Whether you put stock in the popular phrase there’s “lies, damn lies and statistics,” the demographic numbers following President Barack Obama’s re-election are telling.
As he enters his second term, Obama’s presiding over a divided country, and few places are more evenly split than North Carolina and Lenoir County.
Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney won this state by two percentage points — fewer than 100,000 votes. He won Lenoir County by 32 votes.
There’s stereotyping and then there’s the numbers to back them up when it comes to who voted for whom. If you’re a nonwhite woman, younger than 40, with an income less than $50,000, living in an urban area, chances are you’re an Obama voter. And if you’re a white male, older than 40, with an income more than $50,000, living in a rural area, you’re likely a Romney voter.
According to an Associated Press exit poll conducted throughout North Carolina, definite trends emerge. Women went for Obama by 51 percent, while Romney took 54 percent of the male vote. Obama won voters 18-24 years old by 67 percent, those 25-29 by 66 percent and claimed a 58 percentage point victory among people 30-39.
Romney’s trend went inversely, claiming larger percentages of voters the older the person was. According to the poll, 64 percent of North Carolina voters older than 65 cast their ballot for the Republican.
Racially, the demographic is even starker. White respondents went with Romney by 68 percent. Obama won 96 percent of blacks, 68 percent of Latinos and 52 percent of other non-white voters. The trends match up with voting patterns from other states, and nationwide.
Minority voters are credited with giving Obama a victory in North Carolina in 2008 and making it close in 2012.
"We still are a country that's kind of divided, and a lot of that fissure in the population tends to be based in race and age and ethnicity," said demographer William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, to Reuters in November. "There's kind of a dangerous result in this election when we see older whites moving in one direction and younger minorities moving in another direction."
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at WolfeReports.