Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain appear to have done equally well with their respective partisans, so at first glance this would appear to be a wash. In terms of votes, however, Sen. Obama clearly won this battle -- 89% of 39% trumps 90% of 32%.Independents, as usual, were the key, and Sen. Obama won this group by a large margin. By bringing home loyal Democrats and a majority of independents, he basically cruised to a popular-vote victory.
Looking at ideology gives us another hint at why the Democratic nominee won on Tuesday.
As expected, Sen. Obama dominated the liberal bloc and, notably, he out-polled Sen. McCain among all-important moderates by a 3-to-2 margin.What I find especially significant is that Sen. Obama managed to pull 20% of self-described conservatives -- that's a stunner, at least to me. It tells me that Sen. McCain's attempt to create a liberal-conservative contrast was an abysmal failure, and it speaks volumes about the withering brand of the Republican Party.
Given the critical importance of Second Amendment rights, I also wanted to find out how gun owners voted on Tuesday.
Before judging these numbers, I decided to look at the 2000 Bush-Gore exit polls for some context. What I found surprised me.In 2000, 48% of those surveyed lived in a gun-owning household, a number that dropped to 42% this year. Result: The NRA (et al) lost 12.5% of its voice at the polls in 2008, despite unprecedented efforts to convince gun owners that Sen. Obama would be the most anti-guns president in American history.
What's more, while gun-owning households split virtually the same way in 2008 as they did in 2000, no-guns households gained considerable ground, from 58%-39% for Gore-Lieberman to 65%-33% for Obama-Biden.
Do the math -- the Democratic candidate's margin among no-guns households ballooned from 19% to a whopping 32%, even without considering the losses suffered by gun owners.
If that's not handwriting on the wall, I don't know what is. We have much work to do.
