Obama's best wins yet

I worked as a voter protection attorney for the Obama campaign in Richmond today. Due to the weather, it took five hours to get from Richmond back to DC (it's usually about an hour and forty-five minutes). Interstate 95 resembled REM's "Everybody Hurts" video, but with freezing rain, and without all the song and dance. It was so bad that I ended up taking a detour through part of Maryland just to get from Northern Virginia to DC.

Anyway, Virginia and Maryland might be Obama's most important wins yet, because they represent the widest range of support he's received across the demographic spectrum. The Washington Post elaborates:

Obama won among men, among women and among union voters. He won big among the affluent, educated voters in the District's suburbs, but he also won convincingly among rural voters and small-town Democrats.

Celinda Lake, an independent Democratic pollster, noted that the class divide that once demarcated the Obama-Clinton battle lines was obliterated in Virginia and Maryland. In Virginia, Obama carried the vote of those earning less than $50,000 by 22 percentage points. In Maryland, the gap was 24 percentage points.

Clinton still pulled more votes from white women, but that advantage was neutralized by Obama's popularity among white men. Even Latinos, who helped deliver Nevada and California for the senator from New York, sided with Obama -- although the number of Hispanic voters was much smaller.

"Shifting Loyalties" [Washington Post]