Many of the social measures on the ballots are being pushed by evangelical groups that hope to force Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, to pay closer attention to their agenda. The proposals that are likely to attract the most attention are same-sex marriage and abortion amendments, along with proposals to ban affirmative action.

On a surface level, those who backed Clinton did so largely out of a combination of familiarity and fatalism. If you were a longtime black leader or activist at the end of 2007, you probably believed, based on your own life experience, that no black man was going to win the nomination, let alone the presidency.