For what it's worth, when I did my
independent assessment of white vote performance by county and state, I came up with around 16% of whites in Alabama voting for Obama in 2012. I think it is actually more likely that the 2008 exit polls were much further off than the 2012 exit polls, the latter of which were pretty close to being accurate.
I made a post awhile back where I highlighted that there was no mathematically possible scenario in which only 10% of AL whites voted for Obama in 2008.
It was likely closer to 20% than 10% based on actual voter rolls and population at the time, as crazy as that may seem.
Yeah, you know...the more I look at the 2008 numbers and the likely racial composition of AL in both 2008 and 2012 (based on Census figures and the average discrepancy between Census and turnout in Southern states that do keep racial turnout data), I really think there was some sort of reverse Bradley effect at play in 2008 exit polling. It just doesn't add up, the whole "Obama got 10% of the white vote in 2008".
Even the active voter rolls in 2012 in AL were >70% white; it's virtually guaranteed that the AL electorate would have been even whiter than the active rolls. Black turnout was likely 90% of the roll number, which would put it somewhere between 23-24%; non-white, non-black turnout was likely around 3%.
73.5% white
23.5% black @ 95% D = 22.3
3.0% other @ 60% D = 1.8
Total = 24.1
Obama's 2012 share = 38.4
38.4 - 24.1 = 14.3
14.3/73.5 = 19.4%
You can tweak this all around the margins, but it's certainly not going to cut Obama's share of the white vote nearly in half. In some cases, it'd actually increase it. I think I'll stick with the original version of my above map. Interesting.
I feel like Blacks in Alabama would be more than 95 percent D, more like 98-99. Would that make a difference?
It would make some difference, and like I outlined above, if black turnout as a share of the electorate were as high in Alabama in 2008 as it was in Georgia, then that would explain it. My own calculations in Georgia suggested that black Obama support dropped from 98% in 2008 to 95% in 2012. There wouldn't be a lot of wiggle room for that dynamic in Alabama if blacks voted 98-99% D in 2012 (exit polls claim that AL blacks, too, voted 98% D in 2008). I just don't buy the premise that AL blacks are somehow more organized or likely to comprise as large of a share of the electorate as they are in Georgia, which has a black population five points larger than AL's. I have the 2012/2013 stats on-hand for each state, so let's take a look:
Georgia 2013 Census Black Pop: 31.4%
Georgia 2012 Registered Black Voters: 29.9%
Alabama 2010 Census Black Pop: 26.6%
Alabama 2012 Registered Black Voters: 26.7%
Alabama's voter rolls are in better shape with respect to black representation, for sure, but I fail to see how this could translate into the kind of surge we would have needed to see in 2008 and 2012 to explain "10% white Dem". For what it's worth, 2008 AL exit polls claim that 29% of the voting block was black. That'd put it within striking distance of the "10% white Dem" territory, but it's a hard pill for me to swallow to believe that whites were actually under-represented (the same exit poll claims only 65% of voters were white, despite more than 70% of the registered voters being white then) and blacks over-represented at the polls in either election by such a large amount.
So basically, yeah, even though I'm in no formal or scientific position to do so, I guess I'm questioning the accuracy/margin-of-error of the AL 2008 exit polls with respect to race.
