Release date: Feb. 7, 2008
Contact: Beverly Cox Clark at 404-712-8780 or beverly.clark@emory.edu

Super Tuesday Trends Hold Surprises for Candidates

Super Tuesday did not resolve the issue of who the eventual Democratic nominee for president will be, but telling patterns did emerge from the voting. Emory University political scientist Andra Gillespie offers the following analysis of voting trends and the candidates' campaign strategy:

Overall Trends, Voter Profiles

Scholars and pundits alike observed that Hillary Clinton had been performing best among downscale voters, older voters and Democratic identifiers, while Barack Obama consolidated his vote among blacks, the affluent and well-educated, and young voters. These patterns generally persisted in the Super Tuesday states.

Other patterns emerge which either confirm or challenge prevailing wisdoms about each candidate's relative strengths with respect to other demographic groups or issue positions. Obama appears to have found some traction with the war. Voters who indicated that the war was their biggest concern were more likely to support Obama. It would seem that Clinton is suffering from refusing to admit that voting for the war was a mistake. In contrast, Clinton was more likely to carry voters who cited health care as their biggest concern.

Race Factor

There should be no question that race, ethnicity and gender did correlate with vote choice. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of African-American voters supported Barack Obama. The strength of the black vote carried Obama to spectacular victories in Georgia and Alabama. It is interesting to note, however, that Obama got less than 70 percent of the black vote in Massachusetts and New York. While it is less surprising that black New Yorkers might be torn between their senator and Senator Obama, it is not immediately clear why black voters in a state led by a reasonably popular black governor (at least among Democrats) and Obama supporter would not consolidate their support behind Obama.

The big question of Super Tuesday was whether Latinos would support Obama. Overall, Latinos supported Hillary Clinton. She posted very strong showings among Latinos in California, New York and New Jersey, and beat Obama by 5-10 point margins in Arizona, Massachusetts and New Mexico. Obama did beat Clinton among Latinos in Connecticut and Illinois, which demonstrates that he is still competitive. What yesterday's results demonstrate is that Obama still has headway to make among this group. It also reminds us to not look at Latinos as a monolithic group. There are regional and sub-ethnic variations within this group that warrant further investigation.

Latino Voters

Many people, myself included, expected young Latinos to break for Obama in yesterday's primaries. Instead, we had two surprises. First, in California, Latino voters age 18-29 voted 2-to-1 for Clinton. Second, despite the fact that seven of the 10 states with the largest Latino populations held primaries yesterday, the exit polls did not interview enough 18-29 year old Latinos to report their voting preferences by age. This suggests two possibilities: either the pollsters sampled improperly, or turnout among young Latinos was less than expected. The latter is the more likely scenario.

Young Voters

In general, while turnout has increased among all groups, Super Tuesday demonstrated that young voters of all racial groups still make up a smaller portion of the electorate than their parents or grandparents; indeed, the spike in turnout has been cross-generational. Despite all the talk of this election empowering young people, there is still a lot of latent power among the young electorate.

Edwards Factor

With John Edwards' departure from the presidential contest last week, many were wondering how his voters would behave. The evidence is largely mixed. Edwards still garnered a sliver of the vote in almost every Super Tuesday state, and received a shocking 10 percent of the vote in Oklahoma. Two of the exit poll questions help us ascertain how people who viewed Edwards favorably behaved. Voters were asked whether Clinton, Edwards or Obama would make the best commander-in-chief or would best united the country. Obama won in more states among voters who said that Edwards was the best commander in chief, while Clinton won in more states who said that Edwards was the best uniter.

Who's Electable

This split reflects a larger split among voters as to just which of these two historic candidates is the most electable. Contrary to what both of these candidates would have us to believe, both of them have detractors. Voters were asked to indicate if they would be dissatisfied to have either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as the eventual nominee. In Alabama, Delaware and Connecticut, roughly equal proportions of voters expressed dissatisfaction if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama went on to win the nomination. However, in the other states, one candidate had an antipathy advantage. Surprisingly, it was Barack Obama. More voters would be dissatisfied with his nomination in Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Clinton carried the antipathy advantage in Georgia, Illinois, Missouri and Utah.

To be sure, most Democrats would be satisfied with either of these candidates at the top of the ticket. However, these potentially dissatisfied voters could be the type of voters who choose to sit out the general election and influence the outcome by their absence. So, despite the fact that Obama has proven that he can win in the heartland, he cannot assume that he is any more electable than Hillary Clinton.

Yesterday's exit polls also reveal another fallacy. It has generally been assumed that because Obama was gaining momentum in the days leading up to the election, any losses he incurred could be attributed to running out of time to persuade voters before the election. The exit polls don't entirely bear this out. Obama appears to have had an advantage among voters who made their decision over the weekend. However, Hillary Clinton held a narrow advantage among voters who made their decision the day of the election.

Republican Primaries

The results of the Republican primaries are no less spectacular, but perhaps a little easier to explain. It is not surprising that Mitt Romney chose to drop out of the race given his disappointing showing on Tuesday. While he may have been able to access his personal wealth to stay in the race, his paltry showing essentially sucked the air out of his campaign.

Mike Huckabee's surprising strong showing has increased speculation of the possibility of his being a viable vice-presidential candidate. These considerations certainly have their merit. John McCain garnered much of his support from social moderates who were upset with the war in Iraq. Mike Huckabee's voters were more consistently socially conservative. There will be those who see synergies in combining the two bases. The one strike against Huckabee is that he does not complement McCain's deficits on immigration. Both of them have garnered criticism for not towing the hard party line against illegal immigration. However, the exit polls do indicate that in some states, Huckabee did win the anti-immigration vote.

Evangelical Vote

One of the interesting observations is how the evangelical vote split. McCain, Romney and Huckabee all garnered large portions of the evangelical vote. However, Romney won the vote among Northern evangelicals. This suggests that Huckabee's appeal may be limited to the South. Given the dominance of southern evangelicals in the Republican base, though, this may be less of a weakness for Huckabee and should not exclude him from any VP short list.

Emory University (www.emory.edu) is one of the nation’s leading private research universities and a member of the Association of American Universities. Known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities, Emory is ranked as one of the country's top 20 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

Subscribe to News@Emory RSS feeds for automatic updates of the latest news at Emory.

Back