Did the LGBT community give Obama his margin of victory?

[dsc]

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president

If you look at the exit polls they say that LGBT (LGB to be more precise since they don't ask T) made up 5% of the electorate and split 76% for Obama and 22% for Romney. That means that his margin among gays is 5% of (76% - 22%) which is .05(.54) which is .027 or 2.7% of the total electorate. Exit polls showed the candidates tied among non LGBT voters at 49% each.

Now if you look at the popular vote as shown at CNN is 60,913,692 for Obama with 57,974,374 for Romney. Leaving out the 3rd party votes increases the percent of Obama's margin. Obama's vote margin is 2,939,318 out of 118,888,066 or a bit under 2.5%.

Now a bunch of caveats have to be said here. One is that not all the votes are in yet so his margin may grow. Two, there is a fairly decent margin of error involved with the exit polls. The MOE is plus or minus 4% for the whole sample so it is around 18% for LGBT population unless they took care to interview more of them than 1/20 of the sample size. But the 76% makes pretty good sense and is quite probably a correct number.

The fact is we will never know for sure but if the LGBT community did provide the margin he earned it.

[mucifer]

1. Every voter who voted for the President is Important. It took everyone to do it. I'm glad we all

worked together. They only have the white majority. (BTW I am white).

[Gman]

2. Lots of groups can make the same claim, including Catholics

who chose to vote their conscience.

[Blue Idaho]

3. Or was it Hispanics, or college students, or young women, or...?

It took every last living one of us to make this happen. Our belief in our President is what unites us and what brings us victory.

I will celebrate with all my brothers and sisters.

[MotorCityMan]

4. Well, this G man contributed, although I doubt I swung the election

I also got my non-political partner to vote, so that's +2.

[liberal_at_heart]

5. It was all of us

LGBT, women, young people, latinos, African-Americans, seniors, even some white males. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists. Even independents, liberals and third party voters helped. We, America, gave him his victory.

[cthulu2016]

6. All GLBT are more than one demo, which confuses the issue

I agree with the general tone of your OP, that the GLBT vote really matters, but am just noting that all GLBT people are also in a race category and a gender category, so there is some double counting.

Black lesbians ruled the vote!

[GeorgeGist]

7. Gosh I thought we were all in this together.

Now I know better.

[FrenchieCat]

8. Those who waited in lines in swing states certainly get some credit.....

but it took a village, and that is us! Pres. Obama knows and acknowledges this.

We are stronger when we stand together, period.

[argiel1234]

9. Im pretty certain

no LGBT member would ever vote for romney, at least sane rational members.


That said the LGBT community is part of the Democratic Party and their rights are my rights.

Economic and social equality for ALL