Over at 538, Nate Silver has been discussing and breaking-down Obama's non-black votes last fall. This most recent entry looks at the results broken down by county in four regions of the country. Silver writes:
Outside the South, Obama did best among nonblacks in counties with more blacks. Inside the South, he did best among nonblacks in counties with fewer blacks. This has got to be an urban-rural thing as much as anything else.
I don't doubt Nate. (Who doubts Nate? No one.) It does seem odd to me, though. Okay, the non-South regions, I get: Obama did better among non-blacks in Cleveland and Seattle, respectively, than he did among non-black voters in rural Ohio and eastern Washington. That's intuitive and obvious.
But am I to understand that in the South, Obama did better among non-black voters in, say, a rural and mostly white northern Florida county than he did in St. Petersburg, or in a rural northern Louisiana parish than in New Orleans? That's really weird and fascinating. Can any of you explain this?
