A Swing to Obama

To the Editors:

I wish to correct a factual error in my piece “How Historic a Victory?” [NYR, December 18, 2008]. I wrote: “Obama’s performances among whites with and without college educations were very similar to Michael Dukakis’s in 1988.” In fact, Obama’s performance among whites without college educations was similar to Dukakis’s—Dukakis lost this group by 20 percent, and Obama lost it by 18 percent. But among college-educated whites, Dukakis lost by, again, 20 percent to George H.W. Bush, while Obama lost this group by just 4 percent, a 16-point Democratic swing. I regret the error.

Michael Tomasky
Silver Spring, Maryland