Another Poll Arising Position

The wingers are mocking the President for this National Journal analysis of recent poll numbers showing that the GOP's strategy of running as the party of non college-educated white folks against a black President is working pretty well for them.  But there's some interesting data in there that should have the Republicans worried.

No one expects Obama to win these blue-collar men, who are now among the most reliably Republican segments of the electorate. But even so, these numbers, if sustained through Election Day, would represent a modern nadir for Democrats. Since 1980, the worst performance for any Democratic nominee among these working-class white men was the 31 percent Walter Mondale managed against Ronald Reagan in 1984; the meager 39 percent Obama drew in 2008 was actually the party's best showing over that period. These new surveys show Obama that these non-college white men represent Obama's largest source of decline in the white electorate since 2008. 

And that decline has been pretty steep, from 39% to 29% in the latest polls.

Still, Obama is also facing weak numbers among working-class white women. The Quinnipiac Poll shows him drawing just 37 percent of white women without a college education, and the ABC/Post poll puts him at 40 percent with those women. In each poll that's up five percentage points from his showing in the most recent national survey, a change within the margin of error. But even so, Obama's performance in the new polls shows the continued Democratic struggles with those "waitress moms" that Bill Clinton and then Al Gore targeted successfully (Clinton won 48 percent of their vote in 1996 and Gore 45 percent in 2000). Obama appears on track to do no better, and possibly slightly worse, than the modest 41 percent he won with those women in 2008, which was itself essentially unchanged from John Kerry's weak 40 percent showing in 2004.

So he's actually rebounding a bit among non-college educated white women, but losing the men.  I can see that.  The real news is the entire electorate is less white, so these numbers are less important to Obama and more important to Mitt Romney.

But if Obama's doomed, how come he keeps polling ahead consistently in states like Ohio?

Such a poor performance among working-class whites would enormously complicate Obama's hopes in older Rust Belt states where they predominate, including Ohio, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin (and to a slightly lesser extent Pennsylvania). But in several of those states, recent polls (like Quinnipiac's most recent Ohio and Pennsylvania surveys) show Obama running slightly better with non-college whites than he's run nationally, which has allowed him to maintain a lead. 

So he's running even better in the swing states, because Mitt Romney's that bad of a candidate. That makes sense:  the economy is doing better in most of these states (Ohio especially) and you have to remember in these Rust Belt swing states, working-class white voters are also...tada!  UNION VOTERS.  And Republicans have been directly hostile to union voters especially in Ohio and absolutely in Wisconsin.

Those Bain Capital and offshore Cayman Island account attacks on Romney are scoring points, regardless of race and gender.