Looking at 2008 elections results based on income for white people, it is pretty obvious to say that most white people voted for McCain. Looking at the Pewresearch chart for white people voting results, shows that most white people voted for McCain at all income levels. For the income range of less than $50,000, Obama had 47% of the votes and McCain got 51% of the votes. This is the closest that Obama got to having the majority of votes for any income level with white people. Probably the reason he got that many votes are these white people are poor and are most likely surrounded by other poor people of different races that could have influenced their opinion on the president election. When you look at the overall voter’s choice based on income, Obama had 60% of votes from people of an income of less than $50,000. When you get to the higher income, white people had a higher tendency to vote for McCain, in the range of $50,000- $100,000 McCain received 56% of the votes and Obama got 42% of the votes. Also looking at the CNN exit poll it says the same thing for whites with an income of over $50,000, 56% voted for McCain and 51% of white people with less than $50,000 voted for McCain also. I don’t know if McCain gave better incentives for higher income people than Obama but I would think most of these people are older and probably couldn’t see having a black president in their lifetime especially if they are from the time when segregation was happening. Also for some reason I just feel that white, religious people vote more republican than democratic but that could just be how it is in Texas.
Now to look at how education level affected the white voters choice. On the Pewresearch chart, only the whites with a post graduate degree voted mainly for Obama with 54% and McCain had 44% of those votes. One reason I can see white people voting for Obama from this education level is college is a liberal type of setting and has that influence on its students. We also are a generation that wants to see a change and be different from other generations, so voting for Obama was our way to be different. It’s also interesting to see on that chart that whites with some college (40% Obama, 58% McCain) or just a high school education (40% Obama, 58% McCain) mostly voted for McCain. I don’t want to seem like I’m stereotyping but these whites could be the racist types, maybe from the deep south, that still are not educated enough to see around the color of someone’s skin, so they would only vote for someone with their same skin color. This is also the trend on the CNN’s exit poll with 51% of whites with a college education voting for McCain and 47% voting for Obama and 58% of no college for whites voting for McCain and Obama receiving 40% of those votes.
CNN poll
pewresearch chart
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1023/exit-poll-analysis-2008
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