The Changing Times and the Equinox Voter

We at Zogby International are always looking for new ways to understand the American voter, and in that endeavor, what we have found is that the old political paradigms just don't work today. For instance, we are thinking that the Red State vs. Blue State phenomenon may pass into history this year, with so many states being in play.

We've said right along -- including in this column -- that instead, this is a year to watch the swing voter and the centrist voter, who are back after a hiatus. There is evidence that these independent, centrist voters are going to play a big part in the presidential elections, but what does that mean? Who are these people? Have they changed much over the last decade? Who will they support this fall?

There has been lots of talk about white ethnic voters or the white working-class voters. These are the people who, on the Democratic side of the aisle, gave Hillary Clinton her substantial primary election wins over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. These are the former Reagan Democrats who had supported Bill Clinton but who have since climbed up onto the political fence to sit for a spell.

Can Obama win this group in November? Well, he didn't this spring, so that's our first clue. Another is the fact that neither Al Gore nor John Kerry won their support. It is a safe guess to say Obama would be in the same situation. If he is to avoid the same electoral fate as was suffered by Gore and Kerry, he must find other voters elsewhere.

But can he find enough voters elsewhere to make up for the loss of that voter bloc? Perhaps. This year we are looking at increased turnout among minorities, including Latino turnout, because of the immigration issue and an expected very large turnout of younger voters.

Incidentally, young people turned out in 2004. They maintained their percentage, about 20% of the total vote, from 2000 and 2004. The problem for the Democrats is that everyone else turned out, too. This time we're looking at young people perhaps to be 22-23% of the total vote and Obama doing particularly well. And I should say they were 20% of 105 million in 2000, 20% of 122 million in 2004 -- this year we're looking at 130-135 million voters, so that 22-23% of the total is significant, as is a heightened turnout of blacks and Latinos.

We're working to identify the earmarks of two new kinds of voters -- we call them the Equinox Voters, because they fall into two distinct groups: the "Spring-Aheads" and the "Fall-Backers."

The Spring-Aheads are the economic winners in America today, who largely reside in regions that have turned themselves around. They are the reason that southern New Hampshire, central and southwestern North Carolina, southern Florida, Colorado, parts of New Mexico -- even growing parts of Wyoming and Montana -- may be considered in play this election cycle. These are areas growing in diversity, in the population of the "creative class," and, for the Democrats, these are the areas that are the antidote to the areas mired in economic decline.

Those are the areas populated by many Fall Backers who have suffered at the hands of the changes in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years. They have not been able to recover from the movement from a manufacturing to an information economy. They are working for less money than they made a decade ago, and include those with uncertain futures and those who are concerned about maintaining a middle-class status. Those who fit this bill, historically, are less open to diversity. They are concerned about minorities because they represent a challenge in the workplace and elsewhere.

Fall Backers can be found in central and western Pennsylvania, the northern tier of Ohio, the southern tier of Indiana, and West Virginia. They can also be found in pockets in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, as well as in some parts of other Midwestern states.

The Equinox voters carry with them a political irony. That is that Fall Backers used to be Democrats, because Democrats are supposed to be the party of the people, of the working class. But now, they are identifying in greater numbers with Republican ideas and proposals. Meanwhile, the Spring Aheads would traditionally be Republicans -- entrepreneurs and the party of the burgeoning voters on the move.

So what's behind this flip? What's making the Republicans more attractive to the economic losers and the Democrats the party of the economic winners? With an economy that's still in transition, Republicans have still not quite adjusted. In many ways, this is old economy vs. new economy.

I regularly speak to the National Association of Manufacturers; they're Republicans. Old economy is Republicans. You go to Palo Alto or Boston, they're Democrats, that's new economy. That's one part of it. Another factor is that is that when arguments go beyond economy, when people don't have a way of understanding what's happening in their world, there's a tendency to fall backward into tradition, to find scapegoats in immigrants, on race, on gays, or on anything that people perceive is making their world different.

At Zogby, we're asking the kinds of questions that probe this new Equinox Voters paradigm to truly understand this election. Stay tuned for what we find out.

