When President Obama was elected in 2008, the media painted him as post-racial and as someone who could not just bring races together, but move us past racial tension. The results of the past four years of an Obama presidency have done just the opposite. The Washington Post is out with a new poll showing the racial divide between blacks and whites is back to where it was in 1980.
As he did in 2008, Obama gets overwhelming support from non-whites, who made up a record high proportion of the overall electorate four years ago. In that contest, 80 percent of all non-whites supported Obama, including 95 percent of black voters, according to the exit poll. In the Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll released Wednesday, Obama wins 79 percent of non-whites, and support for his reelection is nearly universal among African Americans.
But among whites, Obama is currently doing much worse than he did in 2008. At this stage four years ago, Obama trailed Republican John McCain by eight percentage points among white voters. Even in victory, Obama ended up losing white voters by 12 percentage points.
Obama’s current 21-percent-deficit — he trails Romney 59 to 38 percent — would be far harder to overcome, as this year may break a string of increasingly non-white electorates. In 2008, whites made up a record-low 74 percent of all voters; in the latest Post-ABC poll, they made up a similar 75 percent of likely 2012 voters.
In 2004, John Kerry lost white voters to George W. Bush by a similarly wide margin, 58 to 41 percent — and he also lost the election.
And, a flashback about "typical white people":
Join the conversation as a VIP Member