The electorate that put Barack Obama in the White House in 2008 and 2012 was different from the one that elected Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Obama also expanded the Democratic vote beyond its 2000 and 2004 boundaries.
This time around, Hillary Clinton lacks the charisma, popularity and progressive credentials Obama has enjoyed.
So can she keep the gang together? Can she preserve the Obama coalition on Election Day?
Obama is the only Democrat to win a majority of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter, who scored 50.08 percent in 1976. Obama’s 53 percent in 2008 and 51 percent in 2012 were the second and third-highest percentages for a Democrat going back to World War II.
Obama helped drive people to the polls at a record pace. The 58.2 percent turnout was the highest since the 26th Amendment extended the franchise to 18-20-year-olds.
Obama did this by turning out some populations at a higher rate, but mostly by winning higher portions of a few demographics. To discuss an Obama coalition meaningfully in the context of elections, it helps to look at where he outperformed John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.
Comparing these results and exit polls across age, race, income and geography, one can discern an “Obama vote” that is distinct from the Democratic vote.
Throughout his presidency, Obama mostly maintained the support and enthusiasm of these groups, helping him win a second term, and helping him leave the White House with climbing approval ratings.
“Team Hillary is betting big on the Obama coalition,” the Washington Post reported in March. “Hillary Clinton’s Convention Goal: Turning the Obama Coalition Into Clinton Coalition,” the Wall Street Journal explained in July.
The Obama coalition, by the numbers
Before answering whether Clinton can pull off this same feat, we need to define the Obama coalition. In short: The Obama coalition was the Democratic base plus moderate to conservative blacks, young voters, unmarried women and rich people.
Black voters have been overwhelmingly Democratic for more than a generation, but Obama took it further. Gore got 90 percent of the black vote and Kerry received 88 percent. Obama boosted that to 95 percent. Also, Obama drove black turnout upward from 10 percent of the electorate in 2000 to 13 percent in 2008.
Do the math, and Obama gained 12 points on John McCain thanks to the black vote, while Kerry and Gore both gained about 8 points. In other words, Obama’s gain on Kerry and Gore can be mostly explained by turning out more black voters, and swinging some others.
Those marginal black voters, conservative or moderate blacks and infrequent voters were key to the Obama coalition.
Young voters also moved enormously into the Democratic camp in 2008. Voters age 18-29 voted 54 percent for Gore and Ralph Nader combined in 2000, and the same 54 percent for John Kerry in 2004. Obama didn’t deliver huge youth turnout as the media hype had suggested. Instead, he just dominated that demographic, hauling in 66 percent of the under-30 vote in 2008.
Among women voters, Obama found a new gold mine. Obama’s 56 percent among women voters was a few points above Kerry’s, and was equal to the Gore-plus-Nader total from 2000.
Yet unmarried women were a huge part of the Obama coalition. In 2008, Obama scored 70 percent of this voting bloc, compared to Kerry’s 62 percent in 2004 and Gore’s 57 percent in 2000.
Here’s a final demographic that tacked significantly to Obama: six-figure earners. Exit polls show Gore winning 43 percent of $100,000 earners in 2000, and Kerry pulling in 41 percent. Obama jumped to 49 percent of this group.
Geographically, the Obama vote was the Democratic base plus two other states. Virginia had voted Republican every presidential year since 1964. Obama also twice won Colorado, which had voted Republican for president in every election since 1964.
The Obama coalition in 2016
So can Clinton win this coalition, too?
If you look at the numbers, the answer is yes. Clinton will win the states Obama won, and she will win the demographics he won, by bigger margins in most cases than he did. That’s because she’s running against Donald Trump.
Young voters are leaning heavily toward Clinton, but not because they like her.
Clinton beat Trump 49-21 percent among young likely voters in a recent poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics. That 28-point victory is huge, but it’s more about Trump than about Clinton. Only 14 percent of those polled had a very favorable view of Clinton, and 26 percent were “somewhat favorable.”
Her unfavorables (53 percent in total) were 13 points higher than her favorables (40 percent). Compare Clinton’s position, 13 points under water, to Obama, who at 57-40 percent is 17 points in the positive — a 30-point swing compared to Clinton.
Only 24 percent of Clinton voters called themselves “very enthusiastic.”
Compare Clinton’s poor approval ratings among young voters to the enthusiasm young voters had for Bernie Sanders in the primary. Sanders gathered about 2 million votes from under-30 voters, more than twice as many as Clinton did.
Among unmarried women, Clinton also suffered in the Democratic primary. For instance, she lost that demo by 26 points in the New Hampshire primary.
