Obama's problem with white working-class Americans

In 2008, he won vital votes among poor whites, but their support is slipping: that demographic is not for this Democratic president
Barack Obama holds a baby in Columbia, South Carolina, Jan 26, 2008
Barack Obama campaigning in Columbia, South Carolina, 2008. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

Obama's problem with white working-class Americans


Many (myself included) have frequently commented that President Obama is losing white working-class voters. But what does that mean exactly, demographically? What or who is the working class in the US, anyway?

Many would argue that the working class are those without college degrees. Barack Obama won only 40% of white voters without a college degree in 2008 – although this percentage was actually up from John Kerry's share in 2004. So how's Obama doing with these voters now?

Not well. A recent Pew poll had Obama up by 7 points nationally, but all the way down to 35% support among those white voters without a college education (pdf). Obama's support in the Pew poll among whites with at least a college degree stayed steady, from 2008, at 48%. That suggests Obama is failing badly to connect with the blue-collar segment of the electorate.

But some might argue that education is not the only definition of being working-class, or any definition of it at all. After all, college is usually associated with economic success, yet the list of wealthy Americans without a college degree is long. So we could say, instead, that being working-class correlates with an income below a certain level.

Exit polls in 2008 put the economic cut-off line at $50,000: 38% of voters had family incomes at this level or below. Anywhere above, you start approaching the 50% of the electorate that could be called middle-class, by income. In 2008, Obama won a higher percentage of the whites making less than $50,000 (47%) than he did among whites making more than $50,000 (43%).

The difference in Obama's support between these economic groups has disappeared in 2012. Obama's support among whites making less than $50k has plummeted to 41% in the recent Pew poll, while his support has stayed relatively steady, at 40%, among those making more than $50k. A recent ABC/Washington Post poll puts Obama's support among whites making less than $50k at 40%, while he's at 39% with all whites.

Likewise, there is no difference within the different economic segments of the working class. My reading of the last three pooled Public Policy Polling (PPP) national surveys suggests that those whites making less than $30,000 also only give Obama 38% of the vote; whereas it was 42% in the Pew poll.

This lack of a divide between lower-income and upper-income whites is an extremely unusual phenomenon. Lower-income whites have actually been moving towards the Democratic party since 1952, while middle and upper have been moving away.

You might be tempted to guess that Obama's lack of success is merely because of whites in the south. But in the pooled PPP data, Obama still trails among whites making less than $50k who live outside the south. He obviously does do better among non-southern whites, but he's only taking 43% of their vote – and trailing Romney.

Again, this finding flies in the face of historical trends. According to Larry Bartels, the Democratic vote among low-income voters outside the south actually increased over the past 60 years by 11 percentage points. That is not holding true in the polling for the 2012 election.

Obama is doing better among better-educated whites making less than $50k. According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, he's taking 45% of the vote in this group, but even there, he's trailing Romney by 5 points. Obama's standing with the electorate in general is about 2 percentage points higher than he polls among whites of all income groups with at least some college education, according to that latest Pew Poll.

Obama polls at only 37% among whites who did not attend college and make less than $50k in the ABC/Washington Post poll. That's about where he is with the overall non-college-educated white population in the Pew poll. In past elections, we'd expect the Democratic nominee to do considerably better among economically less well-off people, compared with their wealthier counterparts, when controlling for less education. 

You might also assume that part of Obama's difficulty among those making less than $50k is that they are more religious (recalling Republican primary candidate Rick Santorum's strong showing with evangelical voters). Of the 307 whites making less than $50k in the Washington Post poll, only 98 (or 31%) identified as white Protestant evangelical. That's only 4 percentage points higher than the overall white voting population in the Pew poll.

So, are poorer religious voters more likely to back Republicans? In fact, not necessarily. Keeping in mind the small sample size, these economically less well-favored evangelical whites showed as actually more likely to back Obama (at 33%), than the overall white evangelical population, at 19%, in the Pew survey.

The truth is that, no matter which way you slice the data, Obama is doing worse with the white working class than he does with other demographic groups. The differences in voting patterns seen among whites who are college-educated or not have widened, while the usual economic gap in voting intention among whites has disappeared, if not reversed itself.

Obama can still win this election with strong support from an alliance of ethnic minority groups, but he should be worried that he appears incapable of winning the kind of broad demographic victory on which Democratic candidates could once depend.

Author's note: my thanks to Jon Cohen and Scott Clement at the Washington Post for their examplary willingness to share their polling data.