Obama's poll numbers point to his defeat in 2012

Obama's poll numbers point to his defeat in 2012 Washington Examiner By: Byron York

President Barack Obama pauses as a woman in downtown Kokomo, Ind., stretches the yellow police tape to grab a souvenir photo during a visit to tout the city as a success story of the Recovery Act, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010.We're fast approaching the halfway point in Barack Obama's term. With Nov. 2 behind him, everything the president does will be calculated to boost, or at least not harm, his chances of re-election in 2012. What's not clear is whether he fully appreciates how badly the coalition he led to victory in 2008 has frayed in just two years. A look inside his poll numbers suggests that if he cannot turn around some key trends, he'll be a one-term president.

Just look at the exit polls from 2008, which reveal the demographic contours of Obama's support. Compare those with Gallup's weekly analysis of the president's approval rating, drawn from multiple polls broken down by age, gender, political philosophy, and the like. Throw in some insights from the midterm elections, and the mix shows a dramatic deterioration in Obama's 2008 support. "His majority coalition is not there," says Republican pollster David Winston. "What he put together, at least in the way he put it together, just isn't there."

Start with voters who call themselves independents. Obama won 52 percent of them in 2008; now, according to Gallup, he is at 42 percent. Obama's party as a whole fared even worse among independents in the midterms, losing them to Republicans by 19 points. If Obama does anywhere near that badly in 2012, he'll lose.

Next, women. In 2008, Obama won 56 percent of female voters. Today, he's at 49 percent. If that number doesn't improve, he'll be in deep trouble. (Obama is also down with men, from 49 percent in 2008 to 44 percent now.)

Even younger voters, a key part of Obama's coalition, are peeling away. In '08, Obama won 66 percent of voters 18-29 years of age. Now, he's at 58 percent. That might seem pretty good, but not when you consider his deterioration among other age groups. Obama has dropped 5 percentage points among voters in and around middle age, and 8 percent with voters above 65. If those trends continue, he'll lose.

Then there are white voters. In '08, Obama won 43 percent of whites. Now, he's at 37 percent -- a dangerously low number for his re-election hopes. He won 67 percent of Hispanic voters in 2008; now, he's at 58 percent. Even support among black voters, a bedrock for Obama, has ticked downward; after winning 95 percent of blacks in '08, he's now at 89 percent.

Just one group has stuck with Obama through it all. In '08, he won 58 percent of people with graduate degrees. Now, he's at 59 percent. It appears that academic types will be with Obama always, but they're not enough.

Everyone expects some of Obama's lost voters to come back in 2012. "Presidential elections are different from midterms," says David Winston. "You'll see a slightly larger turnout among younger voters, a slightly larger turnout among African-Americans, making the electorate a little more liberal. But everybody across the board turns out at higher rates."

And that includes conservatives, of whom there are more every day. Gallup has found that the number of people who call themselves conservative has gone up sharply since 2008, "fueled by heightened conservatism among independents."

"He's got to realize the reason he lost independents," says Winston of the president. "He thinks it was about communications. It wasn't. It was about substance and policy." Whether Obama can gracefully back away from the policies that got him in trouble -- federal spending, Obamacare -- is simply not clear.

Obama supporters point to the example of Bill Clinton, whose approval dipped to 40 percent after losing Congress in 1994, only to climb to 54 percent before winning easy re-election in 1996. Maybe that will happen again.

But Clinton's former pollster, Doug Schoen, doesn't see it that way. Schoen recently did a survey asking voters whether Obama deserves to be re-elected and found that 56 percent believe the president doesn't deserve another term, while just 38 percent believe he does.

Despite his problems, there are still ways Obama can win. His greatest hope, as always in politics, is that the other side will screw up. Maybe the newly empowered House Republicans will do a terrible job, or the GOP will nominate an awful presidential candidate. But that just underscores a stark reality. At this point, it will be hard for Obama to save himself. He'll need a lot of help to win a second term in the White House.

Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2010/11/obamas-poll-numbers-point-his-defeat-2012#ixzz17NAiksbX
 
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2010/11/obamas-poll-numbers-point-his-defeat-2012