Michele Bachmann: Hillary can’t ride wave of white ‘guilt’ into office like Obama did

[karynnj]

71. That would be true if there was the same advantage of generic Democrat vs generic Republican as

in 2012.

It is true that EVERY Democrat has received somewhere near 90% of the black vote and large majorities of Asian, Hispanic and Jewish voters. Look at percents for Gore and Kerry. One thing that was very different in 2008, was not the percent, but the absolute number of black voters. There were many who never voted before.

I agree that Obama likely lost some votes due to racism, but estimates of that tend to be pretty low. One study found some by identifying some Southern places where Obama in 2008 (a great D year) got fewer votes than Kerry in a bad year for Democrats - this is striking given the overall differences in the years and that Kerry was not a Southern favorite - to say the least.

Another thing that should help Hillary is that there will be another 4 years of young voters. I saw a study that indicated that Kerry would have won if instead of the 2004 electorate, he had the 2008 electorate. That cohort of new young voters went very Democratic. The increase for 2012 was likely very helpful in 2012.