There is a fascinating (as usual) governor’s race in Louisiana, where Republican wunderkind (and ethnic Indian, though born in Baton Rouge) Bobby Jindal has a slight lead over Cajun grandma and Democratic stalwart Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.
Take a look at these interesting results from a Mason-Dixon poll:
There were the traditional racial and gender gaps. Whites favored Jindal by a two-to-one margin of 61 percent to 29 percent for Blanco; blacks favored Blanco by a more than eight-to-one advantage of 83 percent to 11 percent for Jindal. Among all men, Jindal held a 53-39 advantage, while Blanco had 46-43.
Jindal held a 40-point advantage among white men, 66 to 26, but only a 24-point advantage, 56 to 32, among white women. Among black males, Blanco had a 65-point advantage, 79 to 14 for Jindal, but among black females, Blanco’s advantage was 78 points or 86 percent to 8 percent for Jindal.
These numbers may seem like typical numbers in the highly polarized politics we’ve come to accept as normal, but they aren’t.
University of Louisiana at Monroe political scientist Pearson Cross said Blanco needs a greater percentage of white votes.
“Right now, Kathleen Blanco is not at the magic number that will get a Democrat elected,” Cross said. “She is at 29 percent, but needs to be at 32 to 34 of the white vote, and a very strong black turnout that votes for her.”
“Louisiana is getting more and more like the rest of the country,” Cross said. “I cannot detect in these poll numbers any effect of Jindal’s ethnicity, but you can see there may be some anti-woman backlash among black males. Black males are significantly stronger in their support for Jindal than black females.”
“Black males are starting to vote like white males,” he said.
It’s a sad measure of the sorry state we’re in when increasing sexism among black males almost sounds like progress.
Strange analysis. Couldn’t it just be turned around to say that there is a significant anti-male backlash among black females in their stronger support for Blanco (granted I find this just as dubious).
He makes some pretty bold assumptions there.
Jindal’s giving solutions, the women want touchy-feely.
Well, black men are notably less likely to be Democrats than black women, which probably explains most of the difference here. I don’t think you should think that either sex is bigoted, at least without some more evidence.
And after the election was over and Jindal lost, conservative Fred Barnes ‘discovers’ that right-wing whites told pollsters they would vote for a person of color, and then didn’t. (Incidentally, Barnes’ analysis looks weak to me: Jindal ran ahead of the Republican candidate for State Insurance Commissioner. Although, come to think of it, I don’t know that candidates’ race.)