Now that the penalties on FL and MI are the same as the GOP penalty....

[Sam Spade]

Basically, as far as I can tell, the voters had aligned with their respective candidates early on, perhaps as early as New Hampshire, but definitely by South Carolina.  Although Hillary fared better with blacks and younger people in some areas and Obama fared better with the white working class and Hispanics in other areas, I simply don't believe that this had anything to do with "changing opinions" but rather with the cultural aspects of these voting populations.

In other words, I have long suspected that movement among voters in this race only occurred in two areas. 

1. There was roughly about 5% of the vote among *Democrats* nationally that was malleable.  In that way, Bush-Kerry compares very well to this race on the national scale.  The only place where I can definitely attest that this malleability switched to supporting Obama was in WI, IN and NC (and I still think there was some questionable voting going on in Gary).  The fact is that if primaries were held among Democrats only who identified as Democrats, Hillary would have won the race fairly easily.

2. The Independent/Republican crossover vote.  These guys were the real interlopers in all of this, and they naturally supported Obama over Clinton, though this became less as time went on (although some of that too may have something to do with cultural aspects - more thoughts on that later).

I may say more on this later too.