Did Obama win the Dem Primary cause of his race?

[Mr. Morden]

You're missing the racial dimension here. Southern white voters and black voters will not support the same candidate. Ever. If Clinton is the choice of Southern blacks, she is automatically disqualified in the minds of many Southern whites, to the benefit of John Edwards primarily but also probably to white!Obama somewhat. (The pattern is weaker in Appalachia, of course, but Appalachia voted very, very late this year.)

What about 1992?  Clinton swept the South in the primaries.  Did Brown or Tsongas do particularly well with either whites or blacks?  Or did Clinton pretty much win everybody?

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Minor sidenote here: It was actually 11 days between NH and NV.

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In 1972, Muskie won both Iowa and New Hampshire, and went on to lose the nomination.  Of course, McGovern came in a strong second place in both, and media coverage of these things was a lot different back then.....I don't think people really paid that much attention to Iowa yet at that point.  (At least, based on what I've read.  I wasn't born yet in 1972, so that's all I have to go on.  )

[Mr. Morden]

You're missing the racial dimension here. Southern white voters and black voters will not support the same candidate. Ever. If Clinton is the choice of Southern blacks, she is automatically disqualified in the minds of many Southern whites, to the benefit of John Edwards primarily but also probably to white!Obama somewhat. (The pattern is weaker in Appalachia, of course, but Appalachia voted very, very late this year.)

What about 1992?  Clinton swept the South in the primaries.  Did Brown or Tsongas do particularly well with either whites or blacks?  Or did Clinton pretty much win everybody?

Neither Brown nor Tsongas contested any Southern states except Florida (where Tsongas campaigned). Both were running out of funds by Super Tuesday and, in retrospect, had no shot even beforehand. (No idea on the voting patterns, btw, although Brown would later announce that he would consider Jesse Jackson as a running mate, so maybe he was trying black outreach at this point.)

So we're not counting 1992, because it wasn't competitive enough?  I assume we're not counting 2000 or 2004 either because they weren't competitive enough.  So are there *any* other Democratic primaries in the modern era that were competitive, on which you can conclude that the white and black Democrats will automatically vote for opposing candidates?

1988, sure.  But again, that has the complication of one of the candidates being black himself.  1984?  Same issue.  Jackson wasn't nearly as competitive as in '88, but presumably still got most of the black vote in the South.  1980?  Carter beat Kennedy in every state in the South.  Is that disqualified for the same reason as 1992 (the race wasn't sufficiently competitive in the South to measure this effect)?  Do you have to go back to 1976 for an example of Southern whites and blacks voting differently in a Democratic primary, in which none of the candidates was black himself?