woolfe9999
Diamond Member
- Mar 28, 2005
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I don't think Obama will win NC in the general elec, at least not based on the info I've seen.
That 20% of Dems may well vote for him in the general, or at least many of them. I suppose some will still vote "No Preference".
But Obama is running behind in polls of him v. Romney among independent/unaffiliated voters here. That's a bad sign for his chances.
I was surprised Obama came out publicly supporting gay marriage. I think everyone knows he did, but publicly supporting it is an additional step that carries some political risk, I believe.
I think many Dems in the South, life long Dems, Dems whose family has never voted anything other than Dem, are very much social conservatives. A lot of Baptists, who are socially conservative, are Dems. I don't think people elsewhere in the USA realize how socially conservative many Dams down here are. I couldn't give a % breakdown, but I think the recent referendum shows that there are a substantial portion.
Fern
Most of the true southern states aren't swing states, however. NC and Virginia are really the exceptions (Florida kind of is and kind of isn't a southern state). It matters most how the issue polls in the majority of battleground states.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...r-gay-marriage-outweighs-opposition-in-polls/
An interesting angle to this is that there is one bloc of dems who do solidly oppose gay marriage: african-Americans. I believe Obama's calculus here is that he cannot really lose many of those votes over his gay marriage stance, even if another dem could. The poll I cite is showing 50/45 supporting gay marriage, but African-Americans are 2:1 against. If you remove them from that equation and assume they'll vote for Obama regardless, it looks even better. We'll see.
- wolf
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