Exit Polls: Obama Loses To Clinton Among 'Bitter' Low-Income Voters
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About Sam Stein
Sam Stein is a Political Reporter at the Huffington Post, based in Washington, D.C. Previously he has worked for Newsweek magazine, the New York Daily News and the investigative journalism group Center for Public Integrity. He has a masters from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a graduate of Dartmouth College. Sam can be reached at stein@huffingtonpost.com.
Exit polls from the Pennsylvania election show that low-income Democratic voters favored Sen. Hillary Clinton by relatively wide margins.
Those Pennsylvanians who earned $15,000 to $30,000 backed the New York Democrat by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent. That increased to 57 percent to 43 percent when the income range was raised from $30,000 to $50,000
The results could suggest that Sen. Barack Obama's comments that small town, working class whites cling to religion, guns, and anti-immigration sentiment, had some political impact in the days leading up to the primary. However, it is important to note Obama has also had difficulty in winning over this constituency in earlier contests. And the margins in the exit polls are not breathtakingly large.
So while Obama's comments, made at a private San Francisco fundraiser, clearly didn't help, they may not have entirely contributed to his deficit.
Late Update: On the other hand... CNN reports that, "Pennsylvania Democrats said Tuesday night they don't view Obama any more out of touch than Clinton: 66 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats said Clinton is in touch with people like them, while 65 percent said the same for Obama."
April 22, 2008 08:04 PM