More bad news in what seems a steady flow of bad news for Democrats heading into what looks like a political Katrina of nationwide defeats: a Gallup Poll finds minority and young voters, two key parts of the coalition that elected Barack Obama President and gave Democrats their winning coalition, are not poised to go to the polls this November:
Minority and young voters made a significant mark on the 2008 presidential election with their high turnout; today, however, these groups appear to have reverted to previous levels of interest in voting in the context of midterm elections. Most notably, in contrast to 2008, when whites and blacks were about equally likely to say they were giving “quite a lot of” or “some” thought to the presidential election, whites are much more likely than blacks to be thinking about the 2010 elections: 42% vs. 25%, a gap exceeding those from recent midterm elections.
Gallup analyzes these figures and then offers this bottom line:
Earlier this year, President Obama identified women, blacks, and young voters among the groups he highlighted as critical to a voter mobilization effort designed to help the Democrats hold their congressional majority. These groups made up a good portion of the “new voters” who propelled Obama to victory in 2008. However, Gallup data suggest they are not poised to provide the same kind of boost for Democratic candidates this fall. As a result, and because of the extraordinarily keen interest in the elections that conservative Republicans currently display, Republicans overall currently enjoy a 54% to 30% lead over Democrats in “thought given to the election.”
If these numbers hold, the preservation of the Democratic majority in Congress would depend on the Democrats’ increasing their appeal to voters at large — recent Gallup polling shows the Democrats trailing the Republicans among registered voters — rather than counting on heightened turnout from their strongest backers.
Unlikely to happen significantly enough to impact the elections, unless there is some positive shift in the economy’s tepid numbers, some huge Republican mistake or news dominating overreach between now and election day.
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.