The Race Factor

A Clinton pollster’s strategy on how Obama can win over working class whites.

As we head into Tuesday’s debate, Barack Obama supporters buoyed by their candidate’s steady lead in the national polls should be wary. There’s a big elephant in the room, and it’s race. An AP/Yahoo poll released in September showed that Obama could lose as much as 6 percent of the vote on November 4 due to racial prejudices. The most recent polling from 18 swing states shows Obama has unambiguous problems with working-class voters, particularly in the crucial battlegrounds of Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Obama fares poorly with voters over the age of 40, working-class voters, and former Hilary Clinton supporters.

This has the potential for what political scientists call a Bradley effect, in which an African-American candidate like Obama fares better in the final, pre-election polls than he does in the final results. The Bradley effect was so named because of the 1982 California gubernatorial election, when Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, had about an eight percent lead in the Field poll before being narrowly defeated by George Deukmejian. It was later seen with African-American candidates David Dinkins in New York City; Douglas Wilder in Virginia; Harvey Gantt in North Carolina; and, more recently, Harold Ford Jr., whose 2006 Senate campaign was undone by a commercial featuring a white Playboy bunny beseeching Ford to “give her a call.” There has been a lot of debate about the nature and extent of the Bradley effect, but I have concluded from an examination of these prior elections and the results of the primaries that Obama could lose as much as three to four percent from his final poll tally due to its impact—particularly in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Obama also needs to identify himself clearly and unabashedly with fiscal conservatism, as well as traditional lifestyle issues and a commitment to faith and cultural conservatism.

Race, of course, is not Obama’s only problem with the white working class. For a lot of working-class voters who have never had a passport, never traveled, and rarely leave their communities, Obama’s journey from Hawaii to Chicago by way of Indonesia and Harvard Law is one they have trouble identifying with.

So what can Obama do to win over the white working class?

First, the financial crisis affecting Wall Street gives Obama a clear chance to articulate his message in terms these voters understand. Obama needs to show how financial failures on Wall Street lead inexorably to working-class Americans being at greater risk to their overall well-being. Obama needs to argue that the choice is clear between the failed policies of the Bush administration that have increased joblessness, increased the deficit, increased gas prices, and made homeownership more problematic because of foreclosures, and the records of Democratic presidents like Bill Clinton, where there was record growth on Wall Street, low unemployment, low inflation, and job development.

Obama needs to emphasize the economic results that flow from his fiscal plans: more jobs at home, affordable health care, and mortgage relief. These are benefits that working-class voters can identify with. Obama needs to stick with this message and drive it home on a day-to-day basis, certainly more than he did during the first debate.