ELECTIONATE OCTOBER 23, 2012
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Eight years ago, John Kerry won 41 percent of the white vote and lost to President Bush by nearly three points. If Obama wins 41 percent of white voters in 2012, he'll win reelection thanks to an increasingly diverse country where non-white voters will represent roughly one-quarter of the electorate and cast roughly 80 percent of their ballots for the president. In September, President Obama held 41 percent of the white vote and that was enough for 49-plus percent of the vote and a four-point lead, even as polls found deflated enthusiasm among the young and Latino voters necessary for Obama to capitalize on favorable demographic trends. And if Obama’s vaunted ground operation or late gains in enthusiasm could rejuvenate non-white turnout rates to ’08 levels, Obama could afford to win as few as 38 percent of white voters and squeak out a narrow victory.
But since the first presidential debate, Obama’s support among white voters has fallen beneath the range consistent with reelection, even if minorities vote at the same rate that they did four years ago. An average of recent polls shows Obama holding 37.9 percent of white voters—and in 2008, poll internals tended to underestimate McCain's lead among white voters, at least compared to the exit polls. A combination of low enthusiasm and low support among Democratic-leaning independent voters are responsible for much of Obama’s decline, and polls suggest that a disproportionate share of them are whites without a college degree or Northeasterners. For Romney to maintain or grow his lead among white voters, these voters will either need to stay home or cast votes for the Republican.
In the modern political era, it has taken extraordinary circumstances for Democrats to perform so poorly. The last Democratic candidate to fall so low was Walter Mondale, who only won 35 percent of the white vote in 1984. Even Michael Dukakis won 40 percent of the white vote in 1988. In 2010, House Democrats only won 37 percent of the white vote—the lowest tally for any party since the 1820s. Those blowouts resulted in 400 or 500 electoral vote landslides and a historic 63-seat gain in the House, but in 2012 it would only provide Romney with a narrow victory, since the non-white share of the electorate promises to be higher than it was in any of those contests.
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Given the state of the economy, high Republican enthusiasm, and Obama’s low approval ratings, the 2012 election could see an extraordinary GOP performance among white voters. But there is a reason why flawed candidates like Dukakis and Kerry managed to reach 40 percent of the vote, or why Mondale still received 35 percent: such weak performances require Democrats to lose voters who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates. From a certain perspective, the traditional Democratic-lean of the remaining voters on Obama’s path to victory provides reason to believe that they might return to his side over the final 15 days of the campaign. This helps explain Romney’s relentlessly moderate approach in the debates, since his path to victory essentially requires him to win Kerry voters. It also explains why Obama feels comfortable pushing progressive social issues.
The fact that Obama remains at such low levels among white voters with two weeks remaining illustrates the importance of minority and youth turnout (they're intertwined) to Obama's chance to win the national popular vote. Nearly half of Obama's '08 margin of victory was due to increased black turnout and support, and he'll need another strong showing to overcome a huge deficit among white voters. Of course, surveys show a tight race--precisely because most anticipate minorities will constitute a much higher share of the electorate than they did in 2004 and vote for Obama by an overwhelming margin.
But the polls do not anticipate strong Latino turnout and Obama can make up ground if his ground game can upset expectations. Incredibly, polls suggest that Obama might do better among Latino voters than he did in 2008.There probably isn't anything the Republicans could have done to significantly improve their standing among black voters so long as they faced Obama, but there are plenty of Latino swing voters and 40 percent voted for Bush in 2004. If Romney makes a comeback in Ohio and Obama regenerates Latino turnout and wins Latino voters by as much or more than he did in '08 in states like Colorado, Nevada, or Florida, there's a chance we look back on the Republican decision to oppose comprehensive immigration reform (not to mention the DREAM Act) as the moment that ultimately cost them the 2012 election.
21 comments
Oh but there's no racism here. We're going to lose a fine and talented president for a lying windbag and a regressive platform with white skin.
- Sophia
October 23, 2012 at 2:29pm
Ugh. Why am I not surprised? And they say race has nothing to do with it. Totally agree with you, Sophia.
