Kentucky Oregon Exit Poll Analysis
Kentucky Oregon Exit Poll Analysis
Submitted by politicalWinters on Wed, 05/21/2008 - 7:14am.
The Associated Press takes a look at last night's voting patterns.
Quote: White voters played a decisive role in Hillary Rodham Clinton's lopsided victory in Kentucky's Democratic presidential primary. Barack Obama got the victory in more liberal Oregon, where race and the hard-edged rivalry between the two embattled candidates were muted. Nearly nine in 10 of each state's voters were white, surveys of voters showed, but there the similarities ceased.
Kentucky's more rural population fit the profile of states where Clinton has done well, while Oregon's residents more resembled those that have delivered for Obama all year.
Divided voters
Interesting, isn't it, that the divisions among voters isn't limited to just Republican versus Democrat or liberal versus conservative. These divisions seem to be profound.
I suspect there have always been divisions but that modern communications -- and even more sophisticated vote tallying -- make them stand out as they never did before. As the world gets smaller, people are able to gravitate to like-minded voters through communications in ways that would have been impossible even 50 years ago. So someone who might have held a minority opinion in their little community a few decades ago and would have consequently been ignored as a fringe element can now find strength in the numbers of kindred spirits from across the country via the Internet, talk radio and cable TV.
The challenge for modern leaders is to convince people to put aside their opinions, no easy thing as blogs and talk shows intentionally aim at segmenting the market in order to attract an audience large enough to entice advertisers.
Walter Jones is the director of Morris News Service and has been covering politics since 1998.