Thursday, May 8, 2008

Evidence scant that Wright hurt Obama much in Ind., N.C.

The reaction — or lack of it — by Indiana and North Carolina voters to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary comments emphasizes how deeply entrenched the racial lines of support are for the two Democratic presidential rivals.

It doesn't seem likely that the renewed focus on Wright has helped Barack Obama, and it is all but certain that he'll hear more about it from Republicans should he win his party's nomination. But for now, there's little evidence it hurt him much in this week's Democratic contests.

After all the attention to Wright and Obama's disavowal of his former pastor, exit polls in the two states found that:

_Six in 10 white voters in both states supported Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is waging an increasingly long-shot struggle to become the party nominee. That's close to the average 57 percent of whites who had backed the New York senator in Democratic primaries since Super Tuesday, which was Feb. 5. It's also slightly below the 63 percent of whites who voted for her in Pennsylvania and 69 percent in Mississippi, the most recent contests before Tuesday's voting.

_About nine in 10 blacks in Indiana and North Carolina voted for Obama, slightly stronger than his usual showing with them. It mattered little whether they said the Wright situation influenced them or not.

Pollsters said there was not enough data to draw conclusions about whether the attention on Wright drove people away from Obama, the Illinois senator, or drew some toward him because of how he denounced the pastor.