Who are the Darby Democrats?

Larry Darby, the Holocaust-denying atheist who ran against Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson for Attorney General, managed to earn over 160,000 votes in last week's Democratic primary. That amounts to approximately 44% of the total votes cast in the Democratic race for Attorney General.

So, who were these Darby Democrats? How many of those 160,000+ votes were genuinely for Darby and how many of them were due to mere ignorance on the part of Democratic voters? The Mobile Press-Register and the Huntsville Times attempted to answer those questions last week, and gave a few possible explanations for Darby's popularity among Alabama Democrats:

1) Since candidates' names are listed alphabetically, Darby was first on the ballot. Presumably, undecided (clueless?) voters are more likely to choose the name that comes first when candidates have low name-recognition;

2) The state's major black Democratic group - the Alabama Democratic Conference - didn't endorse anyone in the race. The conclusion: many black Democrats didn't know who to vote for since they weren't told how to vote;

3) "Darby" is a common family name in Alabama. The assumption: when in doubt, Alabamians vote for long-lost relatives; and

4) Voters were simply unaware of Larry Darby's beliefs, in which case they must not have been reading my blog recently.

Those are all interesting conjectures, but here are a few relevant facts to illustrate just how embarrassing this is, or at least should be, for Alabama Democrats.

Darby won a majority of Democrat votes for Attorney General in 33 of Alabama's 67 counties. The votes for Darby in those 33 counties contributed just over 50% of his total. Adding in his votes from Jefferson County (the state's most populous, where Darby's measly 36% amounted to 16,504 votes), you get to 60% of his total.

Larry Darby outpolled Don Siegelman in 45 counties, including Madison county, the state's third largest, where he received 52% of the votes. He got more votes than Lucy Baxley in (only) one county - Russell.

In comparison to the Republican candidates for Governor, Darby fared even better: in terms of total votes, he surpassed Bob Riley in 37 counties and Roy Moore in 46.

Darby's highest percentages were in Russell (63%), Lawrence (60%), Lauderdale (60%), Blount (59%), Limestone (59%), Cherokee (59%), Coosa (57%), Cleburne (57%), Franklin (56%), and Clay (56%) counties.

Those are the perhaps the most embarrassing statistics for Democrats, but let's continue:

None of Alabama's 11 majority-black counties (Marengo, Montgomery, Hale, Dallas, Perry, Wilcox, Lowndes, Bullock, Sumter, Greene, and Macon) gave Darby a majority. His vote in those counties ranged from 25% in Greene County (81% black) to 48% in Macon County (84% black).

In ten of Alabama's twelve counties where whites make up more the 90% of the population (Winston, Cullman, Blount, Marshall, DeKalb, Cleburne, Marion, Franklin, Cherokee, Jackson, Walker, St. Clair), Democrats gave Darby a majority. (The two where Darby didn't rack up majorities were Walker and Cullman - which gave him 45% and 48%, respectively.)

There are 14 counties in which over 80% of the population is white and in which most voters voted in the Democratic primary. In all but two of those counties, Democrats chose Darby. Here's a table summarizing the relevant data from each of those 14 mostly-white, mostly-Democrat counties:

County	White Pop.%*	Dem Voters %**	Darby %
DeKalb	96%	60%	52%
Cleburne	95%	73%	57%
Marion	95%	84%	54%
Franklin	94%	89%	56%
Cherokee	93%	84%	59%
Jackson	93%	87%	54%
Walker	92%	78%	45%
Lauderdale	89%	65%	60%
Lamar	88%	87%	55%
Fayette	87%	84%	54%
Covington	86%	52%	53%
Etowah	84%	50%	51%
Clay	84%	66%	56%
Colbert	82%	70%	48%

* From 2004 U.S. Census estimates of each county's total population
** Based on number of 2006 primary votes for Governor

What does all that say? Well, first of all, it gives Alabama Democrats a huge black eye. That's a given. Secondly, it strongly suggests that something other than mere "random choices" by uninformed voters was at work here. While the Democratic Party has sought to blame black voters and black political organizations for the Darby fiasco, it appears that they have chosen the wrong scapegoat. The fact is that large numbers of white Democrats gave Darby their votes - by a landslide in some areas. The lingering question is why.