Florida and Obama

It will be very interesting to see what happens to the GOP in Florida. Even though he pulled his ads from local media there, Romney is on the upturn in the polls. In fact, according to RCP, Romney is in the lead. Of course, with Hillary's spectacular defeat in South Carolina (55 to 27) at the hands of Obama, we can't really trust the polls. They predicted only a 10 point spread in favor of Obama. The 28 point gap is rather larger than that (180% larger, in fact).

The pollsters seem to be doing a poor job this year. The major polling groups seem to just be guessing as to the actual margin of victory. This has been especially true of the Democrats. The new dynamic of a woman and a black man is causing a shift of voters' opinions. Sure it's fine to say that you support equal rights, but it is quite another to follow a woman or a black man as the leader of your country. I personally feel that that view is completely ridiculous and that votes should not be based on skin color or gender, but I do believe that people throughout the U.S. are struggling with this "dilemma." They may not give a completely accurate answer to a pollster.

Florida is a southern state (duh) so many of its voters may be influenced by racism that is not as pronounced in other places. Many blacks will probably vote for Obama while many white women will probably vote for Clinton. At the start of the race, many blacks did not support Obama. Many were of the opinion that Obama, a partially black man, could not win and would only be used as a scapegoat for the whites to get out of Iraq. After he won in Iowa and it was shown that he was a serious candidate, more blacks began supporting him. His win in South Carolina was powered almost exclusively by blacks (80% of the blacks voted for him, while only 25% of whites did so. To keep up his momentum, he will need to attract more white voters.