Republican Reliance on White Voters Holds Risks-Bloomberg Op

[bobbyw24]

There’s only one word for this week’s Republican landslide: historic. Beyond the positive headlines, though, are warnings that the victors would be wise to heed if they want to build on their win for 2012 and beyond.

The rout should give Republicans hope. They look to have gained 60 to 65 House seats, the most by one party in an election since 1948. If they reach the top of that range, Republicans will have 244 seats, the most they have held since 1947 and their second-highest total since the Great Depression.

Republicans need to take this challenge seriously. Working- class whites voted Republican primarily because they intensely dislike President Obama. Polls of the white working class electorate this year put Obama’s approval rating at close to 30 percent, or just a few points higher than President Richard Nixon’s in the days before his resignation.

Republicans will need every one of those votes because other, worrisome trends in the electorate continued this year. Polls showed that, even with the depth of the recession, Republicans captured only about 10 percent of blacks’ support and a third of Hispanics’, no better than in other years.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-04/republican-reliance-on-white-voters-holds-risks-commentary-by-henry-olsen.html

[bobbyw24]

Overall, the national exit poll measuring preferences in House races put the Republican vote among whites at a jaw-dropping 60 percent, up sharply from 53 percent in 2008. Democratic candidates attracted only about 35 percent of the vote among white men and women without a college education and college-educated white men. Following patterns evident in Obama's approval rating, the only segment of the white electorate that didn't collapse for Democrats were college-educated white women. But even they tilted slightly toward the GOP.

The stampede toward the GOP among blue-collar whites was powerful almost everywhere. In heartland states such as Arkansas, Ohio, Indiana, and even Illinois, Democrats were routed among college-educated whites, too, the exit polls found. But along the coasts - in such states as Delaware, California, and Connecticut - Democrats did a better job of holding college whites, especially women. That was critical to their Senate victories in those states. The exception to that coastal pattern was in Pennsylvania. Republican Pat Toomey attracted more of those suburban voters and, crucially, remained competitive in the Philadelphia suburbs (which two years ago gave Obama a crushing margin of nearly 200,000 votes); that helped power Toomey's narrow victory over Democrat Joe Sestak. In Colorado, which shares many cultural characteristics with the coastal states, strong support among college-educated whites in metropolitan areas such as Denver and Boulder allowed Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet to remain in a tight race with Republican challenger Ken Buck despite Buck's massive advantage among noncollege whites, especially in the state's rural areas.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/perfect-storm-for-gop-obama-base-stays-home-white-voters-defect