Sorry to rain on the party, but covert racism appears to be still alive and well in America.
Yes, the Electoral College vote of about 340 to Barack Obama and about 160 to John McCain was apparently a huge victory for America’s first black president.
But it disguises some other facts and figures which suggest many US voters might have not voted for Obama because of race and others voted for him purely because of race.
The Electoral College vote disguises the relatively close popular vote of 52 to 46 per cent. McCain won his states handsomely. Obama won a lot of his more narrowly. It is the nature of winner-take-all constituency elections (whether states or single-member seats) that a narrow lead in the popular vote translates to a major win in the Electoral College or parliamentary chamber.
Obama got the advantage of brilliant campaign strategy to concentrate on states where Democrats had a reasonable chance of getting Electoral College votes that were Republican in 2004 and pay less or no attention to states that were either in the bag or inevitably Republican.
Further, Obama’s lead in the popular vote was less than polls suggested. It was at the bottom end of polling that indicated a lead of between six and eleven per cent.
This suggests that the racist Bradley Effect played some part. The Bradley Effect is where a black candidate is ahead in opinion polls against a white candidate but loses the election (or gets less vote than the polls suggest) because voters will tell a pollster they will vote for the black candidate, but in the privacy of their polling booth they cannot bring themselves to vote for a black candidate over a white candidate.
The Bradley Effect is named after Tom Bradley who was way ahead for the election for the Governor of California in 1982, but lost the election.
The effect is maybe losing some of its force and is ameliorated by more black voters getting on the rolls and voting. Some of these vote for the black candidate irrespective of policy.
That was illustrated this campaign by some CNN interviews in Harlem where black voters insisted they were voting for Obama’s policies, not because he was black. When asked by the journalist would it trouble them that it would mean “staying the course in Iraq”, a “ban on abortion”, and “the possibility of Sarah Palin being President”, they still said they would vote for Obama.
A more interesting comparison is between the Senate vote and the presidential vote across eight races in the north-east and centre involving successful white Democrats. In Michigan, Iowa, South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Virginia and Massachusetts successful white Democrats got between six and 20 percentage points more vote than Obama got in each of those respective states.
Only in Illinois, Obama’s home state, did Obama come close to getting the same percentage of the vote as the white Democrat Senate candidate – he was just one per cent shy.
There was a significant number of voters voting for the white Democrat Senate candidate and voting for the white Republican candidate. And these states were not red neck Deep South states.
It suggests race influenced some voters.
Obama and the Democrats had the advantage of two unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afgahnistan, the worst financial crisis in several generations and climate change concerns. The Democrats should have romped in with a massive victory in the popular vote. That they did not suggests race might have been a reason.
The Democrats had the advantage of the opposing Republicans having the least popular president since polling began. They had the advantage of an uninspiring Republican candidate who would have been the oldest first-term president in history. They had the advantage of a hopelessly inexperienced opposing vice-presidential candidate who should have been a major disqualifier for the Republicans.
And still the Democrats did not get a huge win in the popular vote.
Also, the Democrats’ candidate was one of the most inspirational speakers and political campaigners since John Kennedy ran in 1960. He was also one of the most astute in raising campaign funds in small lots from masses of people. He was brilliant in marshalling the resources of the internet.
Obama got out the black and young vote like never before. These could counter-act somewhat the older white voters. The young (18 to 29 year olds) voted 66-32 in favour of Obama.
And still with all these factors favouring the Democrats there was no landslide in the popular vote.
In short, America got its first black president by a fairly narrow margin and only because of a fortuitous alignment of many factors to overcome about the only handicap that Obama had, one that he could do nothing about — his race.
In Australia it would be called a “drover’s dog” election, after a Bill Hayden comment on Bob Hawke’s winning the 1983 election. A “drover’s dog” could have won it for Labor, he said.
Similarly for the Democrats in 2008 in America. The conditions were such that virtually any candidate could have won it for the Democrats.
It was fortunate that it was on this occasion that the first African-American was the Democrats’ candidate. In any less favourable circumstances race might become pivotal and resulted in a loss. As it happened to the extent there was any voter refusal to vote for an African-American over a white, it was not enough to affect the result. But the relative closeness of the popular vote suggests that there were a fair number of such voters, otherwise the Democrats would have won more decisively.
The hope is now that with a black President Americans will get a chance to see that race should not be a factor and that in 2012 Obama will get more votes, not fewer votes, than white Democrat Senate candidates in many states.