- maxhencke
October 23, 2012 at 4:24pm
The part about white voters without a college degree in the Northeast abandoning Obama is quite telling. After all, there are practically no competitive states in the Northeast besides New Hampshire (unless you really believe the GOP is trying to go for Maine's Second District), so there is almost no advertising reaching those voters. They are going solely on national news and their general political persuasion. If many of them are warming to Romney, it could be because they perceive his electoral persona -- i.e., the one shown in the debates, not the one painted by Obama's swing state ads which they never saw or heard -- as the kind of can-do, moderate Republican that they often vote for in state or Congressonal elections (think Weld, Pataki, Collins, Brown, Snowe, Rell, etc.). It's an example of Romney's New England connection actually paying off. Of course, the Democrats are highly unlikelly to fight it because most of those white working class votes for Romney will be wasted in the general election. That's why statistics can sometimes mislead.
- wildboy
October 23, 2012 at 6:08pm
So Romney will make northeast states tighter than they were 4 years ago, who care really as long as he wins them. Winning Pa. by one vote is the same as by one million. It is entirely possible Romney might win the popular vote and lose the electoral college by a nice margin. I don't know if I buy this that much though that Obama will do as bad as this is claiming he will. Obama holds a significant advantage among women with many of them white, so this means that Romney will have to win around 70% of the white male vote. After Romney's ahole 47% statement I just don't see it happening.
- blackton
October 24, 2012 at 12:10am
"I don't know if I buy this that much though that Obama will do as bad as this is claiming he will. Obama holds a significant advantage among women with many of them white, so this means that Romney will have to win around 70% of the white male vote. After Romney's a-hole 47% statement I just don't see it happening." blackton, Methinks you give stupid white men (to use Michael Moore's term) too much credit. I can see Romney getting 70% of the white male vote easily. Nobody votes against their own self-interests more than white males. I'm predicting Romney will win the White House and the Dems will take back the House and keep the Senate. And then Romney will be in the position that Obama is now, as far as legislation goes. That would be the sweetest outcome of a sour presidential-election result. But still, it's going to be a close presidential election. Anything can happen. Maybe the God of Sanity, whoever that is (let's call him Bob), will keep Obama in office. You go, Bob!
- magboy47.
October 24, 2012 at 2:11am
Will do magboy. O will hold Ohio, and stage a comeback in Virginia and Florida. Curtains for the Rom-bot and Robin!
- Robert Powell
October 24, 2012 at 5:18am
We may look back on Romney's comments about the 47% and conclude it was key to his victory. Yes, it really is us and against them, and Romney's comment may have made voters choose whether they are with us or with them. That Romney's policies are aimed at the 1% and not the 53% is beside the point. He inadvertently (?) framed the election as a choice between two, competing groups, and many voters notoriously will choose the group that they identify with even though it least represents their interests. The framing, us against them, coupled with Romney's performance at the first debate as not at all threatening, may well have been the hook that resulted in so many voters choosing us and not them. In a perverse way the Carters may have lost another election for the Democrats.
- rayward
October 24, 2012 at 7:04am
To be clear, Romney's comments divided America between two groups of about equal size (47/53), with Romney identified with the 53%, whereas up to that point the two groups were of vastly unequal sizes (1/99), with Romney identified with the 1%. It suddenly became far easier for someone earning $50,000 per year to identify with Romney and the 53%.
- rayward
October 24, 2012 at 7:29am
"We're going to lose a fine and talented president for a lying windbag and a regressive platform with white skin." No we aren't, Soph, because Obama ain't gonna lose. Buck up! My fellow liberals are the most wildly risk-averse tribe in the known universe; any risk that Obama might lose is converted to his having already lost. Do you hear Republicans pissing and moaning about how Romney's dull debate performances in the second two debates were too little too late to get him over the Electoral College line? Of course not. And yet that's closer to the reality of the contest than all the sturm and drang in the Democrat's gallery. The GOP should be sweating it out, because their man is way behind where it counts--in the Electoral College--and the time for him to make up those deficits is fast running out. I'd love to play poker with some of y'all. You'd sit on all kinds of good cards convinced you were behind, "Oh, I don't know, I don't know... I've got aces over jacks, but he might have trips. I better fold." I'd throw my weight around, betting hard with any old trash, and you Nervous Nellies would be working so hard not to lose that you'd toss your best hands, and slowly but surely I'd chip your stack down to nothing.
