Put aside the top lines from all the polls for a moment and consider what may be the real story of the election: white, working class voters are turning away from the President in record numbers…
Pew, one of the most respected in the business, showed Obama winning only 37 percent of likely white voters. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed Obama stuck at 36 percent. Gallup’s weekly tracking found his approval rating among whites at 38 percent. Even Public Policy Polling, a Democratic robo-polling firm skewered by the Right, finds Obama’s job approval at 39 percent in its tracking. If Obama can’t hit 40 percent, he badly needs to maximize the minority and youth turnout that comprise his base.
Which helps explain some of the more bizarre ads the Obama campaign and its affiliated groups have released in recent days. Get the kids and foul-mouthed grannies out to vote, because otherwise, the racists win!
But the deeper story is, and always has been, turnout. And for Team Obama, that’s also becoming a source of genuine concern, particularly in states where white, working class voters appear to be ditching the hopey-changey stuff. So much so that more states are in play than was previously thought possible. The President is having to devote resources to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin — all states he won four years ago and that polls today show are either close to or well within the margin of error. So what might it all mean on election night?
The election isn’t just coming down to Ohio. There’s plenty of evidence that, given Obama’s struggles with white working-class voters, he could face some unexpected headwinds in states that have been in the Democratic column during presidential years since at least 1988. Obama’s campaign is acknowledging as much with its late television buys and surrogate campaign stops. Romney is currently trailing in the aforementioned states by several points, but Obama is under the 50 percent mark. If undecided voters break to the challenger, all bets are off.
The presidential election looks like it will come down to which candidate is able to live up to the promise of his coalition. If Obama is able to pick off Florida, Virginia, or North Carolina, he’ll be headed for a second term. If he doesn’t, Romney has a golden opportunity to pull off a Rust Belt surprise on election night.
North Carolina is already out of the President’s reach and both Virginia and Florida have been moving steadily away from him, too. Very quietly, and on background, some Republican operatives are telling me we could see a thumping Romney win on election night. We shall see.
