Hillary on Obama's Win

From former Democratic contender and New York State U.S. senator Hillary Clinton:

"Tonight, we are celebrating an historic victory for the American people. This was a long and hard-fought campaign, but the result was well worth the wait.

"Together, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and a Democratic Congress, we will chart a better course to build a new economy and rebuild our leadership in the world. And I look forward to doing all that I can to support President Obama and Vice President Biden in the difficult work that lies ahead.

"For too long, middle-class families in this country have felt invisible, struggling alone as wages stagnate, jobs disappear, and the costs of daily life climb upward. In quiet, solitary acts of citizenship, American voters gave voice to their hopes and their values, voted for change, and refused to be invisible any longer."

(Getty Images)

Battle For LGBT Voters Rages On

Photo: Getty Images

Even as Barack Obama's campaign finalized an ad buy last week for four full-page ads in local gay weeklies in Ohio and Texas, Hillary Clinton was conducting a conference call on LGBT issues and answering the questions of local reporters from the Dallas Voice and two Ohio publications: Outlook Weekly and Gay People's Chronicle. Altogether, Clinton has done interviews with six LGBT outlets, including The Advocate, Logo, and The Washington Blade. Clinton also published a message to LGBT Americans on OurChart.com.

Obama has given one interview to an LGBT news outlet: last October to The Advocate. Today he published an open letter to the LGBT community on the blog Bilerico Project, the second such post he has made to that site.

GLB Voters Chose Clinton Over Obama

Among many interesting developments last night, mainstream news organizations acknowledged that gay, lesbian, and bisexual voters exist and asked them to identify as such in the exits polls. A solid majority of those polled in California and New York preferred that Sen. Hillary Clinton be their next president.

NBC exit polling found that among the 4% of California voters who identified as GLB, 63% voted for Clinton, 29% for Obama, and 1% for Edwards. In New York, 7% of voters self-identified as GLB and 59% voted for Clinton, 36% for Obama, and 3% for Edwards.

New York and California were the only states in which this question was asked. The results show that the GLB electorate didn’t move much from where they were last fall in Hunter College’s national polling of the community, when likely GLB voters preferred Clinton by 63%, Obama’s by 22% and Edwards at 7%.