Republicans and Independents Give Obama Victory

Looking at the exit polls. Independent voters made up 28% of those recorded at the exit polls. Republicans made up another 9% of those polled, which means that 40% of those voting in the Democratic primaries were not Democrats. This is good for Obama, but I'm pretty concerned about this. I'm not sure if I would be happy with a group of outsiders represented such a large group of voters non-affiliated with the party. The other thing that I think this shows is that there are a LOT of people determined to kill off Hillary Clinton for no other reason than she is Hillary Clinton. I say this because there is little difference between the two candidates be it position or be it corporate support.

The other item of interest is the male vote. I asked after the SC primary whether the voters who went for John Edwards, who were mostly Men, would either vote their race or their gender. In WI it is clear that the majority of them went gender. I say this because while the female vote was generally evenly split but favoring Obama, the men's vote heavily lopsided towards Obama. Even when split by marital status, Men fall heavily on the man side while women are evenly split. I think it is clear that men on both sides of the supposedly party lines prefer to see a man in power.

The Union vote is interesting. Obama went to cite President Clinton's NAFTA as a source of loss of jobs among Americans. Of course Hillary Clinton, being a Clinton would be negatively affected by this especially since she has attempted to latch onto her husband's presidency as a source of part of her experience. However; Obama is on record as voting for the PAFTA which in essence is the same thing as NAFTA. So Union voters believed the hype rather than the record. Obama wasn't around to vote on NAFTA. If his vote on PAFTA is any indication of his economic leanings, then he would have voted for NAFTA as well (or simply not voted since he has a predisposition of doing that too). So the Union members that voted Obama based on his apparent tough talk on free trade, may find that they will be in no better position vis-a-vis a Clinton vote. However; that is their own fault, since more progressive candidates on the subject have been forced out of the running.