White Support for Obama at Historic Level

According to a recent Politico analysis of Gallup and Pew Research Center polling, Barack Obama is positioned to win the largest share of white voters of any Democrat in more than three decades. Recent Gallup Polling shows Obama with a 44% level of support among non-Hispanic white voters - the highest number for a Democrat since 47% of whites backed Jimmy Carter in 1976. In comparison, Bill Clinton garnered 43% of this vote in 1996, also the best performance since Carter. No Democrat has won a majority of the white vote since LBJ in 1964 (As he famously predicted).

As I noted two days ago, the latest report by the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research found that in 13 battleground states, rural voters — nine in 10 of whom are white — were split, with 46 percent backing Obama and 45 percent McCain. Obama holds solid leads in all of these states. In September these voters favored McCain by 10 points .

86% of white Democrats now support Obama, roughly equal to what John F. Kerry earned in 2004. Until the economic crisis began, that number had been in the 70s, on par with Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Clinton in 1992. Better than 80% of white working-class Democrats now back Obama, roughly a 20-percentage-point rise compared with the week before the Democratic convention.

Obama also splits white independents with McCain, with 46% backing each candidate, a performance unseen by a Democrat since Clinton in 1996. In the past week, Obama’s support has slightly waned with independent white working-class men, the largest group of independents. But he has gained with women in the same bloc.