* White voter pool still the largest, but shrinking
* Romney needs to improve on McCain’s support among white
men
* White voters fled Democrats in 2010 elections
By Samuel P. Jacobs
WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) – With the race between Mitt
Romney and Barack Obama tightening, the Republican needs one
group more than any other to drive him to the White House: white
men.
For Romney, the support of white male voters offers the
likeliest path to the presidency, even as betting on white men
is proving an increasingly risky proposition for Republicans.
His reliance on that voter group becomes more acute as polls
show him far behind with African-Americans, lagging badly among
Hispanics, and at a disadvantage with women in many polls,
despite overall poll numbers showing him essentially tied with
Obama in recent days.
Ninety percent of Republican voters were white in 2008,
according to exit polls, while white women tend to be more
evenly split between the two parties.
The bulwark of white male support is slowly eroding. For
decades, each presidential election has offered a smaller pool
of white voters. That puts pressure on Romney to secure a
greater share than previous Republican presidential nominees of
the shrinking proportion of the electorate made up by white men.
Adding to Romney’s electoral challenge: white male voters
are more conservative and describe their views in ways
increasingly different from the rest of the population,
according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. That trend stretches a
candidate who must simultaneously retain his base and increase
the diversity of his supporters.
White male voters currently pose challenges for both
campaigns. A smaller percentage of likely white male voters said
it preferred Obama than voted for him in 2008. At the same time,
a smaller percentage of white male voters also favors Romney
than it did John McCain in his losing effort four years ago.
If Romney does not improve on McCain’s performance among
white men, the electorate’s second largest voting demographic
after white women, he will likely repeat McCain’s fate,
pollsters and demographers said. Obama faces similar odds: a
huge dip in white male support could spell the end of his time
in office.
According to Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted Oct. 1 to Oct.
7, likely white male voters favored Romney 55.5 percent to 31.9
percent. Six percent of likely male voters said they were
undecided.
Romney’s advantage over Obama exceeds McCain’s, but falls
short of his fellow Republican’s total share of the white male
vote. In 2008, McCain outpaced Obama among white male voters 57
percent to 41 percent, according to exit polls.
“The fact that (Romney) is right in line with McCain does
mean he has work to do,” said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark.
PRESSURE ON OBAMA TOO
In 2010, whites fled from Democratic candidates. White
voters supported Republicans 60 percent to 38 percent in the
midterm elections, according to exit polls. In 2006,
Republicans held only a 4-point advantage among white voters.
For Democrats, who count on consistent support among Latinos
and overwhelming support among blacks, a 22-point disadvantage
among white voters will not be as daunting in the future. The
share of white voters in the electorate continues to slide. When
Republican Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, 89 percent of
voters were white. By 2008, that figure had fallen to 73.4
percent.
Contributing to the decline in the share of white voters is
the burst in eligible Latino voters. Hispanics saw their number
of eligible voters increase 21.4 percent from 2004 to 2008,
nearly five times the rate of growth of eligible voters in the
general population, according to the Pew Research Center.
But for now, white men outnumber all minorities put
together, and Obama and Romney in recent weeks have crisscrossed
Ohio and Iowa as the candidates and their surrogates blanket
coalfields and automobile factories hoping to lure male support
in predominantly white places.
Of course, gender and race offer only a simplified snapshot
of the electorate. For instance, Obama leads among likely white
male voters aged 18 to 29, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling
The president’s advantage over Romney falls within the poll’s
margin of error.
The fathers and grandfathers of those young men greatly
favor Romney: likely white male voters over 60 preferred the
former Massachusetts governor to Obama by 62 percent to 26.3
percent during the week ending Oct. 7.
“Older white men are the people (Romney) has to turn out,”
said William Frey, a demographer with Brookings Institute.
WHITE MEN AND WOMEN SPLIT
White men find themselves parting not only from how
minorities vote but from white women.
In Reuters/Ipsos polling ending Sept. 30, 36.5 percent of
white men said the Republican Party better served the middle
class, while 32.8 percent said the Democrats did.
That advantage flips when white women are polled. They give
Democrats a nearly 5-point advantage over Republicans when it
comes to the middle class. Minorities say Democrats serve the
needs of middle-class Americans by a margin of nearly 40 points.
While white men picked Romney over Obama as the candidate
with the right values by 43.5 percent to 31.4 during the week
ending Oct. 7, white women showed greater ambivalence, giving
the advantage to Romney 37.9 percent to 33.1 percent.
Minorities give Obama a nearly 50-point advantage on the
question.
Such numbers help explain the Republican Party’s dedication
to showcasing leading minority and female lawmakers and
candidates at the party convention in August. It also
underscores how dependent Romney is on turning out white men at
the polls.
While Obama bettered McCain among blacks by 90 percentage
points, African-Americans accounted for 12 percent of voters in
2008, according to exit polls. There were more than six times as
many white voters as black voters four years ago.
Hispanic voters turned out for Obama by a 2-to-1 margin.
They accounted for less than 10 percent of voters.
Given those numbers, the growth in minority populations
could be a boon for future Democratic candidates, but its
benefit is unlikely to prove decisive in 2012.
The good news for Obama supporters hoping demographic change
will overcome the struggling economy: Obama starts from a
position of strength. His performance among white men, feared as
a possible weak spot for the first African-American major party
nominee, was impressive in 2008, netting 41 percent of white
male voters, Obama outperformed every previous Democratic
nominee since Jimmy Carter.
