Nate Silver examines Racism and Tolerance : For Obama, Will Familiarity Erode Contempt ?

FiveThirtyEight.com
Nate Silver examines Racism and Tolerance
For Obama, Will Familiarity Erode Contempt ?

Nate Silver
November 17, 2008

Some Excerpts :

In the states where Obama campaigned extensively, he drew, on average, 3.3 percent more of the white vote than John Kerry did. In the states where he did not campaign significantly, on the other hand, his percentage of the white vote dropped by an average of 3.3 percent. The differences are highly statistically significant.

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The question, really, is to what extent Barack Obama's underperformance among certain types of white voters was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not asking for somebody's vote, you're usually not going to get it. This may be particularly true if you're a black person and the voter is a rural Southern white person.

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But that doesn't necessarily mean that the voter is hellbent against you. I tend to think that racism runs along a spectrum. Many, or perhaps even most white voters are a little bit racist, but for relatively few is race a complete deal-breaker. Many of them will vote for you if you're actively soliciting their votes, and they've had time to grow comfortable with you. If Obama had been targeting Georgia's or West Virgina's electoral votes as actively as he sought Florida's or North Carolina's, might he have won them? I don't know, but I think he'd have had a fighting chance.

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There are some analogies here to homophobia, in that people become much more tolerant of gay people once a friend, workmate or family member has come out to them. The idea that you can say, Greg is gay, but guess what -- I know Greg, and he's a pretty good dude is very powerful. Prejudice is global, but tolerance is local.

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This also has some interesting implications for 2012, in that by virtue of having become President, Obama will have spent four years in the living room of every American. That doesn't mean that Obama is going to win, say, Alabama. But it might mean that if he has a successful presidency, he can become -- well -- everybody's imaginary hip black friend, at least up to a point. I hope I'm not being too optimistic by suggesting that our country will be a bit less racist four years from now than it is today. If so, then states like Georgia and West Virginia should be given careful attention once Obama begins to plot out his 2012 strategy.

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