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Hey,
I was happy to vote for Obama and delighted to see Virginia (where I live and vote despite the username) favor him so overwhelmingly. My neighborhood was 62/38 in his favor, better than Webb did against Allen here. The much-abused Southern White Male also went 62/38 for Obama in Virginia, according to a post-primary analysis I read, which brought the overall white vote into Obama's column here despite the female advantage for Clinton. Mississippi white males voted only 25% for Obama, but I think NC is a lot more like VA than like MS and he just might win there. Today's poll results are the first strong sign of that possibility AFAIK.
One can analyze the Virginia results by all kinds of metrics, but since our primary I've been less hopeful for Obama because white males in supposedly less racist states like Ohio and Pennsylvania are tilting so decisively towards Clinton. At first it seemed like we were the harbinger of victory for Obama, just as we were with Webb and control of the Senate in 2006. Now the Clinton folk would have it that Virginia has too many latte-drinking Volvo drivers in NoVA and too many African-Americans down here in Southside, so we have no national significance whatsoever. But I'm quite convinced that Barack can carry this state and Hillary can't, which recent polls support.
It seems to me that our neighbor to the south is the best measure of whether or not our Virginia results were an outlier or a decisive turning point. Would like to know what North Carolinians or anyone else who follows Southern politics thinks about how your primary results might differ from or parallel ours, and why. How do you think NC's chance of going D in the general is compared to Virginia's? So far all indications I've seen are discouraging.
CYD
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