Obama’s Advantage: Working-Class White Women
Across most of the presidential battleground states, particularly in the Midwest, President Obama’s lead rests on a surprisingly strong performance among blue-collar white women who usually tilt toward the GOP.
A National Journal analysis of recent polling results across 11 states considered battlegrounds shows that in most of them, Obama is running considerably better than he is nationally among white women without a college education. Obama’s gains with these so-called “waitress moms” are especially pronounced in heartland battlegrounds like Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Combined with his continued support among young people, minorities, and college-educated women, these advances among blue-collar women have been enough to propel Obama to the lead over Republican Mitt Romney in the most recent public surveys in all 11 states (albeit in some cases within the polls’ margins of error).
These women have tilted Republican in every presidential election since 1980 except 1996, and in 2008, Obama won only 41 percent of them. The three recent national surveys showed Obama attracting between 35 and 44 percent of their votes. But in the battleground states, especially in the Midwest, Obama’s performance is much stronger.
Beyond the opposition’s portrayal of Romney as obtuse to the problems of working families, both sides agree that he has been hurt among blue-collar white women by the skirmishes over defunding Planned Parenthood and access to contraception in health insurance. Many of these women view such women’s-health matters not as moral issues but as practical pocketbook concerns.
Convincing more working-class white women to reassess their tentative choice of Obama may be Romney’s most urgent task in the presidential debates that begin this week. These battleground-state trends show why. Read more
—Ronald Brownstein
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