obama's voter "problems"

During the Democratic primary battle, the corporate media spent countless hours and column inches repeating and dissecting the Clinton narrative that Obama had a “problem” with … name the voter demographic. With Hispanics (we all know that Hispanics are racist and won’t vote for a Black man). With women (even though Obama ran a respectful campaign that never went negative on Hillary, he needs to be held to account for sexism in society generally – even if McCain is actually committed to undermining women’s rights). And especially with “hard-working White Americans”. It was well known that Obama had “problems” with these voter groups.

That corporate media narrative has now given way to the question, Why isn’t Obama doing better against McCain? (Of course, you never hear the question stated the other way: Why is a 26-year veteran of the Senate who has (or used to have) the best brand in American politics behind in his race against a 47-year old African-American who was virtually unknown four years ago?)

I should start by saying that I HATE these demographic narratives. Voters are more than the sum of their demographic groups. For example, I am a middle-aged, affluent, married white man with kids – by far the MOST Republican demographic group. But I have almost NOTHING in common with many of those with whom I share this demographic profile. With that said, let’s look at some of these well known “problems” Obama has.

All polls now show Obama leading McCain among Hispanics by a solid 2 to 1 margin (according to Gallup he is actually leading by 68 to 20%). George W. Bush in his race against John Kerry managed to secure 40% of the Hispanic vote. McCain will be lucky if he gets 30%. So much for that “problem”.

Among women, Obama is leading McCain 52 to 37% (15 points). By contrast, Kerry beat Bush among women by only 51 to 48% (3 points). Among white women, Bush actually beat Kerry, 55 to 44% while Obama is tied with McCain (44 to 44%).

The big one, of course, is the so-called “hard-working White American” vote. This is the one, we are told, that is Obama’s Achilles Heel. Then how do explain this from today’s Washington Post:


During the Democratic primary battle, the corporate media spent countless hours and column inches repeating and dissecting the Clinton narrative that Obama had a “problem” with … name the voter demographic. With Hispanics (we all know that Hispanics are racist and won’t vote for a Black man). With women (even though Obama ran a respectful campaign that never went negative on Hillary, he needs to be held to account for sexism in society generally – even if McCain is actually committed to undermining women’s rights). And especially with “hard-working White Americans”. It was well known that Obama had “problems” with these voter groups.

That corporate media narrative has now given way to the question, Why isn’t Obama doing better against McCain? (Of course, you never hear the question stated the other way: Why is a 26-year veteran of the Senate who has (or used to have) the best brand in American politics behind in his race against a 47-year old African-American who was virtually unknown four years ago?)

I should start by saying that I HATE these demographic narratives. Voters are more than the sum of their demographic groups. For example, I am a middle-aged, affluent, married white man with kids – by far the MOST Republican demographic group. But I have almost NOTHING in common with most of those with whom I share this demographic profile. With that said, let’s look at some of these well known “problems” Obama has.

All polls now show Obama leading McCain among Hispanics by a solid 2 to 1 margin (according to Gallup he is actually leading by 68 to 20%). George W. Bush in his race against John Kerry managed to secure 40% of the Hispanic vote. McCain will be lucky if he gets 30%. So much for that “problem”.

Among women, Obama is leading McCain 52 to 37% (15 points). By contrast, Kerry beat Bush among women by only 51 to 48% (3 points). Among white women, Bush actually beat Kerry, 55 to 44% while Obama is tied with McCain (44 to 44%).

The big one, of course, is the so-called “hard-working White American” vote. This is the one, we are told, that is Obama’s Achilles Heel. Then how do explain this from today’s Washington Post:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama holds a 2 to 1 edge over Republican Sen. John
McCain among the nation's low-wage workers … according to a new national poll
[by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard
University].

Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers -- a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November -- Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate. …

Obama's standing with the white workers runs counter to an impression, dating from the primary season, that he struggles to attract support from that group.

According to this poll, Obama is actually doing much better among poor whites (where he leads by 10%) than he is among whites overall. Overall, Obama trails McCain by roughly 10 points among whites (39% to 49%). But to put that in perspective, Obama is doing better than Kerry did among whites. Kerry lost the white vote by 41 to 58% (17 points) while Obama is only trailing by 10. Obama’s biggest weakness is among white men where he trails McCain by 34 to 55% (21 points). But Kerry lost that group by a stunning 37 to 62% (25 points). Even Bill Clinton never polled more than 39% among white men in his landslide win in 1996.

