Hillary Clinton’s bid to win the 2016 presidential election includes an attempt to woo white college graduates — a demographic Barack Obama lost twice.
If Clinton’s strategy is successful, reports Bloomberg Politics, it could largely reshape the by-now familiar presidential election map.
Like two-term President Obama, the presumed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee will still depend on votes from massive numbers of women, blacks, Hispanics and starry-eyed younger voters.
At the same time — particularly in swing states — the Clinton camp appears to be making a concerted effort to reach out to white voters who have at least bachelor’s degrees.
College-educated white voters have tended to vote Republican for decades. Obama lost the group twice — in 2008 by 4 percentage points and in 2012 by a full 14 percentage points.
This year, Clinton is beating presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump among college-educated white voters. She’s winning the cohort by just a little — 1 point — if you believe a Wall Street Journal/NBC News from late June. She’s crushing Trump by a whole lot among white college grads — 10 points — if you rely on a Quinnipiac University from the same time period.
Clinton will attempt to woo white college graduates in several swing states including North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado.
In North Carolina, Obama barely eked out a victory in 2008 — by 0.3 percentage points. He lost by 2 points in 2012.
Nearly one-third of the white voters in North Carolina have college degrees. (That percentage places the state roughly in the middle of all 50 states.)
If Clinton wins the white-college-graduate vote in North Carolina and other swing states, or even if she can get 40 percent of the coveted demographic, Trump is “toast,” progressive political scientist Ruy Teixeira told Bloomberg.
“If the minority vote’s very strong for Clinton and she can even do somewhat-less-bad among the white, college-educated vote, then that should be enough,” Teixeira.
“If she got 40 percent it’s almost a lock that she wins” North Carolina, he added.
(Teixeira, it should be noted, has been confidently predicting the emergence of a permanent Democratic electoral majority for at least 14 very long years.)
Clinton is also counting on college-educated whites and other voters to detest North Carolina’s “transgender bathroom bill,” which mandates that people can only access the bathroom that corresponds to their biological sex.
The Clinton camp believes a law keeping men out of women’s restrooms is “a big mistake” which has “turned off all of suburbia,” according to Bloomberg.
Clinton and Obama campaigned together in Charlotte, N.C. on Tuesday at an event at which The New York Times gushed that Obama was nothing short of “electrifying.” (RELATED: Remember When Obama Was The Messiah?)
The plan, apparently, is for Obama to lock down the black vote in swing states.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign plans to send Joe Biden out into the world to appeal to white working-class voters in swing states. Biden will campaign for Clinton in Scranton, Pennsylvania this weekend.
Trump continues to lead substantially among white voters who do not have college degrees. This group has voted overwhelmingly Republican for decades.
Trump received 51 percent of the vote among voters with high school degrees or less in the Republican primaries and caucuses, according to data obtained by Bloomberg.
Marco Rubio and John Kasich did best among college-educated GOP voters and GOP voters with advanced degrees.
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