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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

About those Hillary voters

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Aug 30 2008, 4:25 PM ET Comment

Nate Silver does the knowledge:

What's interesting, however, is that while there is a gender gap in these numbers, it's not the one many observers were anticipating. Rather, along a variety of metrics, men like the Palin choice better than women:

These numbers pretty much speak for themselves, but men have a favorable imperssion of Palin by a 35-point margin, whereas women have a favorable impression of her by an 18-point margin. Conversely, by a 23-point margin, women do not think Palin is ready to be President, whereas Palin lost this question among men by a considerably smaller 6-point magrin.

Why does this gap exist? Don't know, but it may simply be a matter of ideology. Men are generally a bit more conservative than women, and opinions of Palin are very strongly determined by ideology.
I have to say that I'm not surprised that women are harder on Palin than men---she's repping for them, after all. But moreover, I'd be utterly surprised if there weren't an "insult factor" at work here. More to the point, I bet there's a strong possibility that a portion of Hillary voters will actually be repelled by the pick of Palin. I'd be very interested to see how these numbers broke down by age, for instance. The more I think about this, the more ite appears that the upside here is in locking down the evangelicals. I don't know what else there could be. It's not like McCain needed help with men, or working class whites.


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