Reporting from Washington—
Barack
Obama won the presidency in 2008 by riding two of
America's biggest waves of population change — greater
racial diversity and a rise in college graduates. With the
2012 election a year away, his reelection chances depend on
those trends overpowering the sour impact of a bad economy.
The personalities and characters of candidates, the cut and
thrust of campaign tactics and the interplay of issues all
help decide elections. But the daily battles of a campaign
play out on ground shaped by long-term population change.
The growing Latino population, for example, has buoyed
Democratic fortunes and gives Obama hopes of holding on to
Nevada, despite that state's punishing economy. Increasing
numbers of highly educated professionals keep his chances
alive in Virginia, which he was the first Democrat to carry
since 1964. Colorado, a state that ranks high on both
counts, is a major prize
Democrats
hope to keep.
By contrast, many strategists believe that states like Ohio,
where both college graduates and minority voters are
scarcer, could prove far more difficult for the president
unless he catches a significant break on economic conditions
in the next year.
More is at stake than just Obama's future. After their
victories in 2006 and 2008, Democrats hoped that changes in
the U.S. population had delivered them a stable, lasting
majority. Now, as the rising demographic tides crash against
the rocks of an economic collapse, they see that advantage
slipping away.
No matter the demographics, a party in power "still has to
deliver" for the voters who supported it, said political
analyst
Ruy
Teixeira, who, shortly after
President
George W. Bush took office, co-wrote a book correctly
predicting the Democratic resurgence.
"Voters have to feel they're getting what they need, and at
this point that's very much in question," he said.
To win, Obama needs big margins among his two core groups,
minorities and college-educated white professionals, plus a
reasonable share of whites without college degrees — the
working-class voters who formed the bedrock of the
Democratic majority in the 20th century, but who now tend to
vote Republican.
Right now, he's in danger on both sides of that equation.
Democrats have won large majorities among nonwhite voters
for years, but only in the last decade has that vote become
large enough to swing national elections. When
Richard
M. Nixon profited from white backlash against the
civil rights movement and captured the formerly Democratic
South, nonwhites made up only about one in 10 voters,
Teixeira noted. By 2000, nonwhites were almost 20% of the
vote.
By 2008, they made up a quarter of the electorate. Obama won
the lion's share of
their
votes — 95% of blacks and two-thirds or more among
Latinos. In 2012, their numbers will tick up yet again.
To win in places like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico — all
key targets — Obama needs the Latino vote to keep expanding
and to go heavily to him. In North Carolina, another closely
fought state the last time around, his chances depend in
part on a very large and loyal black turnout.
Yet minorities have been hit disproportionately hard by the
recession — unemployment rates are higher among
blacks
and
Latinos
than among whites, and poverty is deeper.
The grim economic numbers almost certainly will discourage
some from voting. The economy could even encourage some
Latinos to consider the
Republicans
— although the hard line the GOP candidates are taking
against illegal immigrants may lessen that prospect.
The other key for Obama is the strong support that Democrats
have developed among professionals — lawyers, college
professors, nurses, social workers, teachers. That group
makes up almost a fifth of the electorate, and its members
tend to share the Democratic belief in government as a force
for public good.
Republicans still triumph among a different group of college
graduates — business owners and managers. But Obama beat
Sen.
John McCain by 19 points among voters who have
education beyond a college degree — one good indicator of
his strength among professionals.
In 11 states plus the District of Columbia, more than
one-third of the white residents have
college
degrees, according to the latest government
statistics. Obama carried all 12 in 2008. By contrast, of
the 10 states with the lowest percentage of college-educated
whites, Obama carried only one — Indiana, and strategists in
both parties assume he will lose it this time around.
Going into 2012, Obama's standing with college graduates has
fallen, as it has across the board. Nonetheless, the states
with the largest percentage of college-educated whites,
including California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut,
New Jersey and New York, remain the most solid parts of
Obama's electoral base.
But in states where the college-graduate percentage is
lower, his prospects seem increasingly glum.
Loss of jobs and income has deepened the alienation and
pessimism of working-class whites — a group that is
shrinking but still makes up about 4 in 10 voters.
(Pollsters generally use lack of a college degree as a way
to define the working class, since polls seldom ask about a
person's occupation.) Among white working-class voters, the
defeat Obama experienced in 2008 now threatens to become a
rout.
Extensive polling by the Democratic firm
Greenberg,
Quinlan, Rosner shows that through the George W. Bush
years, whites without college degrees were, on average,
about 7 percentage points more likely to call themselves
Republicans than Democrats.
But beginning in 2009, that gap yawned ever wider, reaching
20 points in 2010, when Republicans took control of the
House. Ominously for Democrats, the gap has remained close
to that level.
The reasons are not hard to discern: The Democratic message
of government as a positive force for Americans runs smack
against the experience of many without a college education.
For these voters, economic prospects "are still declining,"
said Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg. Average
paychecks for non-college-educated men, adjusted for
inflation, are lower now than 30 years ago. The current poor
economy has only made things worse, feeding a belief that
government functions only for insiders with connections.
"I just don't feel like I can rely on government at all,"
said Christopher Kane, 41, a heavy equipment operator from
the Northern California town of Brentwood. "It doesn't feel
like anyone's reliable anymore. Unions, companies, no one
does what they say."
Kane, who was a respondent in a recent
USC
Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, voted for Obama in
2008 and said he did not completely fault the president for
the economy because "he inherited such a mess."
But, he said, conditions have simply gotten worse, and he's
come to agree with the Republican argument that government
"just pisses the money away."
"It just gives you a real sense of helplessness."
In that view, Kane has a lot of company. A poll this spring
for the
Pew
Charitable Trusts showed that blacks and Latinos were
both more optimistic about their futures than were whites.
Among whites, those without a college education were the
most gloomy.
"The pessimism is extraordinarily deep," said
Mark
Mellman, the Democratic pollster who helped conduct
the survey. Working-class voters "still want the government
to take action," he said; "they're not necessarily
antigovernment." The difficulty is convincing them that
"policies will help them and people like them and not
someone else who doesn't need the help."
Persuading voters to put aside that deeply felt pessimism
can be done, but will be "a great challenge" for Obama, said
Greenberg. "I truly do believe the long-term demographic and
cultural trends favor the Democratic coalition," he said.
"But in the short term, we're not there yet. Not this year."
