In a report on the results of a Pew Research Center poll released today, National Journal says that Obama has recaptured a lot of the ground Democrats lost with well-educated white women in 2010. But — and this is a big but — when it comes to every other segment of the white electorate, things are looking pretty bad.
Some of the conclusions:
Obama's best group in the white electorate remains well-educated women, who tend toward more liberal positions on social issues as well as greater receptivity to government activism. In the new poll, 56 percent of college-educated white women said they approved of Obama's performance. That's a slight improvement from the 52 percent of such women who voted for him in 2008, according to the Edison Research exit poll.
The rest of the white electorate remains deeply cool to Obama, the Pew survey found. Just 38 percent of college-educated white men said they approve of the president. That's down from the 42 percent of the vote he won from those men in 2008, and only a slight improvement from the minuscule 35 percent House Democrats won with them in 2010.
Obama's approval rating in the Pew survey stood at just 34 percent among white women without a college education — the so-called waitress moms. Obama won just 41 percent of them in 2008, and House Democrats just 34 percent of them in 2010.
The toughest group for Obama remains white men without a college education — the blue-collar workers who constituted the foundation of the Democratic electoral coalition from 1932 to 1968. Just 35 percent of them said they approve of his performance in the Pew poll. That's below even the 39 percent of them Obama carried in 2008, though slightly above the Democrats' microscopic 32 percent showing with them in 2010, according to the exit poll.
Earlier this week, The Root's Cynthia Gordy critiqued the re-election-campaign launch video that seemed to send the message that "black folks better motivate themselves to vote for Obama again because he's too busy to ask for our support." While that outlook is certainly "not the most inspiring selling point," numbers like these do make it seem like a bit of a reality check on the 2012 race.
Read more at National Journal.
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