Even if the President were to recreate the 2008 electorate – and as I mentioned last column, it is by no means certain that he’ll be able to – it wouldn’t be enough for Democrats to fix this problem. A CNN poll released immediately after the midterms showed Obama trailing Mitt Romney among registered voters. Even after re-weighting the state polls to a 2008 electorate, Obama was tied in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and trailed in Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida. Clearly this isn’t just a matter of getting 2008 voters to turn out. He has to convince some 2010 voters to re-evaluate their voting selections.
The President still has two important things going for him, however. The first is time. There is ample time for perceptions of the economy to turn around, and for his job approval to increase. Second, he won’t be running against “generic Republican.” All of the major Republican candidates have flaws, and the results from 2010 in Colorado and Nevada show that a Republican candidate with serious enough flaws can still lose in swing states, even to badly damaged incumbents.
But the President’s electoral coalition is showing serious signs of weakness right now. If the election were held today, he would almost certainly lose, probably by a margin in the Electoral College similar to that by which he won in 2012. If he wants to be re-elected, he has some serious work to do reaching out to the suburban and working class voters that Democrats shed in 2010. Simply maxing out the vote among minority and progressive voters won’t be enough to win.
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