Romney falters in polling of working-class electorate

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Republican Mitt Romney is faltering with white working-class voters crucial to his party’s drive to capture the White House, even as he tries to fend off a rising GOP challenger, Rick Santorum, who wields strong blue-collar appeal.

The wealthy former Bain Capital chief has led his rivals by comfortable margins among white college graduates, according to combined polls of voters in the first five states that had presidential nominating contests. But the exit and entry surveys showed only a modest Romney advantage among whites who lack college degrees, the yardstick analysts typically use to define the working class.

The imbalance was most pronounced among less-educated white men, with whom his lead disappeared.

More-recent polling bears out the same problem for Romney. According to a national poll of Republicans released this week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, the former Massachusetts governor has a slender lead over Santorum among whites with degrees but trails him among working-class whites, 36 percent to 23 percent.

Romney’s lukewarm performance with less-educated whites could haunt him in the Feb. 28 Michigan primary. Though it’s Romney’s native state, Santorum is using his upbringing in the western Pennsylvania manufacturing town of Butler, his rougher-edged style and his “Made in America” proposals for boosting U.S. manufacturing to woo Michigan’s many blue-collar voters.

Romney’s weakness with working-class whites is a liability he also would have to address as the nominee.

Some voters view Romney as “an ultra-wealthy individual,” said David Hill, a GOP pollster. “They have a sense he cannot identify with ordinary Americans. He’ll have ample time over the course of campaigning in the general election to rectify that.”