Karl was on Fox’s early morning news show. He had a white slateboard on which he had scrawled the upcoming primaries, and he said which candidate he thought would win each state. He gave both Texas and Ohio to Hillary. I agree that Hillary will carry Texas because of the Latino vote. But Ohio? Ohio has virtually no Latino population (1.9%), but it does have a large black population in the cities:
Cleveland 51%
Dayton 44%
Youngstown 43%
Cincinnati 43%
Akron 29%
Columbus 25%
Toledo 24%
It is true that Ohio is a rural, white state, and southern Ohio is VERY southern, if you get my drift, and the white vote is pretty conservative. Even so, the Democratic primary has to be heavily influenced the large urban black vote, plus Ohio is a state with a lot of universities — Ohio State is bigger than UT — whose students rate to be for Obama. All this made me wonder if Karl trying to puff up Hillary, who is the opponent the Republicans want to face, and whom Karl called a “flawed candidate” after he left the White House. So, I e-mailed him: “Am I missing something?”
This is the case for Hillary winning Ohio: The black population of Ohio is just 11.4%. The Democratic governor has endorsed Clinton, and state government positions are filled by patronage. I looked up the population of the states where Obama has been successful: Georgia (28.5% black), Alabama (25.9% black), and South Carolina (29.4% black). All of these states had Republican governors — or, to put it a different way, didn’t have a Democratic governor endorsing his opponent.
