Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them “lazy,” “violent” or responsible for their own troubles.
The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that 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 2.5 percentage points.
But Republican Senator John McCain has his own obstacles: He’s an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation’s oldest first-term president.
But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.
More than one-third of all white Democrats and independents agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, the survey found.
“There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s only a few bigots,” said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman, who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.
The 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 findings suggest that Obama’s problem is close to home — among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic whites.
Seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.
Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama’s support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no discrimination.
But in an election without precedent, it’s hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.
The poll used the methodology of Knowledge Networks, a California firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone.
Studies have shown that people are more likely to report unpopular opinions on a computer rather than when talking to a stranger.
More than a quarter of white Democrats polled agreed that “if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.”
Racial stereotyping was not uncommon among white independents, either.
For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks “intelligent” or “smart,” more than one-third latched onto the adjective “complaining” and 24 percent said blacks were “violent.”
Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they “try harder.”
The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted from Aug. 27 to Sept. 5.
It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
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