Obama-Clinton, Lieberman-Lamont

More mapping from Nick Beaudrot. Above is his representation of the Obama-Clinton race in connecticut which, since Connecticut reports results on a town-by-town basis, provides us with some pretty fine-grained data. Nick observes that there's a strong similarity to the map of Lieberman-Lamont primary results:

The main difference would seem to be that Obama did better than Lamont in the neck of towns closest to New York in the southwest corner of the state. Overall, it's not a huge surprise -- Obama, like Lamont, had a lot of appeal to voters who took the war very seriously as an issue and probably have a self-conception of themselves as freethinkers eager to buck the establishment. The question for Obama has always been to what extent can he break out of that box, adding African-Americans of all classes and an adequate number of working-class hispanics and white men to the typical reformer coalition. He's passed a number of critical tests in that regard, but it's still an open issue.

Comments

I don't know. Obama did well in lots of blue-collar areas of CT. He won some of them and lost others. But he was very competitive just about everywhere. My sister, who has worked on other campaigns in the state was pleasantly surprised by his performance in areas where she didn't expect him to do well at all. Most of eastern CT is pretty blue-collar, for example.

Posted by ikl | February 12, 2008 2:21 PM

"The question for Obama has always been to what extent can he break out of that box, adding African-Americans of all classes and an adequate number of working-class hispanics and white men to the typical reformer coalition. He's passed a number of critical tests in that regard, but it's still an open issue."

Shorter Matthew Yglesias: Connecticut doesn't really count because Barack couldn't get enough working-class hispanics and white men to vote for him. LOL.

Posted by TLM | February 12, 2008 2:24 PM

Liebermann and Clinton did best in the blue-collar Catholic areas, Obama and Lamont cleaned up in the cities of Hartford and New Haven plus the rural areas of the state, particularly in the west.

Again: without rural voters, even in a place like CT, Obama loses.

Posted by lampwick | February 12, 2008 2:43 PM

lampwick - you do know that Obama won CT, don't you?

Posted by kjblair | February 12, 2008 2:47 PM

Ugh - same problem with the dark purple and dark green being almost indistinguishable as before. This time, seeing as there are dark green areas to work with, I can see the difference, but only if a stare at the screen and squint at it.

If he'd just fix the color scheme, I'd be singing the praises of his mapping ability.

Posted by Adam Villani | February 12, 2008 2:50 PM

A shorter version of those maps:

wine track candidate
+ netroots = loss

wine track candidate +
netroots +
black liberation theology = win

If the Democrats are paying attention, we might, conceivably, stop taking African-American voters for granted.

Posted by Ted | February 12, 2008 3:08 PM

Regarding those areas which broke for Lieberman over Lamont but are going for Obama over Clinton: how much of the difference is due to the votes of some of my more paranoid co-religionists who may have seen in challenges to Holy Joe an underlying anti-Semitism but who also feel that attacks on B. "Hussein" Obama are underhanded (and also want to prove that they would vote for a Black guy who may very well be Muslim ... kinda an inverse Bradley effect) and hence feel a need to retaliate against Clinton (whom they view as the source of these attacks)?

For that matter, how many think "Barack" is a Jewish name?

Posted by DAS | February 12, 2008 3:15 PM

probably have a self-conception of themselves as freethinkers eager to buck the establishment

Lieberman probably thinks of himself as a freethinker eager to buck the (Dem) establishment and support fellow maverick(TM) John McCain.

How many "free thinkers" (you know the type ... and I know South FL, parts of NJ and I betcha CT are full of them ... and this category has strong overlap with the paranoids of my previous post, FWIW) voted for that "independent Dem" Lieberman and also for Obama?

In general, based on political spectrum arguments, the association between Lamont voting and Obama voting is not surprising at all. But the exceptions are indeed interesting and may very well relate to how Obama is positioning himself.

OTOH, as we saw in NH, where independents, who could choose their party and then candidate, broke for McCain over Obama, even if your typical rural-"independent" (or, for that matter suburban, Jewish "independent") voter prefers Obama to HRC and prefers a "Democrat" to a "Republican" (this is part of why I think those "people would rather have a Dem over a Republican" polls are nothing about which to get excited), they'll still vote for that "maverick(TM) McCain" over "Obama, who is too young".

OTOH, HRC would certainly loose these votes whereas Obama would at least give McCain a run for his money.

On yet another hand, given the Kerry debacle, should we really try to predict electability and vote/nominate accordingly?

Posted by DAS | February 12, 2008 3:23 PM

In my Washington (state) caucus precinct the new voters, with the exception of 3 UW students, were all white, middle aged men. When they spoke for their candidate, they spoke almost entirely against Clinton rather than for Obama. It really made me wonder -- in November, when there is no Clinton on the ticket, will they still show up for Obama?

Posted by mary | February 12, 2008 3:30 PM

kjblair - I know Obama won; I'm just continually exasperated by the fact that people assume the populations of cities and suburbs are all that matter, and that rural voters = blue collar, somehow.

My point is that Obama's 4% margin of victory disappears if you take away:
African-American voters
upscale suburban voters
OR
rural voters

(The third group being the forgotten demographic)

Posted by lampwick | February 12, 2008 3:50 PM

This would be fascinating stuff if only Nick had a clue about how to color the map to make it possible to read it. I'm finding myself squinting a moving my 17 inch monitor around trying to tell the really dark purple counties from the really dark green ones.

It's really simple: counties have widely different results should have widely different colors and as the results head toward 50-50, the colors should converge on a common color --- think red -> purple

Geez...

Posted by paul | February 12, 2008 4:11 PM

This would be EVEN MORE fascinating stuff if only Matt had a clue about actual Connecticut voters.

Obama's win in Connecticut was huge because he scored big numbers in strongly Republican areas like Litchfield County as well as in the cities. Matt can try to make a link to the loser Lamonsters, but Obama's real strength is that McCain/Lieberman voters prefer him to Hillary, and in my view a lot of them can be picked off in the Fall when Barak swings back to the center on the war.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 12, 2008 4:58 PM

But Lieberman voters don't prefer him to Clinton. Lieberman and Clinton both did well in places like Orange, outside of New Haven, and other working class areas of the state. The same pattern holds in Massachusetts; in the northeast (and California), obama is the candidate of yuppie democrats and African-Americans. In the South and midwest, he's also the candidate of suburban Democrats.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | February 12, 2008 5:28 PM

Kudos to Nicholas for making the obvious obvious.

(And I mean that sincerely, believe it or not.)

Posted by Petey | February 12, 2008 5:38 PM

Nicholas--Orange IS suburban, not "working class". I think you're basically correct about Obama's base of support, but Connecticut shows he's beginning to cut deeply into Hillary's base of support among women, and he does much better with White men than she does without regard to class.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 13, 2008 8:15 AM

So Clinton hangs on to the Reagan Democrats and Obama doesn't? Does this add up to a Dem win?

Posted by jane | February 24, 2008 7:39 PM