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But the bottom line is that we should be very surprised if the African-American share of the electorate increases further from 2008 to 2012. We likewise have good reason to believe the Latino share of the electorate will remain stable. This suggests a pretty strong argument that the minority share of the electorate will be roughly the same in 2012 as it was in 2008, and a decent argument that it might contract somewhat.

(2) Obama will have a difficult time winning either white working-class voters or upscale whites.

Even if the non-white share of the electorate does increase by an additional two points in 2012, Obama still faces an additional hurdle. As Teixeira and Halpin suggest, Obama cannot afford to lose white voters at the same rate Democrats lost them in 2010. In other words, he must hold serve among either upscale whites or downscale whites if he hopes to win.

But keeping the margin close, much less winning, among either group will be difficult. Remember, Obama enjoys a low-to-mid-40s approval rating right now for one reason: He maintains an approval above 80 percent among African-Americans. Among whites, it is a mere 33 percent. At that level, there are almost by definition very, very few subgroups of whites who approve of the job the president is doing.

So when we see, for example, that Obama’s job approval among all adults making more than $7,500 a month is 40 percent, we can probably imagine that his overall approval among upscale whites is a few points lower than that. His job approval among adults making $2,000-$7,500 a month is not much different, and his job approval among adults with “some college” or a “high school diploma or less” is also in the low 40s. Once again, we can pretty safely assume that his job approval among whites in those categories is somewhat lower.

In other words, Obama doesn’t just have some “tidying up” to do among various white groups. He has to either improve his image there by about a point a month over the next 11 months, or hope for a Republican nominee so unacceptable to the overall populace that Obama can convince a substantial number of voters who disapprove of him to nevertheless cast ballots for him. Right now, the latter looks much more likely than the former.

(3) Winning minority voters and white voters is something of a zero-sum game.

In a little more than a month, my book, “The Lost Majority,” hits the stands. The central argument of the book is that the famous permanent Republican and Democratic majorities that many commentators foresaw emerging in the 2000s were mirages, precisely because long-term, permanent majorities are almost always impossible in this country.

There are myriad reasons for this, but two are of particular importance here. First, as new issues emerge, the party that is in power will inevitably have to choose winners and losers on these issues from among its coalition. This is even more pronounced in a time of economic stagnation, when the question isn’t “who gets the new slices of pie?” but rather “who is going to have to give up their share of the pie?” Second, the party that is out of power will adapt, and will chase after groups that the other party either takes for granted or ignores.

So, for instance, Obama can try to shore up his support among Latino voters by embracing immigration reform and combating Arizona’s profiling law. But in doing so, he risks alienating white working-class voters and, to a lesser extent, upscale white voters. In fact, this is precisely what happened in Arizona in 2010. Jan Brewer won the state by three points more than John McCain, despite running about 13 points behind McCain among Latino voters. She more than made up for this decline among Latinos by increasing her share among whites (who are still three-quarters of the Arizona electorate) by three points. The idea that there is a zero-sum game at work here is an inherent assumption underlying the argument that Obama has to choose between a “Colorado strategy” focusing on upscale whites, or an “Ohio strategy” focusing on downscale whites.

To be clear, if Republicans win total control of the government in 2012, they’ll have to make similar tough choices. Holding together a party composed of semi-secular soccer moms in Loudoun County, Va., evangelical attorneys in Edmond, Okla., and Catholic auto workers in Youngstown, Ohio, is almost as difficult as holding together a coalition of blacks, Latinos, working-class whites, suburbanites and urban liberals. These types of difficulties run throughout history, and they help explain why parties almost never win the popular vote more than three times in a row.

But for now, Obama is the president. The state of the economy, as well as policy choices made early in his term, are forcing him to pick winners and losers among his 2008 electoral coalition. Republicans will craft their 2012 message based in large part around the choices he makes. Barring a gift from the Republicans in the form of their nominee -- and this is something we absolutely should not rule out -- the president will likely have a very difficult time holding it together.