http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/in-2012-obama-may-need-a-new-coalition-20110105?page=1 President Obama’s path to a second term may rely on states shaped by the same social forces he embodies. By any standard, white voters’ rejection of Democrats in November’s elections was daunting and even historic. Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Not even in Republicans’ 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote. Moreover, those results may understate the extent of the white flight from the Democratic Party, according to a National Journal analysis of previously unpublished exit-poll data provided by Edison Research.
