Supporters of same-sex marriage rights are fuming over California voters' approval of Proposition 8, which would place a ban on such marriages in the state constitution – especially since in other respects voters showed a somewhat left-of-center bent, including a massive victory by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.The implications of this are even more dramatic than they appear. As I noted earlier, in "Schwarzenegger Model is Disaster for GOP," the same minority constituencies that turned out for Obama may in future elections find more appealing the traditional social policy agenda of the Republican Party. This is especially true of Latinos, who went heavily for the GOP in 2004.
Ironically, however, a mathematical analysis of voting and exit poll data indicates very strongly that it was exactly that pro-Obama surge that spelled victory for Proposition 8.
When Proposition 8's passage first became apparent, it was widely assumed that hundreds of thousands of first-time or occasional voters had turned out to vote for Obama, then left the rest of their ballots blank, thus allowing more conservative voters to dominate ballot measures.
In fact, however, there was very little voting drop-off. There are still some late absentee and provisional ballots to be counted, but as of Monday, 10.96 million votes had been tallied in the presidential race and 10.85 million for and against Proposition 8.
The only conclusion, therefore, is that as Obama was running up a 2.6 million-vote victory over Republican John McCain in California – twice the margins by which Democrats won in 2000 and 2004 – a great many Obama voters were also voting for Proposition 8, sponsored by a very conservative religious coalition.
Proposition 8, in fact, garnered 1.6 million more votes than McCain received. And, it's apparent, many of those votes – enough to make the difference – came from African American and Latino voters drawn to the polls by Obamamania.
Time will sort out the full implications of this, but Walters' piece is more than just "bittersweet" news to Obamaniacs. This is a repudiation of the counter-culture wing of the Democratic Party establishment, in California no less!
If you look at all the data, you'll see numbers for first time voters. They rejected Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin. These first time voters were overwhelmingly for Obama, 83-17. Without Obama, Prop 8 would have passed by a much larger margin.
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ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of anger surrounding this last election and proposition 8. Something I noticed while talking to my friends is that I really didn't know why people would vote for it. I just felt really angry at them and the outcome.
I drove to some cities in counties that voted in favor of prop 8 so that I could get some first hand information about why people voted for it. I conducted a few interviews and posted them to http://www.discovertheuser.com/prop8
This isn't a partisan thing- I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I just thought it would help to see the other side's perspective.
This comment comes late but review of the data shows that its was not reported accurately and Blacks and Obama supporters did not hold the deciding votes. Religious conservatives and Republicans, majority of whom are White, did.
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