Obama And The Race Factor: Is This Why It's So Close?
Posted Sep 21, 2008 at 7:56 PM by Maurice Berger
Extrapolating from a series of questions it asked voters to gauge their racial attitudes, a new poll released yesterday reports that support for Obama "would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice." In other words, Obama would be 6% to 8% ahead of McCain right now if racism were not a factor in this election. According to the the survey--conducted by AP-Yahoo in association with Stanford University--"the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points." The survey is based, in part, on the following finding: "40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents." The poll's finding may help explain the closeness of the presidential contest at a time when the Republican brand is weak.
