|
Poll shows prejudice among Dems may cost Obama
In a report sure to spark a national conversation on race, an AP-Yahoo News study reported Saturday that white prejudice could be a significant enough factor to undermine Barack Obamas bid to be the first black president of the United States.The AP-Yahoo study concluded that white Democratic racism may cause 2.5 percent of voters to "turn away from Obama because of his race," roughly the margin of George W. Bush's victory over John F. Kerry in 2004. The AP-Yahoo study found that one-third of white Democrats cited a negative adjective when describing blacks and, of those, just 58 percent said they planned to back Obama. For example, AP reported that more than a quarter of white Democrats agreed that if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites. Four in ten white independents agreed, while a quarter described blacks as "violent." White Democratic supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton were almost twice as likely as Obamas primary supporters to cite a negative adjective in describing blacks a finding consistent with trends in earlier polling. Only 59 percent of Clintons white Democratic supporters wanted Obama to be president. The report may now begin a conversation on race, one notably absent considering the historic nature of Obamas bid and his own call for such a conversation in a speech delivered after racially charged remarks from his longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright emerged during the primary season. Just last month Obama accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Throughout the 2008 presidential race, pollsters have been struggling to accurately gauge the degree of prejudice among whites and how that may affect the final outcome of this election. Democratic primary exit polls suggested that racism was a factor in the vote of as many as a fifth of white party members. Analysts have long presumed that racism was under reported, as some who factor race into their vote would not be willing to admit that prejudice to pollsters. Any possible latent racial prejudice among white Democrats has been of particular interest to analysts because it could potentially undo Obamas presidential bid. The AP study found that racism pervades political identity but that Republicans are already predisposed to support John McCain, regardless of their views on race. To detect unreported racial biases, the study, among other metrics, sat those interviewed in front of monitors, using black and white faces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. The survey then used statistical modeling to estimate the how representative those interviewed were of the electorate overall. The survey's conclusions are likely to be controversial. AP reported that its team of pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. The study, and report, both ignore other weaknesses widely considered by seasoned analysts to also undercut Obamas bid, among them his inexperience, generally liberal record and the fact that no northern Democrat has been elected president since 1960. Still, analysts have also long agreed that race was a crucial unknown factor in this presidential race. The study also notes that race has helped Obama win near uniform support among blacks who have long tilted overwhelmingly Democratic though it does not consider whether some whites are also supporting Obama because his victory could symbolize a large step forward in race relations. Posted by: tipper 2008-09-20 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=250535 |