Barack Obama has got to be loving Vermont today. If he hadn't won this state Tuesday, he would have gone 0 for 4 on March 4, and Hillary Clinton would be crowing about her big upset in Vermont as much as her wins elsewhere. Just a thought.
In any case, Obamania remained intact in the Green Mountain state. Here's some findings from exit polling done of 1,007 people in 20 selected precincts for the Associated Press, giving us some insight into wthatDemocratic primary voters people (at least the ones who submitted to being interviewed) were thinking as they left the polls in Vermont yesterday.
1. Obama won more than half the female vote.
2. Obama won 60 percent of people earning $50,000 a year or less.
3. Clinton won 40 percent of people aged 65 and older.
4. Obama won almost 66 percent of people aged 18-29, who made up 10 percent of the Democratic primary turnout.
5. Clinton won the late-breaking deciders _ people who made up their minds in the last three days - by a small margin.
6. The Iraq war and the economy tied as the number one issue for voters. No other state in the country rated the war as highly.
7. Nearly half the people who voted in the Democratic primary identified themselves as independents, and they broke heavily in Obama's favor.
8. About two-thirds of voters identified themselves as liberals and less than a third said they were moderates. Both groupings went for Obama.
9. People who said the ability to bring change to the country mostly supported Obama. People who rated experience as the top quality favored Clinton.
10. The exit pollsters were unable to gather enough interviews from Republican voters to produce a viable exit poll for Republicans.
-- Sam Hemingway
