I was struck by the same I was struck by the same exit poll numbers that Addie pointed out, but she misreads them somewhat. It wasn't that 59 percent of all Clinton voters said that yes, race was important to them. Twenty percent of all voters in Ohio said that race was important, and of that percentage, 59 percent voted for Clinton. It's still a significant number, but not as shocking as it would be if more than half of her voters revealed themselves to be against voting for a black candidate on the basis of race alone. She also claimed 59 percent of the 14 percent of total voters who said that race was "one of several" factors for them in choosing a candidate. It should also be noted that 53 percent of those who said that race wasn't important at all voted for Clinton, while only 45 percent of that group voted for Obama. I do agree with Addie though that these numbers indicate that we're still no where near a "post-racial society."
Also interesting in the exit polls from last night: 17 percent of voters said that a candidate's gender is important to them, and Clinton won 57-43 among that portion, which means that the number of voters who actively wanted a female candidate outnumbered those those who actively did not. The folks who said they didn't care about the gender of the candidate split evenly down the line, so it appears that both gender and race benefited Clinton in Ohio last night.
--Kate Sheppard
