Unfortunately, nobody conducted an exit poll of this race, which makes the postmortem a little bit more difficult to conduct. From early voting statistics, it appears that African-American turnout was substantially lower, which no doubt was a significant factor in Martin's defeat, as roughly 55 percent of his vote on November 4 came from black voters. If black turnout was closer to the 25 percent of the electorate that it was in 2004 rather than the 28 percent of the electorate that it was on November 4, that would cost Martin a net of about 4 points, implying a loss of about 7 points. If it was closer to the 22 percent of the electorate that turned out to vote early, that would have cost Martin a net of 8-9 points, implying a loss of 11-12 points.

It appears that reduced AA turnout is not sufficient to explain the degree of Martin's defeat, but the lack of exit polls data makes this difficult to asses.  The fact that Martin narrowly defeated another AA, Vernon Jones, for the Dem nomination in the primary would not have helped his case.


notes from no w here