Remember how Barack Obama was supposed to be uniquely weak among "hardworking Americans"? Well apparently that's just not the case.
According to a new poll from The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, Obama leads by a whopping 58 percent to 28 percent margin (.pdf) among voters under the age of 65 working at least 30 hours a week for $27,000 or less per year. Obama's performance within this demographic is almost exactly the same as Kerry's in 2004; although the breakdown of subgroups in exit polling from that fall doesn't exactly line up with this survey, Kerry appears to have brought in about 59 percent of the vote of those earning $30,000 or less per year that November -- not tremendously far off from Obama's showing.
How about John McCain's numbers? How do they stack up? McCain's 28 percent showing among this demographic is significantly less than the roughly 40 percent of the vote George W. Bush received from those earning less than $30,000 per year back in 2004. Unless Bush carried the votes of those earning $27,001 to $30,000 per year by an overwhelming margin, or unless those in this income demographic over the age of 65 were tremendously Bush-leaning (and Bush only carried the overall over-65 vote with 52 percent of the vote), it would certainly appear that McCain is seriously underperforming among the lowest wage workers in the country. McCain's showing is even poorer than that of the House Republicans in 2006, when GOP candidates pulled in about 34 percent of the vote of those earning less than $30,000 per year.
This graf from the write up of the poll would garner some attention as well:
Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers -- a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November -- Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate. [emphasis added]
These numbers sure seem to knock down the idea that Obama can't win the vote of hardworking Americans, or White low-income workers, in particular -- and in fact begin to raise questions as to whether it is McCain who is too weak among this subset of the electorate. It's little wonder, then, that the exceedingly wealthy McCain, whose family owns several homes and who has been seen campaigning in $520 loafers, a wannabe celebrity in his own right who has earned more Hollywood screen time since 2000 than "the rest of Congres combined," is now trying to play class politics and stir up the backlash against Obama in the hopes up narrowing the wide margin by which he trails among this key voting demographic.
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