Obama’s Economic Populism Risks Alienating Suburban Voters

President Barack Obama has adopted a populist economic platform to achieve re-election, but his strategy risks alienating upper-income suburban voters who may determine the outcome in key swing states such as Colorado and Virginia.

Wealthy voters represented a core constituency for Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries, The Wall Street Journal reports. And apparently that’s still the case.

Among voters who earn $100,000 or more a year, Romney leads Obama 50 percent to 44 percent, according to polls from The Wall Street Journal/NBC. That’s a far cry from 2008, when exit polls showed Obama tied at 49 percent with John McCain in that demographic.

The news gets even worse for Obama: wealthy voters are the ones most likely to make it to the polls on Election Day.

Among voters earning more than $75,000 a year, 78 percent put their interest in the election at 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. That compares to 69 percent of all voters who say they’re highly interested in the election.

The centerpiece of Obama’s economic agenda, which many Republicans call class warfare, is a termination of the Bush era tax cuts for families with income of more than $250,000. That cut off worries many moderately wealthy suburban voters.

For example, Patty Leatherwood and her husband Dan of Centennial, Col., earn almost $200,000. She’s worried that Obama’s tax hikes will ultimately bite her family. "I think his definition of wealthy and my definition of wealthy are two different things," Leatherwood told The Journal.