Kurt Andersen

In the discussion of “electability,” and which broadly defined constituencies are and aren’t drawn to Barack Obama, the focus has been on what has turned out to be Hillary Clinton’s strongest constituencies — working-class whites and people over 65. There is conversely a tendency to consider Obama’s reliably enthusiastic constituencies — black voters, voters under 30, voters with college degrees — as an insufficient coalition on which to base a winning presidential campaign.

But do the math, and this default piece of common sense doesn’t look so convincing. College-educated people are more than a quarter of the population (and an even higher fraction of those who vote), people under 30 are 15%, and African-Americans are 11.5%. In other words, those three groups combined make up half the electorate.