Concerns About Obama Linger Among Blue-Collar Whites, Study Finds

Residents of Macomb County, Mich., voice both desire for change and uneasiness about the Democratic standard bearer

by Ronald Brownstein

Monday, Aug. 25, 2008


Doubts about Barack Obama's experience, values, and patriotism, more than racial resentments, are driving the resistance to him among working-class whites, according to an extensive study of those voters to be released today by veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg.

In the study, built around focus groups and a poll, Greenberg and four colleagues found Obama facing substantial hurdles but still possessing the opportunity for gains in Macomb County, a bellwether blue-collar suburb northeast of Detroit.

The survey found McCain leading Obama in Macomb by 51 percent to 42 percent, with Obama suffering substantial defection among white noncollege Democrats. In the focus groups, conducted among Democrats resisting Obama, voters struggled between a strong desire for change and deep doubts about the presumptive Democratic nominee.

"We know Obama is able to bring suburban, young, and minority voters," said Greenberg, who will release the study, "Back to Macomb," at a Convention Daily briefing this morning. "The question now is does he build a real majority with older [and blue-collar] voters."

Since the 1980s, Macomb has been closely watched as a hotbed of "Reagan Democrats" -- traditionally Democratic working-class whites who moved to the GOP during the Ronald Reagan era around issues of national strength, taxes, and a belief that Democrats favored minorities on questions like welfare and affirmative action.

Greenberg, then a Yale University political scientist, helped cement Macomb's status as a national political barometer with a series of focus groups there for the Michigan Democratic Party after Reagan swept the county 2-to-1 in 1984. When Greenberg's focus groups found that these working-class whites interpreted Democratic calls for economic fairness as code for transfer payments to African-Americans, national Democratic leaders suppressed the study as too inflammatory.

Later, as pollster for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, Greenberg helped craft the "New Democrat" message that attempted to recapture Reagan Democrats by linking efforts to expand opportunity with personal responsibility and fiscal discipline through initiatives such as welfare reform. Clinton reduced the GOP advantage in Macomb in 1992, and won the county comfortably in 1996, but George W. Bush narrowly carried it in 2004.

Obama's struggles in Macomb County reflect his larger challenges among white voters without a college education. During the Democratic primaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Obama 2-to-1 among those voters, exit polls found. In four major preconvention national polls, Obama drew 38 percent or less of white noncollege voters against McCain. That's no better than John Kerry's anemic showing of 38 percent among those voters in 2004.

Obama doesn't need to win a majority of working-class whites to be victorious in November; indeed, a simultaneous Greenberg poll in Michigan found Obama leading statewide while trailing in Macomb. But to win nationwide in 2008, Obama will need to improve somewhat on Kerry's performance among blue-collar whites, most Democratic analysts agree. And he'll need to substantially improve among those voters if he hopes to build a lasting majority coalition. "You can't build a sustainable Democratic majority without blue-collar America as part of it," Greenberg said.

The poll and focus groups found that Obama's greatest asset with these blue-collar voters is widespread discontent over Bush's performance and a pervasive, at times overpowering, sense of economic vulnerability.

But the survey found Obama winning only half of Macomb voters who consider the country on the wrong track and just three-fifths of those who disapprove of Bush -- strikingly low numbers. Part of the resistance remains racial: In the focus groups, several respondents said they were closely watching for proof Obama would not favor African-Americans if elected.

But the study concludes, "Macomb voters do not seem to be voting predominantly on race." Few, for instance, considered Obama similar to Jesse Jackson, a symbol of racial tension there.

Obama faced two larger hurdles with these voters. One was a failure by Obama to connect with their economic anxiety. Obama's recent shift toward a sharper-edged economic message may help him on that front.

Obama may find the other barrier more intractable: doubts about his qualifications as commander-in-chief and patriotism. Some voters suspected Obama secretly shared the anti-American sentiments expressed by his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright; several others, even more explosively, wondered if Obama was a Muslim (he's not) and might be secretly sympathetic to terrorists. "You don't want to [find], if he's in office and then a week later we've got Afghanistan on our front door and we're all in cells six feet under," one younger man said.

Those incendiary fears were much more prevalent among Macomb men than women, who frequently described Obama in more positive terms like "fresh ideas" or "confident." While the Macomb poll found little difference between men and women, those reactions suggest blue-collar women "are more gettable" for Obama than working-class white men, Greenberg concluded.

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