Can Democrats Win Without Obama On the Ballot?

Heading into the midterms, Democratic campaigns have at least one problem: Barack Obama is in the White House, not on the ticket.
If the 2009 gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey taught us anything, it is that there is a set of Obama voters who aren’t turning out for anyone but him. They are young, minority voters with little history of voting in other cycles. Former Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) devoted significant time and resources to get these same voters to the polls to reelect him in 2009—Obama even made a handful of appearances—but was unsuccessful. Virginia’s Democratic nominee, Creigh Deeds, suffered the same fate.
Even though one election, particularly an off-year election like 2009, does not a trend make, strategists on both sides of the aisle are busy rapidly characterizing this voting bloc. Whether you call them “Obama independents” or “Obama surge voters,” the Democrats’ electoral chances for the next few cycles appear to be closely linked to the group.
“Democrats and pundits looked at Obama surge voters and thought they were Democrats, but they were lazy Democrats,” says Liz Chadderdon, a Virginia Democratic strategist. “I’m not so sure they are Democrats. They don’t give a rat’s ass who controls the Senate. They are not litmus test voters. They don’t look at abortion rights. They don’t look at gay marriage. They don’t look at taxes. They don’t look at guns. They are not those types of voters.”
If this holds true, Obama’s personal political appeal might be best compared to Ronald Reagan’s. Much like Reagan, Obama’s surge voters appear to be motivated by their affection for the candidate. As Reagan made Americans feel good about themselves, Obama gave them hope—two powerful messages that got voters to the polls. Unlike Reagan, who was bolstered by party-switching Reagan Democrats, Obama was pushed into office by a class of voter that simply doesn’t exist for most politicians.
Because of the president’s track record of getting out the vote for himself, there remains an underlying sense of optimism among Democrats that is fueled by a single thought: Let’s just get to 2012. Another seat-filling Obama campaign, the thinking goes, will help Democrats recoup Senate and House losses suffered in 2010.
“Structurally, the Democrats are much better positioned for 2012 than they are for 2010 because of these presidential year voters,” says Adam Geller, a New Jersey Republican pollster who worked on Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign. “They aren’t going anywhere, but I don’t think they are coming out in 2010.”
Obama’s personal appeal is directly tied to any future success of the Democratic Party. Despite his job approval rating sliding southward of 50 percent in some polls, Obama maintains a favorability rating of over 55 percent. That’s why Democrats believe those surge voters will return in 2012. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato notes that some Democrats may even see an opportunity for the 2016 Democratic nominee to profit from Obama’s personal appeal. “If Obama wins that second term,”
Sabato says, “maybe Democrats can capture that Obama glow for one final time in 2016 just the way Republicans captured Regan’s glow for one more time in 1988 with an inadequate candidate.”
What remains to be seen is whether Obama surge voters were motivated solely by Obama or by a combination of their support for Obama and their dislike of George W. Bush. Ben Dworkin, a political scientist at Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, points to some statistics that support the latter. Between 2007 and 2008 there were 500,000 new voters in New Jersey, most registering before the state’s February primary. Hillary Clinton won that primary by 10 points. “So it’s not that all of these
people were automatically voting for Obama,” he says. “They were voting for change. By November they were clearly going to vote for the Democrat, but one could easily say that a lot of these people who got in were not necessarily for Obama from the beginning. They were actually ‘Hillary change’ voters.”
Others predict that new factors will have a greater impact on the 2012 election than Obama’s personal appeal. Obama surge voter behavior in 2012, says Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institute, “will have more do with the economic
and political conditions in the country than with any personal attraction to Obama.”Jeremy P. Jacobs is the staff writer for Politics magazine.