The results of a recent Kaiser poll are somewhat of a surprise to me. It found that one of the groups most down on Obamacare right now is white blue-collar women, otherwise known as “waitress moms,” who have turned against the law in the last month or so:

…50 percent [of this group] have a “very unfavorable” view of the law””9 points higher than in October. An additional 13 percent view it “somewhat unfavorably.” Indeed, antipathy among blue-collar white women runs even deeper than the most conservative white demographic group, blue-collar white men (59 percent of whom hold an unfavorable view, Kaiser found).

Remarkably, only 16 percent of blue-collar white women have a favorable view of Obamacare. They disapprove of it by a 4-1 ratio. (The poll found 21 percent did not know enough about the ACA to hold an opinion.)

Women are Obama’s natural constituency. But the article reminds me of something I had forgotten: it’s not “women” as a whole:

These voters [white blue-collar women] are by no means a strongly Democratic group: Obama won just 39 percent of them last year.

And the article also reminded me of something else that had slipped my mind, which is that white college-educated woman are not far behind:

40 percent of college-educated white women hold a “very unfavorable” view of the law””10 points higher than a month ago. An additional 10 percent view the law “somewhat unfavorably.” A month ago, those two groups together totaled just 42 percent.

That’s not damning in and of itself, but this is the one slice of the white electorate where Democrats usually perform well. President Obama won 46 percent of the group in 2012, and even that was an underwhelming showing compared with recent Democratic presidential candidates.

Because the white college-educated women I know are so overwhelmingly liberal Obama voters (the total is nearly 100% among them and that goes for their husbands, too; I am acquainted with only one couple where the wife is for Obama and the husband not) I tend to forget that, statistically speaking, such overwhelming support is not the norm. Obama won the female vote, but in particular he won the vote of single women, and single women are disproportionately young (another group he won) and minority (another group he won).

Unfortunately, the Kaiser poll does not break down its results into either marital status, age, or race (although if you look at the data, it did gather those facts and could break down the results that way if it chose to do so). I’d be very interested in learning whether single women and/or minority women have soured on Obamacare as well.

We already know that a great many of the young have turned on Obamacare. My guess is that the website fiasco has been particularly galling to them, as well as a perception that young people are being overcharged to pay for older people. Looking at the more detailed data from the millennial poll, here are some hints about the rest of the demographics, although the question being answered here was not about Obamacare but rather about approval of Obama:

…[Obama’s] approval rating among college students is down 11 percentage points to 39 percent, young male voters slipped 9 percentage points to 41 percent approval and this rating is now statistically tied with young female voters, whose approval of the president dropped 15 points to 40 percent. Young white voters’ approval dropped by 10 points to 28 percent, Hispanics decreased by 18 points (53% approval) — and approval among young Black voters slipped 9 percentage points, but was still strong at 75 percent.

That’s pretty powerful. Remember, though, that Republicans’ approval ratings—already low among this group—have dropped as well. So I’m not at all sure this measures anything more than a general disillusion with government. But as I pointed out yesterday, this could at least theoretically favor conservatives in 2014, if there’s any way to convey more about the fact that small government advocates are not just being meanies, but have a coherent philosophy that they hope will benefit people and the nation as a whole.

This latter idea ties into another finding of the poll on millennials, which is that the number of young people who believe the country “is moving in the right direction” is abysmally small:

Less than one-in-five (14%) young Americans in our poll indicate that the country is headed in the right direction, 49 percent believe its headed in the wrong direction, while 34 percent are not sure.

This drop in optimism was very pronounced among 18- to 29- year old females. The percent responding that the nation is moving in the right direction decreased by 14 percentage points from 2012 to 2013, compared to just 7 percentage points for males over the same time period. The percent of Black Millennials under 30 believing that the country is moving in the direction also dropped significantly from 2012 to 2013. In 2012, 49 percent of Black respondents believed the country was moving in the right direction. Now, less than one-in-four (24%) believe the country is moving in the right direction.

Of course, one must be careful in interpreting such numbers. Many of the respondents might consider that “the right direction” is ever more leftward. Many may be upset with Obamacare because it isn’t single payer. Both surveys would have done well to ask questions that probed these issues, but as far as I can tell they did not.

[NOTE: Notice from the title of this post that I’ve mastered the skill of making a heart in HTML code. I ♥ that.]

[ADDENDUM: The polls are even worse for Obama on the issues.]