Comments

[Rule Of Law]

Let's get this straight right up front: Black people--no matter their social or economic standing, have more in common with working class white people--and vice verse--than with any other segment of this society.

Both are invisible in the National Dialogue except at election time. Both are lied to and manipulated, kept "in their place" by rigorous enforcement of social and economic pressures. Both are ruled by fear of "otherness" and divided by pitting one against the other. When they try to organize in their own self interest, whether that is to Unionize or grass roots Community Activism, they are crushed. And yet, both still provide the bulk of the bodies for the elective wars of Empire that the Corporatocracy tells the Republican administration to wage.

If Black Americans, who have suffered and survived 300 years of apartheid, and working class whites, who have been bled by every "bubble" and "recession" to feed the greed of the Elites, ever realized that they are tolerated by the powers that be for their willingness to work and drive the economic engine that creates wealth for a bare 1%, but are entirely expendable and hated just for being, they would join and rise up together and make the promise of the Constitution a reality: Of the People, By the People, and For the People!

[Kache]

That's exactly the point Jim Webb has been making. And if he doesn't get a chance to make it as Obama's VP candidate, he'll be making it again in 4 years as Obama's primary challenger.

[Fabienne]

Jim Webb is a social conservative who wasn't even a Democrat until recently. I admire his articulateness regarding the war, but he has no place on the ticket.

[letsgetsmart]

This is pretty simple actually. The ones that are getting ahead are also getting their info from modern sources and are looking at the world not some small community. They may be in areas that have controlled media that is owned by the powers that be and that tell the people what they want told but they go out side this info source and get more. If Obama wants to get the fall backers, then he has to come up with a way to get the info to these people. He can do this by using the go a headers in these areas and also do some old fashion mailers. Both of these will circumvent the owned media.

[Snowball]

This white lower working class voter begs to differ with your contrived, beltway analysis and insulting stereotypes of white working class voters. We are not all morons who are so easily swayed by appeals to narrow minded prejudices, fear and hot button issues like gay marriage and abortion. Many of us know the real issues that effect our lives and our pocketbooks. I think your belief that, because Hillary Clinton won most of our votes in the primaries, we'll tend to favor McCain in the general election is seriously flawed. The most likely explanation for your polling data is that it is skewed by asking leading questions, based on false presumptions, designed to achieve results consistent with a predetermined analysis. You presume your demographics are real, not artificial groupings of people along contrived lines. As such, you are gerrymandering the public to achieve the results you expect.

[MidwestBlue]

Excellent post.

[HHarvey]

You should have watched the CSPAN Annenburg poll survey they did two nights ago. They took 11 lower class disaffected Hillary PA voters and had them around a table in the room questioning them for two hours. Out of the 11, 4 were now voting for Obama, 4 were for McCain (1 because of racism) and 3 were undecided. So the analysis that poor whites will overlook Obama and vote republican is a little far fetched. It's also demographic, don't forget that.

[JamesRiddle]

I beg to differ. The great majority of " white lower working class voter" can be pigenholed because they do vote in a block and they consistently vote Republican becuase they are uneducated and Obama pinpointed the Republican sales pitch they buy hook line and sinker ( bitter, God, Guns) and Zogby confirms it. You might be the exception but the rule stands hard and fast. Wake up. Your co-workers and neighbors are drowning in a sea of abject stupidty no matter how noble you paint them. Every poll taken since Archie Bunker sat in that ratty chair confirms it.

[Mildmannered]

IMHO, it still comes down to Ohio, whoever carries Ohio wins. (Though there is a chance at an Obama victory with Kerry states plus NM, CO and IO). MI and PA are in Obama's column and FL in McCain's.

The "flip" which Zogby interestingly notes only makes small changes to the Kerry states, I think.

[HHarvey]

Well all of those states you just mentioned CO, IA, MI and PA are so very close in polls right now that it is going to be a tight race. Obama has not clinched them. I would be worried if I was a voter in those states (election manipulation by the GOP and whatnot).