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North Carolina: Precursor to Victory or Defeat for Obama?

As political observers are examining national polls, even key state polls, North Carolina may be the precursor to victory or defeat for Barack Obama in November.

On May 6, North Carolina was "Obama country." He won the Democratic primary by almost 15%, beating Hillary Clinton by close to 230,000 votes. Some of the media touted the win as a further example of his crossover appeal in what was a red state in the last two presidential elections.

Two weeks later, a different picture emerged. In a poll conducted by Survey USA just fourteen days after Obama's big win in the Tar Heel state, he trailed GOP candidate John McCain by 8 points. Meanwhile, in the same poll, Clinton led McCain by 6 points. That is a huge 14 point difference between Obama and Clinton's support.

Why is Obama trailing McCain while Clinton is beating him? Could it be that the Jeremiah Wright ads run by the North Carolina Republican Party and criticized by a number of people, including John McCain, have had a deep impact on voters? Has the almost daily barrage by talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Fox News helped create a very difficult issue for Obama and the Democrats?

A look at the internal poll data would seem to indicate just that. In the trial ballot tests, McCain is getting less than 10% of the African-American vote against both Obama (7%) and Clinton (9%). While Obama gets 89% of African-Americans in a General Election test against McCain, Clinton gets 74%. The fact that 74% of the African-Americans say they would vote for her after the tough North Carolina campaign, shows how strongly black voters support Democrats in General Elections. Of course if she were to win the nomination, some of those voters might not support her.

The major difference in support is among white voters, a demographic group that is far more likely to split its tickets in November than African-Americans. McCain leads Clinton by 11 points with white voters, but against Obama he leads by a huge 32 points.

What should be even more distressing to Obama supporters is that almost half (49%) of the voters identified themselves as Democrats while only a third (33%) said they were Republicans. Despite this lopsided party affiliation in favor of the Democrats, McCain's vote is above the important 50% mark (51%).

If Clinton had 89% of the African-Americans as Obama has, her lead would be even larger over McCain. On the other hand, Obama can only get 11% more of African-Americans than he has now, a shift that would add 2 points to his totals and take away 1 point from McCain. The GOP candidate would still be at 50%.

The African-American population in North Carolina is 7%-10% higher than in targeted states like Ohio and Michigan, meaning that if Obama lost by 30 points among whites in those states, he would have no chance of winning them in November.

This difference in support between Obama and Clinton from white voters is dramatic. It points out the real problem Obama has when he is tied to Rev. Wright --- something that happened when the North Carolina GOP ran strong TV ads showing the Obama-Wright connection. The North Carolina data presents real questions about Obama's viability in battleground states.

His backers are going to do everything humanly possible to take Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright off the table in the campaign. Anyone with the temerity to tackle the association between the two men will be accused of racism.

Does using the Obama-Wright relationship bring race into the race? Obama backers will say that of course it does. Obama detractors will say that his relationship with Wright is an issue of character and that Obama has failed that character test. They will argue Wright --- and white radical William Ayers --- is fair game in the campaign.

Either way, his association with his former minister and self-proclaimed mentor, clearly takes away from the image that Obama had so successfully built in the early primaries, that he was a "transcendental post racial candidate." That image has obviously been tarnished.

It doesn't take a campaign ad maker to know that the tapes showing Obama praising Wright will be spliced with Wright's own condemnation of America ("It's not God Bless America, it's God Damn America") into a short, 30 second TV ad that ties one inextricably to the other.

It is likely that these issues would never have reached critical mass without the constant drumbeat of radio talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Both have focused on Wright and Ayers and made them almost daily items on their radio shows.

When McCain spoke out against the North Carolina GOP ads, they both defended the ads and urged their huge audiences to rally against McCain and in support of the state party. In part because of their stand, McCain backed off of his criticism of the ads.

Without the incessant reminder of Rev. Wright by the talk show hosts, both of whom have worked diligently to keep the Democratic campaign going as long as possible, Obama might have escaped the primaries with his "post racial politics" image intact.

However, Limbaugh and Hannity have continued to fuel the Wright issue. Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos", designed to keep the contest going by having Republicans vote for Hillary Clinton in Democratic primaries, Hannity's long-term assault on Ayers, and their combined attack on Wright have put what they call the "character issue" --- and what their opponents call the racial issue --- on the front burner.

And, as the data in North Carolina seems to point out, when Wright is a major issue it does not benefit Obama.

Clinton' supporters will say that Wright is one of the reasons she has done so well since the controversy erupted in mid March. They could be right about Wright. Since March 4, Clinton has won about a half million more votes in Democratic races than Obama.

Despite that fact, the media has largely ignored the recent elections. It is as though they never happened. If you combine the results from Oregon and Kentucky on March 20, she captured about 150,000 more votes than Barack Obama despite the fact that he is the presumptive nominee. And those votes came from white voters. They continued the racial divide that has increased in almost every state since Obama's Feb. 19 win in Wisconsin.

What cannot be argued is 1) that Rev. Wright was front and center in the North Carolina primary and 2) that fourteen days later Clinton was trailing among white voters by 11 points while Obama was trailing with them by 32 points.

What can be debated is 1) whether voters in North Carolina are different from voters in northern states like Michigan and Ohio, and 2) whether this means Obama cannot win battleground states when Rev. Wright becomes an issue.

President Bush won the state by about 12 points in both of his races, making North Carolina a solid red state. But the fact that Clinton leads there while Obama trails, might point out serious flaws in the Illinois senator's campaign.

Will North Carolina be Obama country in November? Will white voters overlook the Wright controversy, or will they use it as a reason to vote against Obama?

The huge racial divide this polling seems to demonstrate in North Carolina may not bode well for Obama in major battleground states when the Wright issue is used against him in November. And, although any sponsors of ads will be severely criticized for using Wright, it is almost certain he will be the focal point of hard hitting ads late in the campaign.

These trial ballot tests would seem to provide the evidence that the Limbaugh/Hannity focus on Wright has had an impact. Will the impact last? Is North Carolina a precursor to victory or defeat? That's what the next six months will determine.

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