This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: In 2008, an African-American is the likely Democratic presidential nominee. Not surprisingly, throughout the primaries and caucuses, analysts have looked to see how much and what part of the white vote Sen. Barack Obama has received. Since Ohio and especially Pennsylvania, his inability to connect with the white working class has become a frequent refrain.
Obama's robust victory in North Carolina and very slim loss in Indiana partly allay these concerns. Obama won a higher percentage of the blue-collar white vote in Indiana than he did in Pennsylvania. And when viewed in historical context, Obama's white support is actually unheralded.
White support of African-American candidates can never be assumed in the United States, even in the 21st century. Since Reconstruction, only five African-Americans have been elected statewide as governor or senator and from only three states.
In cities, election of at-large council members often precluded African-American representation for many years.
Fights over the mayoralty have broken along racial lines in a number of cities, with Chicago's 1983 contest the most egregious in terms of racial voting appeals. Cities with very small black populations -- Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles -- elected black mayors easily. But in the Northeast and Midwest where cities exhibit the vestiges of machine politics and a sizeable black population, the contests are more hard fought and the results more closely follow demographics. In the Rust Belt, blacks and whites compete over jobs, schools and neighborhoods. From Detroit to Cleveland to Philadelphia to New York City, black mayors were elected with only between 8 and 22 percent of the white vote.
Obama's white support in this presidential primary contest has been unexpected in certain quarters, but it does fall into the pattern we see with mayoral elections. In states with a negligible black population -- Maine, Vermont, Iowa, North Dakota, Washington, Wyoming and Idaho -- he has done very well. With the exception of Vermont, these contests were decided before his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, became an issue.
Obama has also done well in some Southern states, by capturing the large black vote and a share of the white vote. This pattern was again evident in North Carolina.
The Missouri primary was held before the controversy over Wright. In St. Louis, where the city's first black mayor got only 11 percent of the white vote citywide (although 42 percent in the central corridor), Obama received 71.1 percent of the vote in the February presidential primary. The city's black population is estimated at 50.4 percent in 2006.
The individual ward returns tell an interesting tale. In the predominantly black wards, Obama received between 84 and 89 percent of the votes cast. In the integrated corridor wards, Obama's share was between 70 and 74 percent. In the largely white 13, 14, 16 and 23rd wards, Obama received between 48 and 52 percent. In the two most southern wards, 11 and 12, Clinton won 50 and 55 percent of the vote to Obama's 47 and 41 percent.
Obama did well throughout St. Louis, but his vote decreased in the whiter, more southern areas. A similar pattern occurred in Milwaukee, which is 39.6 percent black. (The Wisconsin primary was also pre-Wright.) Of 614 wards in that city, Obama carried all but 61.
The Wright issue played a role in the Ohio primary and, coupled with "bittergate," affected the voting in Pennsylvania. In Cleveland, which has elected two black mayors since 1967, Obama received 69.9 percent of the vote. The city is 53.2 percent black. Philadelphia, 44.3 percent black, cast 65.2 percent of its votes for Obama.
These figures do not show overwhelming white support, but there clearly was some. Obama's fate in these states was sealed outside the major cities.
Network commentators frequently refer to the white working class, those without college educations. These blocs of voters are not always solidly Democratic. Some reflect the "silent majority," the term coined by Richard Nixon, who, along with other Republicans, courted them on racial grounds, stressing their opposition to busing and affirmative action.
After World War II, the suburbs and exurbs were populated by whites fleeing from the city's diversity and aided in their quest by federally guaranteed loans favoring white homebuyers in white communities outside the city limits. (Two books, "White Flight" by Kevin Kruse and "The Silent Majority" by Matthew Lassiter, deal very well with integration and resegregation and voting patterns outside the central city.) Those living near Cleveland and Philadelphia hear of the city's black-white political struggles, crime and the decay of the schools. Their voting remains reflective of their demography.
In the beginning, Obama's image was untarnished. He ran well in principally white states and in Missouri and Wisconsin, both more racially mixed. The Wright controversy tarnished Obama's image and led to more common patterns of white voting in the Rust Belt. Nonetheless, the tremendous youth vote for Obama did not follow older generations' racial fissures. Most interesting perhaps is that Obama did better in outstate Ohio or Pennsylvania among those blue-collar white voters than black mayoral candidates have done when they ran in Cleveland or Philadelphia.
The best way to sum up the white vote for Obama may be to say that it is better than anyone would have expected four years ago,that old patterns hold but not to the same extent, and that this, perhaps, is a newer world.
Lana Stein is a professor emerita of political science at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.