Obama Struggling with White Voters

A new Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll details President Obama’s slippage with various voting groups–particularly white voters.

“Overall, Obama has slipped from 52.8% of the vote in 2008 to 44% approval in the new survey with 49% disapproving,” writes Ronald Brownstein of National Journal.

Brownstein also says that “Obama has declined not only in the groups that were always dubious of him, but also with several that enthusiastically joined his winning 2008 majority.”

That includes college educated women who backed Obama over John McCain in 2008. In fact, Brownstein writes, “Obama is now facing dismal approval ratings in all corners of the white community.”

Brownstein’s analysis:

In 2008, he carried 52% of those college-educated white women, but attracted much smaller shares among college-educated white men (42%), white women without a college degree, the so-called waitress moms (41%), and the non-college white men (just 39%).

The new survey shows that with all four groups his approval rating is appreciably lower than his 2008 performance. He’s fallen to 42% of the college-educated white women, 37% among the college-plus white men, just 34% among the non-college white men and all the way down to 30% with the waitress moms.

Looking at whites by age underlines the picture of broad-based weakness. In 2008, Obama carried a 54% majority of whites under 30; but in the new poll his approval rating with them has tumbled to 39%.

His standing with white seniors now is almost identical: in 2008, he won only 40% of them, and his approval rating with them now is 41%. His numbers are lowest with whites in the prime working years: just 29% of whites (age) 30-44, and 35 % of whites (age) 45-64 say they approve of his performance. In 2008, he won 41% of the former and 42% of the latter.

Among all whites, now just 35% approve of his performance and 58% disapprove. That’s virtually identical to the results in the 2010 congressional election, when whites gave 60% of their votes to Republicans and just 37% to Democrats, according to the National Election Pool exit poll conducted by Edison Research. . . .

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