On the surface, the Democratic Party’s bid to win back the votes of the white working class looks like an impossible task.

Between 2008 and 2012, President Obama’s already weak support among these voters dropped from 40 percent to just 36 percent.

Looked at from a different perspective, though, Democratic prospects do not seem so gloomy. There was a wide disparity in Obama’s performance among white working-class voters in different sections of the country: awful in the South and significantly better in much of the rest of the country. This suggests that a targeted regional strategy could strengthen the Democratic Party’s chances with what was once its core constituency.

Before we get into regional subtleties, let’s examine the question from the national vantage point.

The results of two national surveys released last year in March and in July by Democracy Corps, a polling organization sponsored by Democrats, provide little ground for liberal optimism.