There could be new trouble for Obamaland: according to the Detroit Free Press, there are signs he is losing Reagan Democrats who once supported him:
President Barack Obama says he saved Michigan’s auto industry, but that isn’t helping his 2012 re-election bid in Macomb and Oakland counties, where Republican front-runner Mitt Romney’s strength helps give him a 5-point lead in the state a year before the election, a Free Press poll shows.
There’s time for the president to woo voters, but without the two key suburban Detroit counties, it would be difficult for Obama to win Michigan, a state whose voters have backed Democratic candidates in the last five presidential elections.
In a head-to-head matchup statewide, Romney tops Obama 46%-41% in the poll.
In Macomb, where Obama received 53% of the vote in 2008, the president trails Romney, 68%-20%. Even controlling for a high margin of error because of a small sample size in the county, Obama trails Romney in Macomb by at least 20 percentage points.
The other top two Republican presidential candidates, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, also lead the president in Macomb, though not in Oakland.
Obama’s problem lies with independent voters, who helped him win three years ago but now favor Romney in Michigan and several other swing states.
If this starts occuring in states throughout the US of A Obama, his team, and the Democrats will have a huge problem: it will signify losing a key chunk of the coalition that elected him.
Of course, what must be factored in also will be this: will the Republicans in the end nominate someone who will scare Reagan Democrats and independent voters away? (Stay tuned..)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.