We don’t have decent crosstabs from the new WaPo/ABC poll, but everything we can see or are told in the Balz/Cohen story on the survey shows an electorate that sure looks like it is settling into the patterns set in 2008. Obama’s up by seven points (among RVs), benefitting from a big advantage among women, minorities, and young voters, and a slight advantage among independents. He’s struggling most among non-college educated white men. I’m guessing he’s doing better among young unmarried women and not as well among Hispanics as in 2008. But all in all, considering everything that’s gone down since then–the full financial collapse, the recession, the war over the stimulus package, the Tea Party Movement, health reform, the death of Osama bin Laden, the vicious and right-bent GOP presidential nomination contest–it’s pretty amazing, and a sign of deeply entrenched partisan divisions, that the numbers look so similar.
Or perhaps it’s just an April mirage We’ll see soon enough.