Remember that Obama’s “problem” among these “hard-working white Americans” was supposedly going to put states like Pennsylvania and Ohio beyond his reach. Well, according to the current pollster.com “poll of polls”, Obama leads in Pennsylvania by 49.7 to 40.6%. In Ohio, Obama leads by 46.1 to 42.5%. Basically, Pennsylvania is out of reach for McCain (while my gut tells me Ohio will be tighter than these numbers indicate). Another media narrative bites the dust.

The Web site fivethirtyeight.com compared recent demographic data from Gallup with the 2004 exit polls and came up with a comparison that showed Obama doing better than Kerry among ALL groups (except among Democrats overall):

Obama's particular strengths are in the Midwest -- that's how a state like
Indiana can be competitive this year -- among young voters, and among Hispanics.
The latter two groups are particularly interesting is they have far and away the
most untapped potential in terms of improving turnout.

In the Democratic primaries, that potential was realized: the youth vote increased by 52 percent as a share of the Democratic electorate, and the Latino vote increased by 41 percent. But these are not groups that vote in heavy numbers traditionally, and so they may be among the first ones filtered out by likely voter models. They are also probably among the hardest voters to reach in surveys -- the youth vote because of the cellphone problem, and Latinos because of language barriers. All yet more reasons why polling is a dodgy and difficult business this year.

Oh, and what is the one group where Obama fails to outperform Kerry? Democrats -- although part of that may simply be that the undecideds aren't allocated in a pre-election poll whereas they have (necessarily) made up their minds by the time they take an exit poll. Kerry won Democrats 89-11; Obama presently leads by an average of 80-11 over the last three weeks of the Gallup poll.

So how come Obama isn’t “doing better” against McCain? I would suggest it isn’t race or any other Obama “problem.” Rather, it is that McCain still enjoys an increasingly undeserved reputation for bipartisanship and moderation and a unique “brand” (bestowed upon him by an adoring press) as a “straight-talking maverick.”

Today’s Los Angeles Times makes a good point – the problem isn’t that Obama is underperforming the Democratic party, it is that McCain is over performing the Republican party:

[N]either McCain nor Obama can be considered a generic candidate, because both
enjoy strong appeal among independent voters. This is particularly the case for
McCain, who has largely managed to avoid the stigma attached to the tarnished
Republican brand. In a recent poll conducted for NBC News and the Wall Street
Journal, only 31% of voters had a favorable view of the Republican Party,
compared with 48% who held a negative one. But McCain's numbers were nearly the reverse: 42% viewed him positively, against 30% unfavorably.

How has McCain done it? It has mostly to do with his reputation as a moderate. In that same NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 21% of voters said they viewed McCain as "very conservative," while 34% pegged him as a moderate. As long as he maintains his moderate brand, McCain will seem acceptable to some large number of independent voters and some smaller number of Democrats. …

According to polling averages compiled by the website RealClearPolitics, at the time they discontinued their respective presidential bids, Fred Thompson trailed Obama by 12 percentage points, Mitt Romney was behind by 15 and Mike Huckabee by 17. For that matter, a recent poll from Rasmussen Reports showed Obama leading President Bush by 20 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup.

McCain has managed to retain his reputation as a moderate and thereby avoid the fate of his conservative former rivals of falling far behind Obama. And so Democrats will aim to undermine McCain's perceived moderation -- by possibly highlighting his rightward shifts during the Republican primaries and by attempting to tie him to Bush. The problem for Obama is not so much that he's underperforming a generic Democrat. It's that he hasn't yet been able to re-brand McCain as a typically conservative Republican.

So Obama would have blown away the other Republican presidential contenders. But McCain is hanging in there because he is perceived as a “moderate.” In large part, that is because the corporate media constantly portray him as one. But now that he has flip-flopped on just about every conceivable issue (except his support for any and all wars), we will see how this reputation holds up when the electorate really starts paying attention and listening to the “New McCain.”

Then, you might find some more of Obama’s “problems” joining the dust bin of media narratives.