Official portrait of Barack Obama
Let's begin this evening's glimpse into the 2012 Crystal Ball by stipulating two points:
- President Obama's 2008 electoral victory was, essentially, a landslide. It also marked the high-water point for Democrats in the past ten years.
- President Obama's current job approval numbers, however, lie right in the midst of the danger zone for a President seeking re-election.
Admittedly, there are some on the left who would strenuously dispute the second point. And...sure, the Republican Presidential primary could easily devolve into a total disaster, leaving a badly damaged nominee whose public esteem is minimal. In that scenario, President Obama could still cruise to a win, his image rehabilitated solely on the comparison with a flawed opponent.
But, it is also just as likely that the GOP will coalesce around one candidate, who will emerge more or less unscathed from the primary process. In that scenario, the election could easily become a referendum on the incumbent. In that scenario, a net negative job approval spread could easily resign the President to early political retirement.
Of course, a big part of the President's job approval rating is predicated on situational ethics. If the economy improves between now and November of 2012, it is a safe bet that his job approval numbers will pep up nicely as a result. There is a pretty sizeable contingent of political observers who presume that the President's re-election is wholly dependent on the state of the economy. They may well be correct in that presumption.
That, it is nonetheless worth exploring what has changed between that high-water mark in November of 2008 and today. There is no question that the President's support with the American electorate has eroded. A cursory analysis of the data shows that it has not eroded uniformly, and that critical elements of what is nominally understood to be the "Democratic base" are among those that have soured on the President the most.
In the interests of exploring this erosion of presidential support, I took the liberty of comparing two pieces of data: the 2008 exit polls from the November general election, and the Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation Poll from last week.
Of course, some will quibble (with some justification) that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, since the exit polls register actual vote preferences, while in the State of the Nation poll we are looking at job approval data. Certainly, history has given us a number of examples of candidates whose vote totals far exceeded their approval ratings, given the political terrain and the quality of the opposition. Certainly Gray Davis (CA) in 2002 comes to mind, as does Pat Quinn last year.
But in presidential elections, there is usually a tighter correlation between presidential popularity and their vote totals. For example, looking at President Bush's job approval in 2004, you find him right on the knife's edge, with his late October job approval ratings being net favorable by somewhere between 0-5 points. He wound up winning by 2.4%.
If you characterize job approval as a "vote for", and you characterize job disapproval as a "vote against", then the bottom line is that President Obama has slid a total of thirteen percentage points between 2008 and 2011. In 2008, the President won by seven points (53-46). Last week, President Obama's job approval was a net -6 (44/50).
What's more: as I mentioned earlier, the erosion has not been consistent across the board.
And therein lies a potentially valuable lesson: there are two glaring common characteristics to five of the six demographic groups that have fallen off the most precipitously for the President.
1. They are all groups that are likely to have been the most acutely impacted by the economic woes that have hammered the country.
2. They are also all groups that should be solidly in the President's corner next November. But, with the sharp drop in support (all six of these groups have seen a drop of at least 23 points in net "approval"), the President cannot take any of these groups for granted.
FIFTH BIGGEST DROP: Latino Voters (From 67/31 to 55/42)
In some ways, the erosion of support for the President among Latino voters should be the most alarming shift of all, despite the fact that other demographic moves dropped more sharply. This is, after all the fastest-growing demographic group in America. Political experts have long speculated that any future GOP political growth in the future would be stunted by the changing demographics of America. But if Republicans can reasonably compete for Latino votes, that whole political calculus changes dramatically. We saw a prologue to that erosion in 2010. Even though Democrats still carried the Latino vote handily in the midterms, the Republicans did manage to see their vote share tick up to 38%, well over the 31% McCain managed in 2008.
FOURTH BIGGEST DROP (tie): Independent Voters (52/44 to 37/54)
Independent voters are a tougher lot about which to draw conclusions. After all, partisan self-identification can often be a fluid thing. The advent of the teabaggers has created a group of very conservative voters who nonetheless refuse to claim identity in the Republican Party. Therefore, the President's sharp drop with Independents may be owed as much to a sliding definition of what an "independent voter" is than it does to any particular failing (real or perceived) of the President's political performance.
