Race and gender in Texas

Sen. Hillary Clinton squeaked out a winner in the Texas primary showdown yesterday for lots of reasons, including strong organization and a slew of hard-hitting attack ads that drew blood.

The exit polls show four overlapping constituencies were largely responsible for the Clinton victory: seniors, Latinos and those without a college education -- all groups she won by a 2-1 margin -- and of course women, who made up 57% of the electorate and voted for her by an 11 point margin.

Lurking near the bottom of the exit poll questions, however, are some possibly disturbing numbers about the role race and gender played out in Texas.

First, gender. Almost one in four voters -- 24% -- said that gender was "important" in deciding who should be president. But that didn't work against Clinton -- indeed, 61% of those who felt gender was "important" voted for her, and only 39% of them went for Obama.

Race is a different story. Slightly less -- 19%, or one in five voters -- said that race was important in their decision. But of those who felt race was important, 52% voted against Obama and went for Clinton; 47% of those who felt race was "important" went for Obama.

In other words, gender seemed to help Clinton, but race seemed to hurt Obama.

This is in line with the results of exit polls from Super Tuesday, which found almost one in 10 voters openly saying Obama's race was a factor in not voting for him. Those saying Clinton's gender was a factor in opposing her was slightly less (8.5%).

And those are just the people who admitted it.

So the take-away from Texas appears similar to Super Tuesday: sexism and racism are both alive and well -- but race is having a greater impact, to Obama's detriment.