Where Obama Has Slipped

There's an ominous trend for President Obama in the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll: not only is his overall approval rating lagging, but he's lost as much (or even more) ground among groups that favored him in 2008 as among those who resisted him last time.

The chart at left compares Obama's vote among key groups in 2008, according to exit polls, and his job approval rating among them in the latest Heartland Monitor released Thursday morning. (The survey, conducted by FTI Strategic Communications, polled 1200 adults by landline telephone and cell phone from November 30 to December 4 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.)

Overall, Obama has slipped from 52.8 percent of the vote in 2008 to 44 percent approval in the new survey with 49 percent disapproving. As the chart shows, Obama has declined not only in the groups that were always dubious of him, but also with several that enthusiastically joined his winning 2008 majority.

In 2008, Obama assembled what I called a "coalition of the ascendant" - by which I meant he did best among groups that were themselves growing rapidly in society, particularly minorities, the vast Millennial Generation, and the growing ranks of college-educated whites, especially women. Several of those groups have noticeably cooled on him. Obama's approval rating is now 12 percentage points lower than his 2008 share of the vote among young adults (aged 18-29); 11 points lower among African-Americans; and 10 points lower among college-educated white women. Each of those groups provided him a majority of their votes last time. Compared to his 2008 showing, he's tumbled 14 percentage points among independents, another group that provided him a narrow majority of its votes last time. Upper middle-income families earning between $75,000 and $100,000 annually were an important constituency for Obama last time; but he's dropped from 51 percent of the vote with them to 44 percent approval.

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Obama is now facing dismal approval ratings in all corners of the white community. In 2008, he carried 52 percent of those college-educated white women, but attracted much smaller shares among college-educated white men (42 percent), white women without a college degree, the so-called waitress moms (41 percent), and the non-college white men (just 39 percent). The new survey shows that with all four groups his approval rating is appreciably lower than his 2008 performance. He's fallen to 42 percent of the college-educated white women, 37 percent among the college-plus white men, just 34 percent among the non-college white men, and all the way down to 30 percent with the waitress moms.

Looking at whites by age underlines the picture of broad-based weakness. In 2008, Obama carried a 54 percent majority of whites under 30; but in the new poll his approval rating with them has tumbled to 39 percent. His standing with white seniors now is almost identical: in 2008, he won only 40 percent of them, and his approval rating with them now is 41 percent. His numbers are lowest with whites in the prime working years: just 29 percent of whites 30-44, and 35 percent of whites 45-64 say they approve of his performance. In 2008, he won 41 percent of the former and 42 percent of the latter.

Among all whites, now just 35 percent approve of his performance and 58 percent disapprove. That's virtually identical to the results in the 2010 Congressional election, when whites gave 60 percent of their votes to Republicans and just 37 percent to Democrats, according to the National Election Pool exit poll conducted by Edison Research. (The convergence extends down to the subgroups: Obama's approval rating among college-educated white women now exactly equals the party's share of their vote in 2010; among both college-plus and non-college white men, the difference is two percentage points.) In eight Heartland Monitor polls since January 2010, Obama's approval rating among whites has exceeded 40 percent just once.

The groups that have proven most resistant to this trend are Hispanics (where Obama's latest approval rating has slipped just three percentage points from his 2008 vote share); seniors (where he's actually running slightly ahead) and families earning at least $100,000 annually (where he's also fallen just three percentage points.) Some other surveys - like Gallup's nightly tracking poll - show Obama receiving lower ratings among all three of those groups than the Heartland Monitor does.

With some of the previously sympathetic groups, Obama's actual vote in 2012 is almost certain to exceed his approval rating today, as those voters focus on the choice with his Republican opponent. (Some national polls in fact show Obama running much closer to his 2008 numbers with some of those constituencies when tested against Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.) But the diminished ratings Obama is receiving even from groups critical to his 2008 victory underscores the challenge he'll face maintaining both turnout and his margin next year among the pillars of his "coalition of the ascendant."