FOURTH BIGGEST DROP (tie): African-Americans (95/4 to 82/16)
It is pretty doubtful that this is a demographic group that the President's re-elect team is terribly worried about. Nor should they be, in all likelihood: if any group of voters will pull the lever for President Obama, despite any political misgivings, it is African American voters, who turned out in historic numbers (and with historically stratospheric levels of support) for him in 2008. That is probably doubly true amid all the birther nonsense, which has had a special impact in the African-American community (witness this moving example in the form of a video from Baratunde Thurston). Of the six groups named, this is the one that is the most likely to return to form between now and November of next year.
THIRD BIGGEST DROP: Earners of between $30-50K per year (55/43 to 41/55)
Since another income group still remains ahead, let's save a discussion for this until a bit later. Suffice to say, a look at the 2008/2011 comparisions shows that most, if not all, of the President's drop in support, comes from voters making $50,000 or less per year. If that doesn't scare the hell out of the President's re-election crew, it should.
SECOND BIGGEST DROP: 18-29 year old voters (66/32 to 45/44)
Young voters were the revelation of the 2008 election cycle. They turned out as they never had before, and they turned out to vote for Barack Obama. His two-to-one margin among young voters was a 25-point improvement over four years earlier, when John Kerry won that demographic group by just a 54-45 margin. Two things have happened since 2008. The proportion of young voters staying involved in the process has dropped precipitously (having gone from 18% of the electorate in 2008 to just 12% in 2010), and Republicans have become more competitive (the margin was back down to 55/42 in 2010). The President now draws a net positive approval for this demographic of just a single point, an eye-popping thirty-three point drop since 2008. This is a recent trend that Democrats need to reverse, absent the counterweight of a huge swing among seniors (which Paul Ryan might be facilitating with his economic tinkering).
BIGGEST DROP: Earners of less than $30K per year (64/33 to 43/49)
As I mentioned earlier, almost all of the drop in the President's support has come from those earning less than $50,000 per year. Consider the following chart, which looks at how each of the income groups have seen their support for the President change between 2008 and 2011:
Presidential "support" (votes in 2008, approval in 2011), by income group
Less than $30,000: 64/33 in 2008, 43/49 in 2011 [net loss of 37 points]
$30,000-$50,000: 55/43 in 2008, 41/55 in 2011 [net loss of 26 points]
$50,000-$75,000: 48/49 in 2008, 46/48 in 2011 [net loss of 1 point]
$75,000-$100,000: 51/48 in 2008, 46/44 in 2011 [net loss of 1 point]
Over $100,000: 49/49 in 2008, 48/48 in 2011 [no net change]
Those voters earning under $50,000 have arguably been the ones most endangered by the lengthy economic slump, and they are pretty clearly dissatisfied with the pace of progress on the economy.
But one has to wonder whether debates about deficit reduction and austerity measures are going to play with these two groups (although, inexplicably, the 30-50K crowd actually came the closest to parity on the poll question about job creation vs. deficit reduction). In this week's State of the Nation poll, these income groups are three-to-one in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy, rather than privatizing Medicare. This is difficult to interpret as a call for a return to the "sensible center", nor does it seem to be a demand to seek common cause with the GOP.
And that may be the lesson for Team Obama and the Democrats. Given the divided government they face now, it is exceedingly unlikely that they will be able to produce actual legislation that will change the political calculus. The Republicans, who now run the House, aren't likely to offer up a big legislative win for the Democrats.
So, it would seem, the Democrats need to remind those core parts of their coalition, who polls show potentially wavering, exactly who is on their side. Which means that it may very well be in their best interest to pick a few fights. Gridlock is never pretty, but it might actually be preferable to the constant seeking of "middle ground" that may only serve to further discourage base elements of the Democratic electorate and lead them to the despair of assuming that neither party in Washington speaks to their needs and their values.