WASHINGTON – The Obamamania that gripped college campuses two years ago is gone.
An Associated Press-mtvU poll found college students cooling in their support for President Barack Obama, a fresh sign of trouble for Democrats struggling to rekindle enthusiasm among many of these newest voters for the crucial midterm elections in three weeks.
Forty-four percent of students approve of the job Obama is doing as president, while 27 percent are unhappy with his stewardship, according to the survey conducted late last month. That’s a significant drop from the 60 percent who gave the president high marks in a May 2009 poll. Only 15 percent had a negative opinion back then.
It’s not just students. Obama’s support from many groups has ebbed since his early months in office because of persistently high unemployment and opposition to his plans to revive the economy and overhaul the health care system. But his diminished backing from college students raises further questions about whether the Democrats’ efforts to rally them—and other loyal supporters such as Blacks and union members—will be enough to prevent Republicans from winning control of Congress in the Nov. 2 elections.
Obama’s weaker performance on campus also underscores his party’s struggles to turn the 15 million first-time voters of 2008—nearly one in eight of that year’s total—into a solid political army. Exit polls from 2008 show 55 percent of new voters were age 18 to 24, and those young first-timers strongly backed Obama and Democratic House candidates—a potent bloc if Democrats could lure them back to the voting booth.
Hoping to rekindle campus enthusiasm, Obama planned to appear Thursday at a youth town hall being shown live on MTV, BET and other networks. He also is to lead a rally Sunday at Ohio State University, and in recent days he headlined a massive gathering at the University of Wisconsin and a webcast town hall at George Washington University.
Ohio State’s 55,000 students are a big part of a central Ohio congressional district in which Democratic Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy is facing a rematch with her 2008 opponent, Republican Steve Stivers. Kilroy spokesman Brad Bauman says the students are “a huge voting bloc for us,” but Stivers spokesman John Damschroder says any advantage Kilroy had on campus in the close 2008 race will be minimized.
