La luna de miel termina, los independientes y los blancos abandonan a Obama despues de un anio.
La caida en el apoyo de esos grupos ha bajado en 30%
A Year After Honeymoon Ends, Whites, Men and Independents Desert Obama
By Peter Brown
Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, is a former White House correspondent with two decades of experience covering Washington government and politics. Click here for Mr. Brown’s full bio.
It was a year ago this month that President Barack Obama began losing voters. In the 12 months since, he has had legislative victories that appear – especially in the case of health care – to have cost him large amounts of both political capital and political support.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama hold a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House Tuesday.(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) A comparison of the public’s views of him then and now tells us a great deal about the shape of American politics and how difficult it is for any president, even one as politically gifted as Barack Obama, to surmount the nation’s deep political and ideological divisions.
Mr. Obama won a surprisingly easy victory in 2008, carrying 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes – along with Bill Clinton in 1996, the biggest Democratic presidential win since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide.
Candidate Obama promised “change we can believe in,” a post-partisan, problem-solving presidency that would heal the nation’s yawning political divide. By the time he was inaugurated in January 2009, Mr. Obama had stratospheric public approval ratings, heightened by many who had voted against him but decided to give him a chance despite their misgivings.
For the first six months of his presidency, Mr. Obama retained vigorous public support – until he tried to translate into legislation his promise to “reform” health care, which, it turned out, meant different things to different voters. In July 2009, the demonstrations against the Obama health care plan reached critical mass and began to deflate the president’s poll numbers, and that continues today.
Skepticism About the Government’s Role
The U.S. economy has continued to flounder, and surely that is part of the reason for the president’s decreased standing. But the disillusionment with the president’s handling of the economy stems from the same public skepticism about the role of government in economic policy as in health care.
Quinnipiac University today released a national poll of 2,181 registered voters, almost twice the size of most national polls. (It has a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.) It showed President Obama’s net job approval rating at its lowest point ever – 44% approve, 48% disapprove.
In July 2009, Quinnipiac’s national poll had the president with 57% approve, 33% disapprove.
The decline in Mr. Obama’s support over the past year has been across the-board, with the largest decreases being among whites, older voters, political independents and men.
Some of it was to be expected. It was unlikely, for instance, that given Mr. Obama’s preference for increased government involvement that he was going to keep the 21% of Republicans who approved of his job performance in July 2009. That figure is now 12% – more than a third lower.
Losing Faith in Obama
So, too, went white, evangelical Christians, perhaps the largest GOP constituency group. In July 2009, 35% said they approved of Mr. Obama’s job performance. Today, that figure has been cut almost in half – to 19%.
If it was just among Republicans and their ideological allies that the president was losing support that would not represent a serious political threat.
What is most problematic for the president is the drop among whites, men and political independents. Those demographic groups gave him greater support in 2008 than they had most Democratic presidential candidates over the past few decades.
Simply put, when Democrats carry or are competitive among whites, independents and men, they win the White House.
When they don’t, they don’t.
Winning the White House
On Election Day 2008, much was made of the increased turnout that Mr. Obama inspired among young voters and African-Americans, and to be sure that fattened his margin. But he won the White House because, the exit polling showed, he got 49% of men, 43% of whites and 52% of independents. Each of these three groups individually makes up a larger share of the electorate than blacks and young people combined.
In July 2009, President Obama had actually grown that support so that he was getting a thumbs-up job approval from 54% of men, 51% of whites and 52% of independents.
But today, the numbers for those three groups show just how far he has fallen. He gets a positive job approval from just 37% of whites, 38% of independents and 39% of men – a roughly 30% drop in all three groups in his support.
And the bleeding has spread to his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill. In July 2009, voters said by 42%-34% that they would back a Democrat for Congress; today, they said they prefer a Republican, 43%-38%. The drop-off among the various demographic groups is similar to that for the president.
All of which suggests the last year has convinced an awful lot of the folks who hadn’t voted Democratic for president in some time before supporting President Obama to rethink their politics with an eye toward returning to their political roots.
Write to Peter Brown at
peter.brown@quinnipiac.edu.