Title: A New Era Begins: The Significance of the Barack Obama Victory, 2008 •
Headings: A New Era Begins: The Significance of the Barack Obama Victory, 2008
A New Era Begins: The Significance of the Barack Obama Victory, 2008
The Candidate
The Electorate
The Circumstances

Content: Obama’s election signals a deep change in American politics. The maps showing red and blue states have been fairly consistent in recent presidential elections. The Northeast and the West Coast show up as blue and most of the rest of the country red, anchored firmly by the South. Not this time. Just after the election, I traveled to Washington, D.C. where I and other members of the Trotter Group, African American columnists from around the country, heard experts in a number of fields analyze the election. In one of my columns for The Seattle Times, I wrote about the demographic changes that made Obama’s election possible. David Bositis, a senior research associate with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Activities, said, “White Southern conservatives have been isolated by the election.” He said that while John McCain got 55 percent of the white vote versus 43 percent for Barack Obama nationally, a majority of white voters in 16 states and the District of Columbia voted for Obama. Obama did better with white voters than John Kerry did in 2004, except in most of the Old Confederacy. Demographic changes, however, are beginning to split the old South.