I took a poll of around thirty people, graduate students and some faculty, attending a workshop on African Women's Labor History. I asked who had voted or was going to vote. Only seven raised their hands. When I asked who they had voted for or were going to vote for, all raised their hands for Obama.
Later, a ran into a women that I know (an older women, who is very decent, very humane, and a longtime Republican). She told me that she had voted in the Republican primary for McCain. She saw McCain as an antidote to the extreme right. She saw the Republican party as 80 percent liberal and moderate. She also saw McCain's position on Iraq not as "pro war," but as pro policing the country for the benefit of the Iraqis, an interesting twist. In any case, she will definitely vote for McCain and she may represent a significant bloc of non right-wing Republican voters, who see voting as a civic duty and can be expected to vote in the election, making it more important to have a strong united campaign in the fall.
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