Obama the divider?
Dante Chinni
Posted: 04.10.2009 / 7:23 AM PDT
Over the past few days, one theme in Washington has been how or if President Obama is dividing the country.
On Wednesday, The Washington Times ran an editorial, “The Great Divider,” citing poll numbers that showed Mr. Obama had “created the widest partisan gap in America since pollsters started measuring this in the 1960s.” The question has quickly moved through the blogosphere and onto cable news.
The poll that the piece cited came from the Pew Research Center for the People & Press, which showed a gap of 61 percentage points in Obama’s job-approval numbers between Republicans and Democrats.
How does that jibe with what we have seen in Patchwork Nation since Inauguration Day?
As any pollster will tell you, polls are snapshots of pubic opinion. (In fact, the Pew poll was conducted a month ago. A new Pew poll was released Wednesday. We’ll have a Patchwork Nation analysis of that next Monday.) Yet judging from the conversations we’ve had this year with people in our communities, the numbers so far aren’t much of a surprise.
Support levels
Since Obama’s inauguration, we have visited four of our communities – Nixa, Mo. (our “Evangelical Epicenter”); Lincoln City, Ore. (our “Service Worker Center”); Baton Rouge, La. (our “Minority Central” community); and Clermont, Fla. (our “Emptying Nest”). The striking thing in the conversations we’ve had in those places has been the wide rift in opinion about the new president.
Most of Obama’s supporters are strongly in his camp and excited about his administration. But his opponents seem even surer that he is taking America in a dangerous direction.
The difference is in who lives where. In Nixa, where social conservatives dominate, the anti-Obama feelings run deep. That same thing could be said of Clermont. Baton Rouge is more divided. And Lincoln City is an Obama bastion.
This divide was evident from the first days of the administration.
There is a tendency to want to give a new president the benefit of the doubt early on – or at least to tell pollsters that. But in some of these places, such feelings didn’t run too deep.
In early February, we reported that a Pew poll showed a broad-based honeymoon for Obama, with 70 percent or more in all 11 of our community types reporting “favorable” feelings toward him. But some communities showed large numbers of people who felt “mostly favorable” toward Obama, and those feelings can change fast.
If you look at the presidential vote in our 11 community types, it was clear those good feelings wouldn’t hold. In five of our 11 community types, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona bested Obama.
Driving the mood
So is something different about the Obama presidency that might be causing a starker Democrat/Republican rift?
The biggest drivers may be the many programs the Obama team has enacted in trying to deal with the recession.
Those programs – loans to automakers, the release of the second half of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds, aid to homeowners struggling with mortgages – are seen by some as big bold moves necessary to prop up an extremely troubled economy. But other people, particularly conservatives, see them as excessive government involvement bordering on “socialism” or “the road to socialism.”
“I worry about what this all means for the future, for my grandchildren,” Jack Hogan, a Clermont, Fla., retiree said recently. His comment echoes many others we have heard in conservative locales.
Mr. Hogan and people like him object not only to Obama, but also to a broader change they see in America’s path ahead. That is why their feelings are so strong – and why they are probably not likely to change.
If our communities are divided along what look to be fiercely partisan lines, the test for Obama will lie in places where the vote tends to swing between Democrats and Republicans. Three of Patchwork Nation’s community types fall into this group – the wealthy and educated “Monied ’Burbs,” the growing and diversifying “Boom Towns,” and the small-town “Service Worker Centers.”
Thus far, judging from the election results, opinion polls, and the comments we’re hearing, Obama’s support seems to be holding up in these community types. Monday’s poll results will give us an up-to-date glimpse.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:10 am PDT
Actually the Obama polarization has 63 point gap. One president had a bigger approval gap. Bush’s was 83 points in 2004, and it only shrunk when he started loosing favor with Republicans.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:20 am PDT
Anytime a change agent comes along, the divide between the haves and have nots widens. Those who want change see Obama as new, refreshing, and successful. Those who want to go back to 50s, see Obama as a flaming lefty liberal who will destroy America. Don’t forget that though FDR commanded large majorities, and had a Democratic Congress, they were many in American who literally hated him for his “socialist” policies. These are the same people who sure enjoy their Social Security checks, and like to use the Medicare provided services, bought their home with FHA or VA, and drive on the interstate highways. But don’t scratch them too deep, or some will tell you that Social Security is bad, and the Medicare is terrible. Americans are not consistent, and really have no idea what socialism is, except that Democrats, in there eyes, tend to be socialist, and Republicans, capitalist. However the steps to socialism have often come from Republican Presidents, i.e., Nixon nationalizes the railroads, institutes wage and price controls, and W virtually nationalizes the banks.
April 13th, 2009 at 6:16 am PDT
One significant thing that seems to be missed in this analysis is how this “partisan divide” was already existent before Obama’s inauguration and it’s sociological basis. As the analysis by Bill Bishop in the book “The Big Sort” suggests, over the last several decades, Americans have been self-selecting themselves into politically homogeneous communities. This leads to a polarizing effect as sociology experiments have shown again and again that groups with a homogeneous opinion lead to more extreme opinions within the group. Furthermore, those that identify themselves as “conservative” (whether traditional or social) generally live in communities with an even wider margin of homogeneity than those that identify themselves as “liberal.” This has brought about one side being more partisan than the other. The way it is presented (not just here) seems to suggest either a partisan presenter or a lack of in-depth analysis/research.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:37 am PDT
I find this blog a bit ironic. You try to partition the country into “patches” that segregate society along sets of beliefs, sociodemographic backgrounds, etc. and you call Obama the divider. I don’t think he is. First of all, the “Washington Times” is a pretty conservative paper. Right now, I do think that conservative media (which for the past year, unfortunately, now includes CSMonitor) has been going through “hypothesis generation” which is basically a phase in which conservative papers and blogs test pejorative labels for Obama, such as “divider,” or “difficult to read,” etc. I don’t think this one’s gonna stick. Don’t worry Dante, I’m sure you guys will find something, rather than reporting the news. Although, given how Obama handled the piracy incident, you’ll have difficulty with the military angle.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:25 pm PDT
This is ridiculous. No doubt the “source” claiming the largest partisan division is conservative based. Or are we supposed to ignore how divided the country was after W the Decider/Disgrace stole his first election. The only reason this country is “divided” is because dumb ******* so-called “christians” are destroying the USA. Let them all move to Texas and secede, we dont need your ignorance, racism, lack of education, nor bs self-righteous attitudes as you hypocrites have no moral compass whatsoever.
April 19th, 2009 at 11:21 pm PDT
I used to read CSM when they were actually a news organization populated by journalists. Now its Fox News with perhaps an even more racist overtone to it’s so-called reporting. And when I say this, consider my background — a caucasion active duty Naval Officer who voted for guys named Bush 4 times in presidential elections over the last 20 years, and even voted for Dole in ‘96. Now, not only have you lost my respect — you also would have lost Ronald Reagan’s if he were still alive.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:30 pm PDT
The CSM would still be a daily if all the folks who now claim to have “always read it before” actually had. By the way, calling the Monitor a ‘racist Fox News’ is like calling the ACLU a bunch of *******. As for Dante’s blog, the “patchwork nation” concept is subject to different interpretations, something Dante readily admits. The circumstance in the country is very similar to when FDR was taking action during the depression, and was so reviled and hated by the John Birchers, and Republicans. Except now, the Republicans have Rush Limblahblahblah.