That less-educated, poorer white women so intensely dislike the president’s health-care initiative might look odd at first. And yet this demographic-associated disapproval seems to be the trend overall. More often than not, Obamacare is sold as a compassionate program, and its opponents are frequently accused of exhibiting an ugly “I’ve got mine” mentality. But this conceit is not supported by the numbers. Among Americans earning less than $50,000, only 32 percent support the law, with 67 percent opposing. This rises slightly for Americans earning between $50,000 and $100,000 per year, to 43–57, and then drops again among those earning $100,000 and more, to 39–60. Somewhere, Marx’s brow is furrowed.

Often lost in the analysis of the 2012 election is that the Republican party needs to win only small slivers of each traditionally Democratic bloc in order to again win a national election. Judging by recent trends, the GOP does not do particularly well with Hispanics. But at the moment it doesn’t need to; it just needs to do a little better. The same goes for the young and for women. As for a long-term strategy, the challenge will be to build an effective coalition that stands strong of its own accord and that is successful in its own right, not merely when the opposition screws up. Republicans by no means have that coalition yet. But if the trend that Obamacare has started continues at this rate, the Democrats won’t have one either.