When added to Obama's commanding lead among minority voters-he is attracting about three-fourths of both minority men and women in the ABC/Post survey-the president's strength among well-educated white women is enough to provide him his solid overall lead in the survey.
The ABC/Post results closely track the trends from the national and swing state surveys released last week by Gallup; and recent swing state polls conducted in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Virginia by Quinnipiac University. As National Journal noted, in all of those polls, Romney led Obama among white women without a college degree, as well as among white men with and without degrees. But the president held big advantages among college-educated white women, as well as minority voters of both genders, and lead overall in each of those surveys as well.
All of these polls underscore the likelihood that Obama's Electoral College map is likely to run heavily through states shaped by both diversity and increasing levels of education-the same powerful social forces that he embodies. They also pinpoint the challenge Romney faces in loosening Obama's hold on the most socially liberal component of the white electorate-college-educated women-after a series of primary and legislative fights that have identified with the GOP with an array of socially-conservative positions, from eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood to allowing employers to deny health care coverage for contraception if it offends their moral beliefs.
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