Category: The Dish

The exit polls reveal what the demographics have long foretold, and what the polls last February predicted, with just a few wrinkles. The race factor seems to have tipped very heavily toward Clinton in West Virginia. In Indiana, 16 percent said race was an important factor for them; in Pennsylvania, 19 percent; in West Virginia, 22 percent. The racial skew to Clinton does soar in West Virginia: 81 percent of race-based voters went for Clinton; in Pennsylvania, it was 55; in Indiana, it was 53 percent. Oddly, Obama did better among white Catholics in West Virginia than he has in the past. No idea if that means anything. My own sense is that WV voters are conservative and risk-averse and Obama suffered a great deal from unfamiliarity. Race compounded it; and if you listen to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, you’re likely to believe that Obama is a Muslim, racist, terrorist communist.

I note that John Edwards – a familiar white man who’s not running any more – got a healthy showing. Okay, West Virginia, we get the message.

The map above is explained here. The purple is where Clinton got more than 65 percent of the vote. It gives a good idea of the Clintons’ Appalachian strength. West Virginia confirms what we knew already – but Obama has not dented this so far. He has work to do.

For what it’s worth, I felt her victory speech was pretty obviously angling for the vice-presidency. Cuomo just put his weight behind the idea. I’m not sure, whatever the objective merits of the case, I could bear listening to her any longer.

Yes, it’s true:

"This may sound strange, but I found that Grand Theft Auto actually offered a less sensational portrait of gangland and ghetto streets than the one put out by most cops, politicians, policymakers, and even academics …  The game is a carnival of violence, deceit, and cruelty that makes you slightly nauseated after playing for only a few hours—I had to periodically rest and play a Neil Diamond song just to calm down. But I have to admit that I was surprised a video game had such a well-developed, fine-grained understanding of human nature."

A reader writes:

I have a question about your Face Of The Day, Stuart Broad. He’s clearly playing a sport, throwing a ball, in a practice session, between England and New Zealand. My question is, what sport is he playing? Is it cricket? That would be my guess, since it is at Lord’s, and I remember from one of the Douglas Adams books that Arthur Dent and Zaphod Beeblebrox travel through time 2 million years and end up at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

But I could be wrong.

Particularly since all I know about cricket is that it is played with a ball and a bat and wickets.

It’s cricket. Honest. But that’s not why I posted it, of course.

Cougar-loving is more and more acceptable for men. On screen. And in real life.

A reader writes:

Basically the exact same thing played itself out in Canada a couple of years ago. You have a conservative party banished to the woods for over a decade due to a combination of charismatic and dynamic opponents and internal incompetence. Then the leader on whose back the party rose to power (Blair and Jean Chrétien) gives way to their wonkish but dithering deputy (Brown and Paul Martin).

Combined with the standard stories of overreach and incompetence that come from being in party so long sullying the good name of the government party, the conservative party out of power long enough for everyone to forget what made them so obnoxious in the first place and replacing the old conservative leaders with newer, younger faces, add water and – bingo! – instant "conservative mandate".

It’s not that complicated, sure Cameron’s green noises help soften the party image a bit, but this is a story of complacency in the left of centre leading towards overhaul.  You can hear in it Brown’s voice in question time, rambling about results as the opposition harasses him on the bumblings of the party.  He sees it coming, it’s happened before, it’ll happen again, and there aren’t really earth shatteringly deep reasons for the move.

Some exit poll data from West Virginia. Eye-popping:

One in four Clinton voters and about one in 10 Obama voters said race was an important factor in their vote.

A quarter of Clinton voters? And how many weren’t saying?

Oh dear:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

Using demography, 538 foresees a a Clinton victory by 39 points and 105,000 votes. But this isn’t news:

No, Barack Obama won’t carry West Virginia against John McCain. And yes, Hillary Clinton very well might. But this has been an open secret since at least February, when SurveyUSA polling showed Barack Obama trailing John McCain by 18 in West Virginia, and Hillary Clinton leading him by 5.

Gary Langer, the director of polling at ABC, sorts through the numbers. Money quote:

It’s fair for the Obama camp to point out that he doesn’t do significantly worse against McCain among working-class whites than Clinton does, and that he does better with their upscale counterparts. And Obama’s numbers are nothing like John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s; they lost working-class whites to George W. Bush by 24 points and 17 points, respectively.

I didn’t realize that Obama has actually been doing much better than Gore or Kerry in this demographic.