat unpleasant task of ranking states and media markets in the United States based on the proportion of their Google searches that included the word “nigger(s).” This word was included in roughly the same number of Google searches as terms like “Lakers,” “Daily Show,” “migraine” and “economist.” …
The state with the highest racially charged search rate in the country was West Virginia. Other areas with high percentages included western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, upstate New York and southern Mississippi. Once I figured out which parts of the country had the highest racially charged search rates, I could test whether Mr. Obama underperformed in these areas. I predicted how many votes Mr. Obama should have received based on how many votes John Kerry received in 2004 plus the average gain achieved by other 2008 Democratic Congressional candidates.
And guess what?
Add up the totals throughout the country, and racial animus cost Mr. Obama three to five percentage points of the popular vote.
I'd say that is likely to occur in higher numbers this time. But imagine a scenario in which Obama's majority of the popular vote had not been 53 percent but 56. And if McCain had won 43 percent. Given the way the GOP has reacted to Obama, I wouldn't go so far as to say they would have behaved differently in the face of such a landslide. But just a few votes for the stimulus would have changed the dynamic of the past four years of total obstructionism. Too late now, at least. But it's good to be completely realistic about the uphill struggle the president is now in.
It's steep. Without the kind of engagement and enthusiasm he garnered last time, it's close to vertical.
The Dish 