The 2008 presidential election has defied conventional wisdom. Few predicted John McCain’s Lazarus-like recovery. And certainly, most political observers — and the campaigns themselves — believed the race for the Democratic nomination would be settled long before the current sideshow.
Since Iowa and New Hampshire, state after state has become far more important than anyone had expected. Talk surrounds the upcoming primary in Pennsylvania.
North Carolina, like Pennsylvania, is delegate-rich, and Clinton hopes to capture it as well. But such a hope demonstrates a lack of understanding of the demographic and historical factors at work.
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has cruised to victory in states with high black populations, including Maryland and Mississippi. Comprising 38 percent of registered Democrats, blacks are the key voting block in the North Carolina primary. This gives Senator Obama an incredible head-start.
Clinton-style talk of general-election electability has not traditionally appealed to North Carolina black voters, who in 1996 renominated former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, over the well-financed and more-electable former Glaxo executive Charles Sanders, for an unsuccessful rematch against Sen. Jesse Helms. Gantt was black, and Sanders was white.
While countless campaigns have been sent to the political graveyard for an over-reliance on young voters, the youth vote really can play a major role in North Carolina. Here, too, Obama has the edge, thanks to a sophisticated effort at the grassroots and online levels. Young voters are especially well-organized in North Carolina, home to one of the largest public-university systems in the country and eleven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which will be Obama-turnout vehicles.
A third vital demographic blocking Senator Clinton’s hopes is military voters. With Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg, the Tar Heel state is home to the fourth-largest population of military personnel in the nation. These voters live in Eastern North Carolina which, while represented in many parts by Democratic members of Congress, is not Clinton country. President Clinton’s past troubles with military voters have been well documented; Senator Clinton’s recent visions of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire only compound the problem.
If North Carolina’s demographics are important indicators favoring Senator Obama, the state’s historical negativity to the Clintons is the most severe handicap.
North Carolina was not always an anti-Clinton state. In 1992, Bill Clinton lost to President George H. W. Bush by less than one percent. But after years of scandal and the war on tobacco, the state has an almost visceral reaction against both Clintons.
CONTINUED 1 2 Next > 
