Obama support from key groups softens, poll finds

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Whites and women are a re-election problem for President Barack Obama. Younger voters and liberals, too, may hurt him but to a lesser extent.

All are important Democratic constituencies that helped him win the White House in 2008 and whose support he’ll need to keep it next year.

An analysis of Associated Press-GfK polls, including the latest survey released last week, shows that Obama has lost ground among all those groups since he took office. The review points to his vulnerabilities and probable leading targets of his campaign as he seeks to assemble a coalition diverse enough to help him win re-election in tough economic times.

The nation’s high unemployment is weighing on Obama, dragging down his marks for handling the economy. His overall standing has slid, too, after a difficult summer marked by contentious negotiations over the country’s borrowing limit, a downgrade of the nation’s credit rating and concerns about the U.S. falling into another economic recession.

The poll shows that 46 percent now approve of how he’s doing his job, down from 52 percent in June.

Among the findings:

White, independent voters, who divided their support evenly between Obama and McCain in 2008, may be the president’s biggest challenge now. Just 3 in 10 white independents say Obama deserves to be re-elected, and only 41 percent say he understands the problems of people like them.

Women no longer are a bright spot for Obama.

At the 100-day mark of his presidency, they gave him significantly higher approval ratings than did men, 68 percent to 60 percent. That’s since fallen dramatically.

In the latest AP-GfK survey, less than half of all women and less than half of all men approve of the job Obama is doing. Just 50 percent of women said Obama deserves re-election.

Still, women are more likely than men to see Obama as empathetic or a strong leader, and they give him sharply higher positive ratings on his handling of the economy. Forty-three percent of women approve, compared with 29 percent of men.

Younger voters and liberals are showing doubts about him, too.

Obama won younger voters in 2008 by a bigger margin than Democrat Bill Clinton in his victories in 1992 and 1996. But younger Democrats are no more apt to say the president deserves re-election than are older Democrats. Twenty-seven percent of Democrats under age 45 say Obama is not a strong leader, compared with 11 percent in June.

Though a majority of liberals continue to say they view Obama as a strong leader, the strength of those opinions dropped sharply this summer. The share of liberals who say “strong leader” describes Obama “very well” has fallen from 53 percent to 29 percent in the aftermath of the debt-ceiling debate.