Hillary’s White Flight Fright

Hillary Clinton’s cruise to the Democratic nomination has been hit again and again by one huge stumbling block — a profound weakness among white voters.

LifeZette estimates that Sanders has won about 7.4 million white votes, roughly half a million more than Clinton.

Despite an overall lead of almost 3 million votes cast so far in primaries and caucuses, the former secretary of state is losing the white vote to the formerly little-known senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. LifeZette estimates that Sanders has won about 7.4 million white votes, roughly half a million more than Clinton.

Remarkably, Clinton may wind up winning the nomination without a majority of white votes.

Her persistent struggles with the demographic — particularly outside the South — largely explain why the California primary is too close to call as voters prepare to head to the polls on Tuesday. A USC/Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll last week showed Sanders with a lead of 4 percentage points among eligible white voters in the Golden State.

Clinton’s difficulty winning white voters could spell trouble in a general election matchup with Republican Donald Trump, and it is the primary reason why she has failed to put away Sanders despite massive advantages in name recognition, overwhelming support from the Democratic Party hierarchy, and a sense of inevitability. Each time Sanders has apparently curbed her momentum after a big primary win, it has generally been the result of a mostly white state taking its turn on the primary calendar.

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It’s a role reversal for Clinton, who did much better among white voters during her 2008 primary battled against then-Sen. Barack Obama. Andra Gillespie, a black politics expert at Emory University in Atlanta, said it is important to remember that the current Democratic Party electorate is different from the one that voted eight years ago. As the party has become more dominated by minorities, she said, some of white Democrats who once supported Clinton have left.

“I wouldn’t assume that demographic is the same,” she said. “We’ve even seen a change since 2008 … Part of it is a shift in who we might be seeing.”

How We Estimated the Vote
Determining the precise racial breakdown in voting is impossible, because exit polls do not exist for every state, and the Democratic Party does not release raw vote totals for every caucus. LifeZette arrived at its estimate by examining the exit polls and the demographics of each state. For caucus states without raw vote totals, LifeZette used figures published earlier this year by Breitbart News, which used the “best information available,” such as news releases or statements from state Democratic parties or media estimates.

Exit polls indicated a tie in the white vote in New York, and six states have yet to vote.

In the 27 states where exit polls do exist, Sanders has an edge among white voters of almost 6.6 million to nearly 6.3 million. LifeZette estimated the rest by examining the racial makeup of the voting-age population in each state and then projecting the non-white portion of the Democratic primary electorate using similar states with exit polls as a guide. Finally, estimates of the percentage of the white vote won by each candidate come from comparisons to demographically similar states where exit polls were taken.

Sanders appears to have beaten Clinton among white voters in 27 states, while she topped him in 16. Exit polls indicated a tie in the white vote in New York, and six states have yet to vote.

Charles Henry, a professor emeritus in African-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, argued that Clinton got a boost among white voters in 2008 because Obama was her chief opponent.

“An obvious reason Clinton is doing less well among white voters this campaign is that her main opponent is white, not black,” he told LifeZette in an email. “The fact that she does less well among white men also speaks to the sexism that exists among male voters and that should help Trump in the general election.”

Henry noted that most black leaders endorsed Clinton early. He also wrote that she benefits from her association with Bill Clinton, who has a long history of winning black voters and remains exceedingly popular among African-Americans. Black voters are much more suspicious than white Democrats of Sanders’ history as an independent, Henry wrote.

“Remember that blacks identify with the Democratic Party more than any other identifiable group and that Sanders has been an independent all of his political career and in a state with almost no black voters,” he said. “I also think there is a significant age divide between black voters and older voters are the most likely to vote.”

Gillespie said white Democrats tend to be more liberal and more open to Sanders’ self-described socialism than black voters, who have a broader range of political views.

“From an ideological standpoint, Clinton would be closer to their views,” she said. “From that perspective, it’s not necessarily surprising.”

General Election Harbinger? 
Poor performance among whites in the primary by no means dooms Clinton’s general election hopes. Democrats regularly lose the white vote. When they win national elections, they do so by cobbling together a multiracial coalition. But her performance among white Democrats mirrors the low marks she gets from whites in general election polls.

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A Quinnipiac survey of registered voters last week gave Trump a lead of 50 percent to 33 percent among whites (and a 47-29 lead when pollsters included third-party candidates). A Washington Post/ABC News poll produced similar results: Whites favored Trump over Clinton by a 57-33 margin. The 24-point spread is even higher than Obama’s 20-point loss to Mitt Romney among whites in 2012.

Some analysts argue that Republicans have maxed out their support among whites and cannot win general elections without increasing their share of the minority vote. But academic research by Northwestern University professor Jennifer Richeson suggests there could be room to grow. In a study published in 2014, she and a colleague found that whites across the spectrum — liberals, centrists, or conservatives — moved to the right on a series of political issues after exposure to information that whites are projected to be minority of the U.S. population before the middle of the century.

Within the white demographic, some point to a gender division.

“Right now, Trump leads Hillary among male voters more substantially than she leads him among women voters,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

Harlan Hill, a Democratic strategist who is backing Sanders but has pledged to support Trump if Clinton is the nominee, said age is a bigger factor. He said younger blacks have been much open to Sanders in the primaries than their parents and grandparents.

“I think she’ll do well with white women,” he said, looking ahead to the general election. “But she has not done well with millennials of color, [or] young Hispanics … I think it’s more of a generational issue.”