- AaronW
October 24, 2012 at 8:05am
Rayward: sober analysis of the numbers over the last two months suggests two things. First, the race is tight now because it was tight in August, and in May. As Galupo observed, Santorum was ahead of Obama at some point in March of last year. Santorum, not unthreatening post-debate Romney, but Santorum. What happened is that between the 47% comment and Bain and the Democratic Convention, there was a bump for Obama that has proven unsustainable. Why, because the real race is where it was in August and May, between a Democratic and a Republican vision of the country. Second, the down-trend in national polls for Obama started in mid-September, about two weeks after the Convention and when you would expect the convention bounce - around 2% - to fade. What the first debate did - and it had little to do with Obama's performance, and everything to do with Romney's - was to confirm for a chunk of "undecided" voters that Romney is not quite the dangerous radical he appeared before the debate, and that he is about as cynical as some of his "moderate" supporters argued: radical for the primaries and moderate for the main election. As someone said, they took Romney for a test drive and he didn't look unhinged, so they are willing to give him a break. Florida is "competitive" only because of the generational warfare Ryan and Romney have launched on Medicare. That NC is competitive at all for Obama is, of course, telling - of Romney's weakness in "battleground" states. What, I think, a lot of people forget is that the community organizer's ground game, which started in December last, is based on his primary ground game in 2007-2008 - the same game that Penn failed to understand, and that ended up blind-siding Hillary until it was too late. It is about registering voters, energizing volunteers, and getting people to the voting booth - all at the state level. Gore and Kerry demonstrated that the national tally does not mean anything: any fifth-grader with an elementary knowledge of gerrymandering will tell you that successful manipulation of voting comes with concentrating support for the opposition in specific districts, and distributing your own strategically among a wider number of districts. So it is with the Electoral College math: Obama can lose Georgia by 60 points and win California by one vote; the popular vote tally will be lopsided, but the math will work in Obama's favour. Again, the best number for Romney at this point is 246. There you have the unforgiving math of the Electoral College that the community organiser understands, regardless of any magical numbers related to national voting patterns.
- icarus-r
October 24, 2012 at 10:30am
"Incredibly, polls suggest that Obama might do better among Latino voters than he did in 2008..." That's not surprising. McCain was from a heavily Latino state and had a history of championing immigration reform, even if then abandoned it. Romney had no such history and then tacked much harder right on Latino issues. I'd be surprised if Obama didn't do better among Latinos. And all this talk about race playing a role...keep in mind the difference between an Obama shellacking among whites (35-36 percent of the white vote) and Kerry's performance (41 percent) is only 5-6 percentage points. White voters just typically don't vote for Democrats, regardless of the color of who's running.
- polcereal
October 24, 2012 at 10:37am
"White voters just typically don't vote for Democrats, regardless of the color of who's running." A certain segment of White voters. Could Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's "welfare queens" have something to do with it? In that case race would be central to the reason why there are differential voting patterns. Having said that, I think while race explains the intensity of the animus towards Obama, in some quarters at any rate (and the way he is portrayed or criticised), it is too reductive. For all the grief that Obama has got over the "clinging" statement, there is something to what he was trying to get through. The political system in the United States is failing the White working poor - has failed them, under both Democrats and Republicans. It is only natural that a large chunk routinely falls back on the frontier "self-reliance" myth/ethos/philosophy - however you want to characterise it.
- icarus-r
October 24, 2012 at 11:26am
Sophia et al, the racism charge does get old. You are screaming "racism" at a group that has ALREADY voted for Obama in 2008. To say they are racists for not voting for him again is a bit of a stretch when the economy has been is in the crapper for so long. The president already indicated a long time ago that if he didn't have the economy fixed he'd a be a 1 term president. The calculus is quite simple here. Is it reasonable that after 4 years, someone that voted for Obama in 2008 might change their mind and vote for the other guy without being racist? Sure. Save the word "racist" for the times its true. As it stands now, you've so watered down so many words, you don't have any charges to lob against someone who really is a bad person.
