Obama's White Support Is Too Low to Win

M2RB:  Foreigner, live Dortmund, Germany

 

 

Cause I'm a dirty, white boy, yeah, dirty, white boy.
I'm a dirty, white boy, dirty, white boy.
Come on, come on, boy, white boy, I'm a dirty, white boy, a dirty, white boy!
Hey, I'm a dirty, white boy, yeah, I'm a dirty, white boy, dirty. white boy, yeah!

"Revenge best served cold never tasted so good."

- Anonymous blue-collar, white, bitter-clinging white voter

 
By David Paul Kuhn


President Obama does not currently have enough white support to win re-election even if he retains his minority base from 2008. At the same time, electoral data indicates Mitt Romney has not yet attracted enough of these white voters to capitalize on Obama's weakness.

Pundits often note that Romney cannot win with his current level of Hispanic support. That's likely true. But so is the converse: Obama cannot win with his level of white support unless white swing voters withhold their votes from Romney as well.

Today, fewer whites back Obama than any Democratic candidate since Walter Mondale. Romney does not need to emulate Ronald Reagan to win. Should he match Reagan’s share of the white vote in 1984 -- presuming all else remains constant since 2008 -- Romney would rout Obama.

Of course, America has changed since Reagan. Non-Hispanic whites were 89 percent of the electorate when Reagan first won the White House in 1980. They were 85 percent in 1988. By 2008, whites were 74 percent. That shift has upended the electoral landscape. But only so much.

Take Michael Dukakis’ fate as an example. In 1988, George H.W. Bush’s margin of victory exceeded Obama’s in 2008. But if Obama’s level of white support in 2012 equals Dukakis’, and all else remains the same from 2008, Obama would likely narrowly win. He would lack a mandate and risk immediate lame-duck status. But he would survive with white support that once sundered Democrats.

Unless . . .

What if Obama doesn't even match Dukakis with whites? That’s the dynamic of 2012. This electorate has a white floor. And it has broken for this president. Democrats cannot depend on demographics to save them.

Should Romney win the whites Obama lost, Romney will only need to perform as well as John McCain with minorities to win. This is true even under Democrats’ most optimistic, and unlikely, demographic scenario: that the white share of the electorate decreases another two percentage points from 2008, blacks turn out at the same historic levels they did then, and the Hispanic share of the vote rises from 9 to 11 percent of the electorate while Obama retains the same level of support from other minority groups.

The white margin to watch: 61-39. That’s the rough break-even point. Obama likely needs more than 39 percent of whites to assure re-election. Romney likely needs at least 61 percent of whites to assure Obama’s defeat (or 60.5 in some scenerios). These are estimates based on an electorate that matches the diversity of 2008 or is slightly less white. It presumes the Electoral College outcome does not diverge from the winner of the popular vote (loose talk aside, it’s only happened four times in U.S. history).

Thus, Obama can do a little worse than Dukakis, and Romney must perform a little better than Bush circa 1988. Whites favored Reagan in 1984 by a 64-35 margin. They favored Bush in 1988 by a 59-40 margin. Four years ago, whites favored McCain by a 55-43 margin.

Only 37 or 38 percent of whites back Obama today, according to the Gallup Poll’s authoritative weekly averages since early April (which have a larger sample size than most polls combined). The rub for Romney? In those same matchups, Romney only wins 54 percent of whites. Other surveys show the same. CNN’s latest pegged the white margin at 53-39. FOX News’ latest, 51-35. Ipsos-Reuters, 53-38. The Pew Research Center's polls have, however, shown Obama stronger this year. Its recent survey placed the margin at 54-41.

Writ large, Obama appears below his floor with whites. But so does Romney. Obama has too few whites saying yea to a second term. And Romney has converted too few nays to his side. Notably, the same share of whites say they will vote for Obama as approve of his job performance.

