Working-class whites and the Democrats

Desperate for jobs and cool toward Barack Obama, working-class whites are flocking to Republicans, turning a group long wary of Democrats into an even bigger impediment to the party's drive to keep control of Congress. A new poll shows that whites without four-year college degrees prefer GOP candidates by twice the margin of the last two elections, when Democrats made significant gains in the House and Senate. The poll, conducted in September 2010, found this group favoring GOP hopefuls 58% to 36% - a whopping 22 percentage-point gap. In 2008, when Obama won the presidency, they favored GOP congressional candidates by 11 percentage points, according to exit polls of voters. When Democrats won the House and Senate in 2006, the Republican edge was only 9 percentage points. Compared with better-educated whites, working-class whites tend to be older and more conservative - groups that traditionally lean Republican and are uneasy with the young president's activist governing. Their wariness is reinforced by a prolonged economic funk that has disproportionately hurt the working class and shown scant signs of improvement under Obama and Congress' majority Democrats. Though accustomed to trailing among working-class whites, Democrats can hardly afford further erosion from a group that accounts for about 40% of voters nationally. Their GOP preference is in contrast to whites with college degrees, who the poll shows are split evenly between the two parties' candidates, and to minorities, who decisively back Democrats. Many of these working-class voters were dubbed Reagan Democrats in the 1980s, when some in the North and Midwest who had previously preferred Democrats began supporting conservative Republicans. Many never warmed to Obama during the 2008 presidential race, when he said some bitter small-town residents cling to guns and religion for solace. They preferred Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, by 2-1 and in the general election backed Republican nominee John McCain by 18 points. In the poll, working-class whites were likelier than white college graduates to say their families were suffering financially and to have a relative who's recently lost a job. They are less optimistic about the country's economy and their own situations, gloomier about the nation's overall direction and more critical of how Democrats are handling the economy. They are likelier than better-educated whites to dislike Obama personally and are more negative about his leadership. Over half say he doesn't understand ordinary Americans' problems. They are also likelier to disapprove of Obama's performance as president, including more than two-thirds who are unhappy with his stewardship of the economy.