Newsweek published the results of a new poll, which shows John McCain doing quite well among white voters, leading Barack Obama by 12 (52% to 40%), and leading Hillary Clinton by four (48% to 40%). This isn’t especially surprising — white voters overall preferred Bush to Kerry in 2004, Bush to Gore in 2000, Dole to Bill Clinton in 1996, and H.W. Bush to Clinton in 1992.
But Newsweek went further in analyzing the results, and found that Obama’s race “may well explain his difficulty in winning over white voters.”
In the NEWSWEEK Poll, participants were asked to answer questions on a variety of race-related topics including racial preferences, interracial marriage, attitudes toward social welfare and general attitudes toward African-Americans. Respondents were grouped according to their answers on a “Racial Resentment Index.” Among white Democrats with a low Racial Resentment Index rating, Obama beat McCain in a hypothetical match-up 78 percent to 17 percent. That is virtually identical to Clinton’s margin in the category, 79 percent to 13 percent. But among white Democrats with high scores on the Racial Resentment Index, the picture was very different: Obama led McCain by only 18 points (51 to 33) while Clinton maintained a much larger 59-point lead (78 to 18).
Who exactly are these high Racial Resentment Index voters? A majority, 61 percent, have less than a four-year college education, many are older (44 percent were over the age of 60 compared to just 18 percent under the age of 40) and nearly half (46 percent) live in the South.
I’m not entirely sure why this is newsworthy. Older, less-educated white people who harbor racial “resentment” are far less inclined to vote for the African-American presidential candidate? I’m pretty sure we could have guessed that without the benefit of a poll.
The same poll, meanwhile, not that white people are also thrown by Obama’s name and confusion over his faith tradition. Only 58% of white voters correctly identified Obama’s Christian faith, while 11% still believe he’s a Muslim. Just as ridiculous, “18 percent of white Democratic voters say they judge the Illinois senator less favorably because of his name.”
We’ll have a lousy economy, more wars, and a right-wing Supreme Court, but at least our president won’t have a funny sounding name.
As for the rest of the Newsweek poll, the results with the country at large were far less discouraging.
Among voters overall, however, Obama fares better, tying McCain 46 percent to 46 percent in a hypothetical match-up. (That’s down slightly, within the margin of error, from the last NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted in late April, in which Obama led McCain 47 percent to 44 percent). In that contest, he is boosted by a strong showing among nonwhites, leading McCain 68 percent to 25 percent (Clinton leads McCain 65 percent to 25 percent among nonwhites). But even this result shows some of the electoral challenges facing Obama in a year when Democrats generally appear to hold an electoral advantage — boasting a 15 point advantage in generic party identification over Republicans, 53 percent to 38 percent.
Clinton fares slightly better against McCain: 48 percent to 44 percent (within the margin of error). She enjoys this slight edge even though Obama leads Clinton 50 percent to 42 percent as the choice of registered Democrats for the party’s nomination. Clinton’s white support is unusually high: at a comparable point in the 2004 election, Democratic nominee John Kerry received the support of 36 percent of white voters, compared to George W. Bush’s 48 percent, and in June of 2000, Bush led Al Gore 48 percent to 39 percent.