<http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2008/05/obama-and-worki.html>
Obama and Working-Class Whites Gary Langer
May 13, 2008 12:42 PM
The anticipated outcome of today's contest in West Virginia is prompting a fresh review of Barack Obama's difficulties winning support from working-class white voters in this year's Democratic primaries. One question: The extent to which it does or doesn't predict problems for Obama if he's the party's nominee in November.
The effect, which we started reporting back in February, has been clear in the primaries: Whites who don't have a college degree have voted for Hillary Clinton by a 2-1 margin, 62-31 percent, while those who've gone through college have divided evenly, 48-47 percent.
It seems that the effect stems in part from the thematic positioning of the two, with Clinton's more nuts-and-bolts approach better attuned to the working class, Obama's inspirational pitch for a new politics resounding better among more upscale Democrats. Obama's been helped by the fact that better-educated voters are disproportionately likely to turn out – especially in primaries.
But primaries only tell us so much about general elections. In our latest ABC/Post poll, testing each of the Democrats against John McCain, there's a shortfall among less-educated whites for both: McCain leads Obama by 12 points in this group, Clinton by 8.
Obama, with his upscale appeal, does better among better-educated whites: McCain's just +3 vs. Obama, compared with McCain's 12-point advantage against Clinton among college-educated whites. That accounts for Obama's better showing against McCain overall, 51-44 percent in our poll, vs. 49-46 percent in a Clinton-McCain matchup.
Obama McCain Clinton McCain Whites, no college 40% 52 44% 52 Whites, college grads 47 50 42 54
There are other potential impacts of race and socioeconomic status. As we noted in our poll analysis yesterday, 17 percent of less- educated whites say they're at least somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of an African-American president; among better-educated whites that declines to 4 percent. As noted, there's a similar effect on comfort with a woman president – and McCain's age is a far bigger negative than either of these. Each of the candidates has room for some consciousness-raising on these concerns.
It's also worth noting that the latte-vs.-lunch bucket effect has not been entirely consistent in all primaries this year. Obama won less- educated whites in the Vermont and Wisconsin primaries, was +2 in Utah and came within 4 points in his home state of Illinois (although in each he again did better with upscale whites).
It's fair for the Obama camp to point out that he doesn't do significantly worse against McCain among working-class whites than Clinton does, and that he does better with their upscale counterparts. And Obama's numbers are nothing like John Kerry's and Al Gore's; they lost working-class whites to George W. Bush by 24 points and 17 points, respectively.
But working-class whites nonetheless are a group with which Obama might well like to improve. If he loses today's primary, and next week's in Kentucky, they'll be the first place to look. And less- educated voters account for a greater share of the turnout in general elections than in primaries. While Obama could win a general election without them – just as he leads McCain today – it's also true that the last Democrat to capture the White House, Bill Clinton, ran evenly among working-class whites as he did so.