Obama & His Base: Slow Dancing In A Burning Room

M2RB:  John Mayer live, Webster Hall

 It's not a silly little moment
It's not the storm before the calm
 

 Nobody's gonna come and save you
We pulled too many false alarms

We're going down
And you can see it too
We're going down
And you know that we're doomed
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

 “We went from having a crush to feeling crushed...We like him, but we're not in love with him.”

- Van Jones, 9 June 2012

By JAY COST

       

President Obama’s gaffe in Friday’s press conference caught the attention of the media, the blogosphere, and the public in general. I thought it was a telling example of how bad this president is at communicating when he is off script, but there is a bigger story to tell.

The president was out there, once again, promoting the American Jobs Act. This bill is basically a huge payoff to Democratic constituent groups – notably organized labor, which would benefit enormously from federal grants to  states to keep government workers on the payroll, as well as construction projects to be completed by union job crews.

This bill has no chance of passing through the United States Congress. The Republican party is never going to vote to hike taxes to pay off Democratic client groups. It never has, and it never will. What’s more, the politics of this bill do not play very well with the middle of the country – as Republicans can always point out (correctly), the American Jobs Act is a watered-down version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e., the stimulus that the country thinks was a failure).

So why, then, is the president still insisting on this package?

He has trouble with his base.

Just as with the flip-flop on gay marriage, Obama’s press conference on Friday was supposed to be a symbolic gesture to remind the core constituencies of the Democratic party that he is their friend. (This is also why he’ll never flip-flop on the Keystone Pipeline.)

Now, to be clear, when I say “trouble with his base,” I do not mean the Democratic party is set to abandon him en masse. No party has won less than 45 percent of the two-party presidential vote in the last quarter century, thanks to the rock-solid nature of both bases. Instead, the problem is at the margins, which is where electoral politics is inevitably played. 

In 2008 the Democratic base was marginally more excited than it was in 2004, while the GOP base was marginally depressed. These small changes added up to an enormous effect. Consider this chart of party turnout in presidential elections going back to 1996:

The shift from ’04 to ‘08 was not large, but it added up to a decisive victory for Obama.

But this points to Obama’s problem today:

With a reversion back to the 2004 levels of Democratic and Republican turnout, this president is sunk. Election night would be an early one.

That’s because Obama is doing terribly with the independent vote. If the level of partisan turnout is the first important variable in deciding who wins, then the swing of the independent vote is the second.

And independents do not approve of President Obama.  According to the Gallup poll, the president has pulled in just 43 percent support from independents over the last month, and just 36 percent of “pure independents,” i.e., those with no ties at all to either party. Worse, as this analysis from Alan Abramowitz suggests, the swing vote shows no signs of warming up to the president any time soon. Indeed, according to the Gallup poll, the president has not been above 50 percent with independents since November 2009.

What would happen to the president if he pulls in only 43 percent of the independent vote? 

We can get an answer to that question by simulating the last four presidential elections. What we will do is hold constant the turnout and vote shares from Republican and Democratic base voters, then see how the Democratic candidate would have done had he received only 43 percent of the independent vote.

This is quite a shift. If Democrats had managed just 43 percent of the independent vote in 1996 and 2008, their huge victories would have shrunk down to mere toss-ups; their narrow popular vote victory in 2000 would have become a defeat; and their narrow loss in 2004 would have been a huge defeat.

Thus, we can conclude that, if the independent vote holds roughly where it has been for the last two years, Obama will need that 2008 Democratic turnout edge just to keep the race a toss-up.

How will the Democratic base perform in November? It is impossible to say for sure, but there is solid evidence that points to trouble on the left flank.

The first piece of evidence is the Rasmussen poll. Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media have basically shut Rasmussen out of the conversation, simply because they do not like its results. But the Rasmussen poll’s historical results are very solid, especially when it comes to measuring the partisan tilt of the country. It called turnout on the nose in 2008 – forecasting the Democrats with a 7-point edge – and was very close in 2004 – calling for a Democratic edge of just 1.5 points (the final result that year was an even split between the two sides).

For the last 18 months, Rasmussen has typically found the Republicans with an edge in party identification. This comports well with its “Presidential Approval Index,” which tracks the level of intensity among those who approve and those who disapprove of President Obama’s time in office. Rasmussen consistently finds the strong disapprovers outnumbering the strong approvers by 10 to 20 points.

The second piece of evidence is the Wisconsin recall vote. The GOP had a money edge (although the size of it was much less than what liberal pundits are now claiming), but the Democratic base had been directly attacked by Scott Walker’s reforms. So, we should have expected Democratic turnout to maintain itself at its historical levels.

But that is not what happened. 

In fact, in Democratic-leaning Wisconsin, Republican voters actually outnumbered Democrats, something we have only seen previously in lower turnout midterm elections:

All of this suggests that it is the Republican base vote that is more energized than its Democratic counterpart, at least at the moment. Hence Team Obama's continued efforts to curry favor with the vast array of interests that comprise the core Democratic vote.

If that holds up over the next five months, and independents do not warm up to the president, Obama is going to lose. 

It won't be a 1980- or 1984-style blowout, but it will look similar to what we saw in 1988 and 2008. That's what happens with a lukewarm party base and broad opposition from independent voters. 

Jay Cost is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic, available now wherever books are sold.

Gallup:

Obama's White Base Shows Cracks Compared With 2008

 

Support down five points since 2008 among all voters, but more among key 2008 white supporters

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup Daily tracking indicates Barack Obama is receiving less support in the 2012 presidential election from some of the white subgroups that gave him the strongest support in 2008. These include non-Hispanic white registered voters who are 18 to 29 years old, female postgrads, and the nonreligious, among others.

