Who Voted for Obama

How did the first African-American president piece together such a decisive winning coalition? In Politico, David Paul Kuhn picks apart the pieces of the Barack Obama vote:

• Obama won a solid 43% of the white vote, matching Bill Clinton’s 1996 performance in that group and nearly Jimmy Carter’s from 1976. The Democrat actually won young white voters outright.

• Among white women, however, Obama slightly underperformed Al Gore’s numbers—perhaps an indication of a Sarah Palin effect.
• The bottom fell out for John McCain in suburban America. Though George W. Bush won rural voters by 19 points, McCain only managed to win them by 8.
• Some 67% of Hispanics went to Obama, and 30% for McCain—10 points less than Bush's draw in 2004.
• Despite prognostication to the contrary, Obama won more than 84% of Hillary Clinton backers in the primaries.

(More Election 2008 stories.)