The Demographics of the Democratic Primaries

Check out this cool tool from the NY Times that visualizes how different demographic groups voted in the Democratic primaries.

The most striking difference is the divide between blacks and whites and women and men (the age, income and education demographics also varied, but not as starkly). While I'm sure there is latent racism in these figures I don't believe racism explains it all. People are attracted to people more like themselves. So naturally blacks will tend to vote for the black and whites will tend to vote for the white. Similarly, women will tend to vote for the women while men will tend to vote for the man.

What makes me proud to be a Democrat is that we, as a party, are willing to risk it all by putting forward two candidates who push the demographic boundaries. We could have played it safe in a year when it looks like beating McCain should be easy. We did not.