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In short, for Indiana, Clinton's projecting of a more GE favorable image (she's risen nationally in the polls in recent weeks) appears to have cost her among the liberal voters. This also explains why the polls were so wrong, especially SUSA. Clinton didn't gain the 21% of black voters that they polled, and they polled Clinton winning among liberals by a 53-44 margin, off by 23 percent. This is most likely due to the 'gas tax' issue. Though she had a 'divide and conquer' frame of the issue that work well for a GE against a Republican, in a Democratic primary, it allowed Obama to squeeze her from the liberal viewpoint.
- White Democrats moved from Clinton leading by 43% in OH, to Clinton leading by 28% in IN.
- Liberal voters moved from Clinton leading by 7% in OH to Obama leading by 14% in IN.
We can quibble about the effectiveness of the gas tax pander in the general election, but it surely seems correct that Clinton made a dreadful miscalculation about its impact on the Democratic primary. Whatever modest gains (and they appear quite modest) she may have made with blue collar voters, she lost and more among liberal voters who a) don't view taxes as evil, b) care about the environment, and c) aren't moved by stridently anti-intellectual appeals. The biggest problem, of course, is that the two groups aren't strictly separate; the white blue collar voters Clinton was trying to pander to also care about the environment, and can see through the anti-elitist rhetoric the campaign was trying to sell.
--Robert Farley