Obama won the 2008 election comfortably over John McCain, but the 2012 election contest with Mitt Romney is shaping up to be more competitive, with the two statistically tied since Gallup started Daily tracking on the race in April. These findings partly explain why.
For this analysis, Gallup has compared Obama's current support among registered voters, based on Gallup Daily tracking from May 21-June 10 with 7,343 registered voters, to his support among registered voters in Gallup's last month of interviewing in the 2008 pre-election poll, from Oct. 1-Nov. 2, comprising 30,623 registered voters.

Obama Down Five Percentage Points Among All Voters

The 46% of registered voters supporting Obama today is five percentage points below the 51% supporting him in final weeks of the 2008 election campaign. Similarly, whites' support for Obama is six points lower than it was in October/November 2008 (38% vs. 44%), and blacks' is down four points (87% vs. 91%). At the same time, Hispanics' support, at 67%, is essentially unchanged.

Whites make up about three-quarters of all U.S. registered voters, and are therefore the most important racial or ethnic group in any election, at least mathematically. Even if Obama were to regain his 2008 level of support among blacks and improve his support somewhat among Hispanics, he could still lose if his support among whites slips any further. By the same token, even a slight increase in whites' support could secure his re-election.

The following sections look at key U.S. registered voter groups: age, gender/educational status, gender/marital status, and religiosity. Because the political views of U.S. blacks, Hispanics, and other racial or ethnic minorities are largely monolithic, the analysis of these demographic trends is based solely on non-Hispanic whites.

Young Voters Remain Most Supportive, but to a Lesser Degree

Whites' support for Obama in 2008 differed significantly by age, with young voters the most supportive and seniors the least supportive. That basic pattern continues today, although Obama's support has dropped more among young voters than among seniors, thus narrowing the overall generation gap.

Currently, 43% of white 18- to 29-year-olds say they plan to vote for Obama in the election, down nine points from the 52% backing him in 2008. By contrast, Obama has lost five points among whites aged 30 to 49 and six points each among the two older age groups.

Obama Support Slips Among White Postgrads of Both Genders

Obama still enjoys higher support from white women than white men, as he did in 2008; however, his support from both groups has declined. Now, 34% of white men and 41% of white women support him, while the plurality or majority of both groups support Romney.

Beyond the overall gender breaks, support for Obama was particularly high among white men and women with postgraduate levels of education in 2008, and remains so today. But support for Obama in 2012 is down among all four gender/education groups, and is down the most -- by nine points -- among postgraduate women, followed by non-postgraduate men (eight points).

Nonmarried white men and women were more supportive of Obama in the 2008 election than their married counterparts, and that also holds today. However, support for Obama among the nonmarried has declined more sharply than that of white married voters, with the decline particularly sharp among nonmarried men.

Obama Loses Support Among Low-Income Whites

There was a modest income skew in Obama's support among whites in 2008, but that has largely disappeared in the recent 2012 data, given the larger-than-average declines in support seen for him among low-income whites.

Obama's support is down nine points among those earning less than $24,000 as well as among those earning $24,000 to $59,999 per year. At the same time, his support among higher-income Americans is down only three points.

Nonreligious and Non-Christian Support for Obama Down

Religious identity and religiosity continue to be significant predictors of support for Obama, with nonreligious Americans (61%) and adherents of non-Christian faiths (60%) being the most supportive. These are followed by non-active Catholics (that is, those who seldom or never attend church), then non-active Protestants, and then active/churchgoing Catholics. Active/churchgoing Protestants (24%) are by far the least supportive of Obama.

Although support for Obama is down at least slightly among all major religious groupings since 2008, the greatest declines are seen among the two strongest groups of Obama supporters -- the nonreligious and those identifying with a non-Christian religion. The latter finding is consistent with a Gallup report published last week showing Obama's electoral support among Jewish voters down by 10 points over the same period.

Bottom Line

U.S. voters are roughly tied in their preferences for Obama vs. Romney for president, in contrast to Obama's nine-point lead over McCain among registered voters in October/November 2008. This is reflected in declines in support for Obama among most voter subgroups, and particularly among white subgroups. Although these declines are generally not dramatic, they are enough to make the 2012 race at this point more competitive than the 2008 election.

Obama's support is down about equally among whites and blacks, while it is unchanged among Hispanics. Additionally, Obama has generally lost more support from the white subgroups that were most supportive of him in 2008 -- young adults, postgraduate women, nonmarried women, residents of low-income households, non-Christians, and nonreligious adults -- than from the white subgroups that were less supportive. Obama has also lost a greater-than-average amount of support among nonmarried men and non-postgraduate men.

The declines in support among Obama's core white supporters may be especially troubling for him if his campaign strategy is, as many have speculated, to repeat his strong 2008 performance among women, the working class, and young voters, as well as minorities. On the one hand, these findings suggest his campaign may need to do more to mobilize those voters. On the other hand, the decline among his core 2008 white supporters could make these the easiest groups of voters for him to win back -- something the Democratic Convention this summer and Obama's fall campaigning will no doubt strive to do.

Track every angle of the presidential race on Gallup.com's Election 2012 page.

Slow Dancing In A Burning Room - John Mayer

It's not a silly little moment
It's not the storm before the calm
This is the deep and dying breath of
This love we've been working on

Can't seem to hold you like I want to
So I can feel you in my arms
Nobody's gonna come and save you
We pulled too many false alarms

We're going down
And you can see it too
We're going down
And you know that we're doomed
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

I was the one you always dreamed of
You were the one I tried to draw
How dare you say it's nothing to me
Baby, you're the only light I ever saw

I'll make the most of all the sadness
You'll be a bitch because you can
You try to hit me just to hurt me
So you leave me feeling dirty
Because you can't understand

We're going down
And you can see it too
We're going down
And you know that we're doomed
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

Go cry about it, why don't you?
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?