These whites constitute, by far, the largest share of the swing vote. The president depends on Hispanics to partly compensate for his weakness with whites. That’s possible in some states like Florida, Colorado and Nevada. But Latinos are less than a 10th of the electorate in every other swing state.

Obama’s recent immigration decision will probably help secure his Hispanic flank. But he already had the support of nearly two-thirds of Hispanics by Gallup’s measure -- roughly the share he earned in 2008. Hispanics’ views of Obama have, however, fluctuated more than whites’.

That steady white opposition should now concern Democrats. Obama’s broken floor with whites appears to be his new foundation. And it’s more than a white working-class problem. In fact, it always is. The white male gap helps explain why. Economic class and education do not impact white men and women the same way.

Currently, among white college graduates, according to Gallup data, 48 percent of women favor Obama and 40 percent of men do as well. Among working-class whites, 37 percent of women favor Obama and 30 percent of men agree.

Obama had a breakthrough with white men a political world ago. He performed better with white men than every Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter (a point to remember, when Obama's race is raised). Obama performed better than John Kerry, though slightly worse than Al Gore and Bill Clinton four years earlier, with white women (see my wrap-up of 2008 for more details). Obama’s current support with white men, 34 percent, reflects about where he stood with them before the September stock market crash.

That crash was critical to the making of this president’s mandate. Now the economy threatens to unmake his presidency. Those voters who swung to Obama with the crash have left him, above all else, because they came to believe he did not focus enough on the Great Recession that followed the crash. That’s no small side note, especially on the cusp of the Supreme Court’s health care ruling. Obama chose to invest his political capital in that cause over others, such as a new New Deal.

Whites helped give Obama his capital. He began his presidency with at least six-in-10 whites behind him. His white support first fell, as with independents, below 50 percent in the summer of 2009. Washington was then consumed with health care. Americans then felt consumed by hard times. The health care law passed in early 2010. Only about a third of whites approved of it. Why? Begin with the mommy-daddy politics that molds modern American politics. Soon after the law passed, Obama tried to pivot to the economy. But it was too late. Governing is choosing. And by the midterm elections, as I first reported the morning after, Democrats suffered unprecedented white flight. Obama’s party paid for the economy but also his choices.

Today, the demographic status quo is not good for either candidate. The long-term future favors Democrats. The GOP must reconcile itself with the browning of America. But even in early 2009, amid renewed talk of an emerging Democratic majority, it was clear that demographics are not electoral destiny. That Democratic majority has not emerged over the past decade because Democrats have not made sustained inroads with the actual demographic majority.

How quickly that proved true. In 2010, whites backed GOP House candidates by a 60-38 margin. It gave Republicans a historic landslide. The white margin two years ago roughly matches the break-even point today. That’s because presidential electorates are browner and blacker, though possibly not enough for Democrats. Plainly put, the data shows that Romney will likely win if he matches his party’s minority support in 2008 and its majority support in 2010.

Democrats have come to depend on diversity. But even today, diversity may not prove enough to save Obama. 

Dirty White Boy - Foreigner

Hey baby, if you're falling down, I know what's good for you all day
Are you worried what your friends see
And will it ruin your reputation loving me?

Cause I'm a dirty white boy, yeah a dirty white boy, a dirty white boy
Don't drive no big black car, don't like no Hollywood movie stars
You want me to be true to you, you don't give a damn what I do to you
I'm just a dirty white boy, dirty white boy, dirty white boy, dirty white boy

Well I'm a dirty white boy, dirty white boy, yeah, dirty white boy
A dirty white boy
I've been in trouble since I don't know when
I'm in trouble now and I know somehow I'll find trouble again
I'm a loner but I'm never alone
Every night I get one step closer to the danger zone

Cause I'm a dirty white boy, yeah, dirty white boy
I'm a dirty white boy, dirty white boy
Come on come on boy, white boy, I'm a dirty white boy, a dirty white boy
Hey I'm a dirty white boy, yeah I'm a dirty white boy, dirty white boy, yeah!