Obama's message of change trounces Clinton in South Carolina

I’ve been looking at the South Carolina exit polls, the election results, and I’ve been wondering just what happened that resulted in Barack Obama’s trouncing win over Hillary Clinton. There are plenty of analytical media stories that you can read on this—New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and McClatchy. Most of the stories are saying the same thing—Obama won the African-American vote. But there is more here. According to the CNN exit polls, Obama certainly did win around 8 out of 10 African-American votes. But Obama won clear majorities among gender, age brackets, church-going, education, ideology, and income. There is something more here. I found this interesting detail in McClatchy’s analysis:

If South Carolina is a sign of what's to come, their competition will be tough, perhaps even nasty, and driven perhaps as much by the race and gender of the voters as by the candidates' agendas.

Clinton and Obama each hold a firm base in the party, as illustrated by the results so far from four contests in all four regions of the country — Iowa in the Midwest, New Hampshire in the Northeast, Nevada in the West and South Carolina in the South.

Her base is women, whites, older people, blue-collar workers, and firm Democrats.

His base is males, blacks, young people, upper middle class professionals and independents.

That gives Clinton an edge; women and whites are a much bigger slice of the party, and Democrats outnumber independents.
But Obama has shown an ability to break into her base, as he did in winning the women's vote in Iowa.

The key to Obama's success is reaching across racial lines, avoiding being seen as a "black candidate" with limited appeal and winning white votes.

We have got two different bases of support for both candidates. McClatchy claims that the key to Obama’s success will be to reach across the racial lines, and not appear to be too much of a “black candidate” for white voters. It is even more than that. Obama needs to break into Clinton’s base with women, blue-collar workers, firm Democrats, and Hispanics. Obama has been breaking into that base with his message of change. Going back to this CNN story on Obama’s win in the Iowa caucus:

"Just over half of Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus-goers who preferred Clinton.

Clinton had worked to convince Iowa caucus-goers she has the experience to enact change, while Edwards and Obama preached that she is too much of a Washington insider to bring change to the nation's capital.

Twenty percent of Democrats said Clinton's campaign mantra -- experience -- was the most important attribute of a presidential candidate.

This is how Obama is breaking into Clinton’s base of support—by consistently pressing this message home about he is the candidate of change, that he will change things if he is elected to the Oval Office. This message of Obama’s change was a stronger pull for South Carolina voters than the negative attacks coming from the Clinton campaign. And now with Senator Ted Kennedy’s upcoming endorsement of Obama, this could result in the Obama campaign taking more votes away from the Clinton base. Hillary Clinton is going to have to find some way to blunt Obama’s message of change before Super Duper Tuesday, because I don’t think Clinton’s touting of experience will help her.

We’ll find out in two weeks.