Apparently there was an election somewhere yesterday...actually, I can't lie and pretend I wasn't glued to my monitor hitting the "refresh" button every couple of minutes. I'm just hoping that my pretence of not caring will translate into me actually not caring and then I'll feel better. I really thought that the polls were wrong and that Red would beat Blue. But that was not to be.
There is some interesting demographic analysis coming out at this early stage about the voting patterns. CNN has a great exit poll that breaks down voting by age, race, sex, income, religion etc
Go and check it out, but here are some interesting results:
Romney won 7% more male voters than Obama. But Obama won 11% more females than Romney. The age gap is just as acute - 23% more under 30s voted for Obama and the over 65s voted for Romeny by 12%. (Interestingly, if that continues into future elections, winning the elderly vote will become more and more important as the popoulation ages!) By race, Romeny won by 20% amongst whites, African-Americans went to Obama by 86% (!) and Latinos also voted overwhemlingly for Obama (a 44% gap). Finally, protestants voted for Romeny by 15% and Catholics went for Obama by 2%.
Some are saying that the GOP has a problem in the future - the country is becoming more and more Hispanic and that is only going to favour the Dems. What do you think? Is this a "watershed" election? Or merely another tight presidential race? Finally, what do you think of the idea of breaking voters into monolithic blocs? The White vote? The Women vote? What do you think about analysing policies by the effect that they'll have on "Hispanics" etc? Frankly, I think it is simplistic and tends to overstate the difference between people in these arbitrary camps. But what do I know? I (quietly) predicted a one-term Obama presidency.