Let's look at some data as opposed to throwing numbers and accusations around. Exit polls ask if the gender and race of the candidate was important in who you voted for. We'll have to make a couple of assumptions.
1. The responses are an accurate reflection of the person responding to the question.
2. As in all polls, we'll have to assume the results reflect the voting population.
3. And we'll also have to assume that voters using gender as a reason to vote for Clinton aren't sexist (since in this campaign its generally understood that if you aren't voting for Clinton specifically because she's a women that represents a sexist approach) and that voters using race as a reason to vote for Obama aren't racist (likewise, if you're not voting for Obama specifically because he's black that is construed as a racist approach).
More in the extended entry.
One of the potential drawbacks to this approach is that we may overestimate the number of people that are truly sexist or racist since people stating that gender or race was important in deciding who to vote for may have other reasons for selecting a particular candidate. However, if you responded to these questions in the affirmative, it had to have a non-trivial influence on your vote. And I would argue that if the gender of the candidate was so important that it influenced who you voted for, that is a pretty good indication of someone who most people would consider sexist.
Let's first look at the last two elections, Oregon and Kentucky. In Kentucky, 16% of the voters said gender was important and of those people, 19% were Obama voters. That calculates out to 3.0% of the total voters that could be considered exhibiting some sexist bias in their vote. 21% of the voters said race was important and of those people, 81% were Clinton voters. That calculates out to 17.0% of the total voters exhibiting some racial bias. Alternatively, if you want to break it down by percentages of each candidate's voters, then 10.1% of Obama voters could be considered somewhat sexist and 26.3% of Clinton voters somewhat racist.
Oregon numbers were a little different. 17% said gender was important and doing the same calculations as above, that results in 7.5% of all voters using sexist reasoning for their votes (13.1% of Obama voters). 10% said race was important, resulting in 4.8% of all voters being using racist reasoning (11.6% of Clinton voters).
I didn't look at all of the states but I did the same calculations for Indiana and Pennsylvania. Sexist voting tendencies could be attributed to 13.6% of Obama voters in IN and 12.6% in PA. Racist voting tendencies could be attributed to 16.7% of Clinton voters in IN and 20.6% in PA.
At least in the four states I looked at, "sexist" voters were between 3 and 8% of the total voting population (between 10 and 14% of Obama voters) while "racist" voters varied between 5 and 17% of the total voting population (between 12 and 26% of Clinton voters). Based on this limited analysis, it would appear that race had a bigger negative impact on the elections than did gender. Unfortunately, all of the numbers were greater than zero.
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