No Runny Eggs

So it’s done, or mostly so.   There are still a couple of Senate races yet to be officially determined (yes, one of them includes Al Franken and yes I live in MN…sigh) but in general, we’re done.   Now that I’ve had about 22 hours to decompress it’s probably a good time, before I completely lose the “sense of the moment” to look at what we learned in this election cycle.   Most of this is gleaned from the exit polling done by CNN:

1. Contrary to Obama’s protests, the election was  decided on  race – While he did swing about 2.5M votes of caucasians, Obama’s win came from non caucasian voters.   We knew about the African American vote.   Only 4% of African Americans voted for McCain.   Traditionally, 10% to 12% voted Republican.   However, Latinos also moved 14 points towards Obama versus what Kerry was able to garner in ’04
2. The PUMAs were a work of fiction – Oh I’m sure there were some and I’m sure they voted for McCain.   However, Bush got 11% of the Democrat vote in ’04 and McCain got just 10%.   Those numbers tell me that the PUMAs looked no different than your normal Dem voter.   I suppose it’s possible that McCain may have had an even smaller Dem vote without their support.   However, I’ve seen other result data that tends to corroborate the lack of a PUMA influence.
3. Working from your base to the middle works better than working from the middle towards your base – Obama received support from 89% of self ascribed “liberals”, compared to Kerry getting 85% of the same group.   McCain only received 78% of the “conservative” vote while Bush received 84% of the same group.   Of course those who are moderates broke for Obama 60% to 39%.   It’s clear from this that while Obama held his base, McCain never fully recovered from his early pokes in the conservative eyes.
4. No “event” cost McCain the election – Regardless of when they decided who they were going to vote for, with the exception of the last week, McCain was never closer than a 5% deficit.    This is interesting in that the talk of how the economic issues impacted McCain doesn’t seem to hold water.   What this also shows is that the election results were  about broad ideology and candidate  confidence issues.   It also suggests that while polling better than the broad Republican brand, McCain was never able to completely shake  the negative perceptions.    
5. 67% of those polled favor expanded offshore drilling – I’m a bit surprised that this number is still as high with $2.40 gas as it was with $4.00 gas.   It will be interesting to see how Pelosi/Reid/Obama respond to this.
6. Expect more Socializing of Industry – while only 39% of all voters supported the $700 billion bailout, unless they were strongly opposed to it (only 29%), they voted for Obama.
7. Age more important than Race – While I don’t entirely believe this given what I saw in item 1, the exit polls showed that 39% said the age of the candidate was a factor in their vote, while only 19% said race was a factor.   The people who said age was a factor overwhelmingly supported Obama.

Ok, so what does this mean?   I’m not honestly sure.   I’ll get back to you after the weekend.  

One  other quick observation:

Who was the person least happy with the Obama victory?   Hillary Clinton.

If Obama does well as President, Hillary can’t run until 2012 and we have this nasty habit of changing parties after 8 years by the same person.   If Obama doesn’t do well, that would likely move that group of no conviction moderates to swing their emotions to the nonDemocrat.