Showing posts with label Jay Cost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jay Cost. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The Race for the Democratic Nomination

Jay Cost has a very interesting analysis of where things stand in the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination.
I am very interested in next week's election in West Virginia. Everybody expects Hillary Clinton to win, but I can't help but wonder if they'll be surprised by the size of the margin.

We can reasonably expect it to be enormous. From a socioeconomic standpoint, West Virginia is almost entirely comprised of the sort of counties that Obama has done poorly in. The median white income in West Virginia is about $30,000 per year. African Americans comprise roughly 3% of the state's population. This puts it somewhere between Belmont County, Ohio and Greene County, Pennsylvania. Clinton won 72% of the vote in Belmont and 75% in Greene.
He also points out that only one Democrat has won the White House while losing West Virginia - Woodrow Wilson in 1916. I doubt that Obama can count on a Teddy Roosevelt splitting the Republicans this time around though.