Many people don’t understand how the white working class can support a Republican party which clearly favors the rich and would continue to vote against their own interest. But, that depends on how you define their interest. Anti-abortion and anti-gay religious beliefs coupled with NRA gun-toting sentiments may well see this group waiting for economic interest to “trickle down” to them while “getting their country back” with a white guy in the White House.
In order to win this year, Mitt Romney must capture two-thirds of white
non-college voters -- about the same percentage that voted for Ronald Reagan in
his 1984 landslide re-election. White non-college voters are a smaller part of
the electorate now than they were then. In 1984 they comprised 61 percent of
all voters. In 2008 they comprised 39 percent.
U. S. Unemployment data, May 2012, shows the following: Total unemployment is 8.2%; White unemployment is 7.4%; Black unemployment is 13.6%. Not to bad for white, huh.
As a majority group -- 86 percent of voters in 1940 and 61 percent in
1984 --white non-college voters cannot be ignored by either party. Party
platforms and candidate rhetoric were aimed at them. A party that fails to win
over this group, like the Democrats in 1984, would suffer landslide defeat.
Things operate differently with groups that are minorities. One party
may antagonize them in search of votes from other groups, i.e. the Republican
and Hispanic voters. Democrats' efforts to woo blacks, Hispanics, and liberal
college-educated whites turned off the white working class in the 1980s.
Barack Obama seems to be doing the same thing this year. His support of
same-sex marriage won't help with non-college whites. Nor will his blocking the
Keystone pipeline with all its blue collar jobs. Add to the list the
contraception mandate being denounced in Catholic churches. And the move to
give work permits to something like 1 million illegal immigrants.
In each case Obama is trying to instill enthusiasm in a core Democratic
constituency and may appear to be poking a finger in the eye of the white
working class.
In 2008, Barack Obama carried white non-college voters in 15 states and
the District of Columbia with 124 electoral votes. California and New York were
not among them; neither was New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Ohio. Candidate Obama
lost the white vote in five of the current "battle ground states: Nevada,
Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Non-college educated voters voted
58% for McCain and 40% for Obama.
The Republican strategy to stall the economy at any cost, to boost white
turnout by using social issues like abortion to overlap economic issues, and to
suppress the vote by voting rules that disenfranchise blacks, young voters and
the elderly might just work to keep Barack Obama a one-term president.
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