- seattleeng
October 24, 2012 at 11:40am
A game winning ground game requires the occasional long ball to keep the opposition off balance. Also, it can be demoralizing if the opposition can score quick and easy points but your team can only score by relying on the long drive. Will the players in the middle of the line on which the ground game depends come through in the clutch after the opposition pulls ahead in the score.
- rayward
October 24, 2012 at 11:59am
What I find frustrating is the lack of any serious analysis of why white voters have turned against the Democrats and Obama. I have read various reports that claim to do this, but invariably found them disappointing, either slandering white voters (they do so because they are racists) or patronizing them (they are bamboozled by the Koch brothers and their ilk). It is very hard to win over people if you disdain them.
- brthompson
October 24, 2012 at 1:23pm
BR: actually, there is quite a lot written on the subject. It has nothing to do with disdain or condescension and everything to do with electoral politics taking advantage of deep cleavages in American society, the deepest of which is race, and after that religion. Google "Southern Strategy" and you will see how and when the deparation of Democrats from a certain segment of the White voter population began. It is neither mystifying nor rocket science, but a dollop of sociology and a dash of political science.
- icarus-r
October 24, 2012 at 1:47pm
icarus, re. your 10:30 post, my sentiments exactly. Especially the part about the 1st debate effect, such as it was--or wasn't--being mostly due to Romney's performance, not Obama's. As I've said several times here (oy, I sound like liberalref), this election was always going to be close, and the fact that it appeared less close in September was 100% due to Romney's unexpected weakness--and to the Obama campaign's unexpectedly aggressive framing of his weaknesses. The suddenness of the swing back towards Romney may have been enhanced by Obama's first debate performance, but such a swing was always on the cards, as you say. And while I'm mentioning annoying posters such as liberalref, has anyone noticed that drofnats! is AWOL? You, icarus, were accusing him of being a paid Republican troll, a double-agent saboteur. I didn't think it very likely, and I suppose I still don't, but I must admit that his disappearance from the site not long after you began to level the accusation and at a time when an amateurs' interest in posting here might be expected to be at peak levels is peculiar.
- AaronW
October 24, 2012 at 2:07pm
People do just vanish from time to time -- I'd particularly like to hear again from WandreyCer these political days, and I was hoping some folks like teplukhin and ginzy might resurface. And the great WilliamYard, of course. But that's mere nostalgia.
- ironyroad
October 24, 2012 at 2:43pm
Aaron: "accuse", hardly - merely wondering, and that after the really dumb "true progressive" comment of his. :) Like the computers in old Star Trek, my brain kept saying, "does not compute, does not compute." ... I doubt if I drove him off the site (the only person I have driven off the site was myself, for 15 months or so ...). I think for a time, his schtick had traction of sorts - you and Roid, for example, were not terribly happy about Obama's political performance against the Republicans - and so he had something of a receptive audience. And so, if sincere, he could at least have a bit of a dialogue. But with the election under way, he was a voice in the wilderness. Either that, or the Central Committee has told him to cool off until November 8, at which point he will be advocating conceding Congress to the Republicans in 2014, so that we could have a true revolutionary unified government in 2016. Go Dean/Nader 2016!
- icarus-r
October 24, 2012 at 4:02pm
teplukhin... Where did he go? He actually sort of reminded me of roid, or rather roid sort of reminds me of tep, tho tep did have his odd obsessions--Vlad Putin being one. I had the impression that before he left he might be having some personal GFC-related financial difficulties. The crew here is mos def thinner on the ground than it was 5 or 6 years ago. For me 2006 was the heyday. Those were the days.
- AaronW
October 24, 2012 at 10:07pm
I think you're right. I wonder which one of us will turn out the lights and lock the gate behind us. But who knows, maybe we'll have a replenishing of new blood (that sounds vaguely vampiric, but you know what I mean).
- ironyroad
October 25, 2012 at 12:04am