The black vote also has posed concerns, though lesser ones, for Clinton. Trump has turned off black voters by dismissing worries about police brutality, failing to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and his off-key expressions of concern for inner cities.
There are some signs that enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy is much lower among black voters than it was for Obama. This is unsurprising, since Obama was the first black major-party nominee, and Clinton is approximately the 100th white major-party nominee.
The wealthy, however, are still with her. A Purple Strategies poll of households earning $100,000 or more showed Clinton up 41-37. A Reuters-Ipsos poll found Clinton leading Trump 52 -29 percent among those earning over $150,000.
The higher you climb in the income scale, the larger you can expect that lead to grow.
Along similar lines, Clinton dominates among Beltway insiders. The Washington Examiner and Echelon insights polled Washington insiders over the summer and found Clinton leading 62-22.
In short, the one part of the Obama coalition Clinton has most securely is the elites.
Obama’s K Street Coalition
The good news for Clinton: The elites may be the most important part of the Obama coalition.
Obama is often praised as an exceptional politician. This isn’t wrong, but it’s imprecise. Obama was unparalleled in one aspect of politics, probably the most important aspect: getting people to vote for him.
He never had much success in the other aspects of politics. He failed to help his allies win, except for driving base turnout in his two elections. When he wasn’t on the ballot, he couldn’t save the Democratic House in 2010, or the Democratic Senate in 2014. His party bled governorships and state houses during his tenure, despite his stumping and cutting ads.
And Obama was unable to use his bully pulpit to rally the public behind his causes. When it came to gun control, for instance, Obama tried to capitalize on mass shootings in Arizona and Connecticut to push for stricter federal gun laws. He worked his party and much of the media into a furor with his roof-raising State of the Union address on the issue, and he barnstormed for increased federal background checks.
Yet he failed to rally the public enough to move any lawmakers. Similarly, he hasn’t stirred any public ire at the Republicans’ refusal to consider his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.
Organizing for America, the heir of his campaign committee, never became a powerful force in pushing policies or helping elect other candidates.
So if Clinton is winning Obama voters by default, because she is running against Trump, and if the Obama coalition of voters doesn’t deliver legislative victories, what does she need the Obama coalition for?
You can see the answer if you study the passage of Obamacare, which Obama got passed while never garnering public support. Almost every poll on the legislation showed more opposition than support. By the time the Senate passed the bill around Christmas 2009, support was averaging around 40 percent (with about 55 percent opposition). At final passage, disapproval exceeded approval by double digits on average.
Yet Obama got it through, thanks to the votes of vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in conservative districts. How did Obama convince his party to vote against the fervent views of their constituents?
The key was most likely the K Street wing of the Obama coalition.
The Obama administration early in the process brought many industries to the table, giving a prime slot to the drug lobby. The hospital lobby got in on it too. The key force here was the network of Democratic lobbyists at K Street firms representing these industries’ trade groups and the big companies affected.
DLA Piper, the Glover Park Group, the Podesta Group, Mehlman Vogel Catagnetti, the Raben Group, Elmendorf Strategies, Hyatt Brownstein Farber Schreck — these lobbying firms represented the drug, insurance and provider industries, and claimed as clients the biggest players in the sector, including Blue Cross, Pfizer, General Electric and United Health.
Obama’s K Street Coalition worked Capitol Hill to push wavering Democrats into the yes column. The drug lobby, working together with the Obama White House, offered millions of dollars for ads to support Senate Democrats endangered by their Obamacare support. Many of these firms and companies hired Democratic lawmakers who lost their jobs thanks to their Obamacare votes, such as Sen. Ben Nelson and Reps. Earl Pomeroy and Bart Stupak.
Clinton is keeping together this part of the Obama coalition, with John Podesta at the center.
Decades ago, John and his brother Tony Podesta co-founded a lobbying firm, which still exists and is run by Tony. Tony is a top bundler for the Clinton campaign, with Clinton-friendly clients such as Google, Wal-Mart and Solar City.
Steve Elmendorf, whose lobbying firm helped pass Obamacare and teamed up with the Obama administration on other issues, shows up in the hacked Podesta emails as a confidant of the Clinton campaign. The Glover Park Group, another small-but-powerful K Street firm, is in Clinton’s inner circle, the hacked emails show.
DLA Piper partners served on Obama’s campaign steering committee, and Obama confidante Tom Daschle was a quasi-lobbyist there. In one hacked email, a Clinton campaign fundraising official described lobbying firm DLA Piper as “people we are close with.”
So while Clinton may not have Obama’s electoral coalition firmly behind her, they will begrudgingly vote for her on Nov. 8. More importantly, she will have Obama’s K Street coalition on her side, and with that alliance backing Clinton, she may be able to make a real impact.
