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Loading ...Poll: Racism in Dems could cost Obama election
09.22.2008 8:17am EDT
(Washington) Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost 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.Certainly, Republican 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 a third of all white Democrats and independents – voters Obama can’t win the White House without – agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.
Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.
“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. President Bush’s unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.
The findings suggest that Obama’s problem is close to home – among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.
The survey also focused on the racial attitudes of independent voters because they are likely to decide the election.
Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren’t voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for any Democrat for president – white, black or brown.
Not all whites are prejudiced. Indeed, more whites say good things about blacks than say bad things, the poll shows. And many whites who see blacks in a negative light are still willing or even eager to vote for Obama.
On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn’t be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites’ views.
Race is not the biggest factor driving Democrats and independents away from Obama. Doubts about his competency loom even larger, the poll indicates. More than a quarter of all Democrats expressed doubt that Obama can bring about the change they want, and they are likely to vote against him because of that.
Three in 10 of those Democrats who don’t trust Obama’s change-making credentials say they plan to vote for McCain.
Still, the effects of whites’ racial views are apparent in the polling.
Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama’s support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.
But in an election without precedent, it’s hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.
The AP-Yahoo poll used the unique methodology of Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to report embarrassing behavior and unpopular opinions when answering questions on a computer rather than talking to a stranger.
Other techniques used in the poll included recording people’s responses to black or white faces flashed on a computer screen, asking participants to rate how well certain adjectives apply to blacks, measuring whether people believe blacks’ troubles are their own fault, and simply asking people how much they like or dislike blacks.
“We still don’t like black people,” said John Clouse, 57, reflecting the sentiments of his pals gathered at a coffee shop in Somerset, Ohio.
Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word “violent” strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with “boastful,” 29 percent “complaining,” 13 percent “lazy” and 11 percent “irresponsible.” When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.
Among white Democrats, one-third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.
The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that “if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.”
Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn’t.
Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks “intelligent” or “smart,” more than one third latched on 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 broke ground by incorporating images of black and white faces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. That test suggested the incidence of racial prejudice is even higher, with more than half of whites revealing more negative feelings toward blacks than whites.
Researchers used mathematical modeling to sort out the relative impact of a huge swath of variables that might have an impact on people’s votes – including race, ideology, party identification, the hunger for change and the sentiments of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s backers.
Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton’s white backers plan to vote for McCain.
Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries – particularly whites with high school education or less – were motivated in part by racial attitudes.
The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
as a white 48yr old man…I have NO probvlem voting for OBAMA…he WILL get my vote! If McCain wins…you can kiss America good-bye…and watch our nation DEVOLVE further internally and outwardly!..and remember Obama is HALF-WHITE!!
It’s very sad to think that we’re all the way in the 21st century and yet racism is STILL an issue. I mean what’s the big deal? Honestyly, race was something that, I thought, was an issue fifty years ago. Is there even on logical explanation for why we can’t have a black president? I for one think Obama would make a great president, white or black, republican or democrat. People seriously need to grow up and get some brain cells. What really ticks me off is that some people actually think he’ll get shot if he goes into office. Let me assure you that secret service isn’t going to ANYTHING happen to him, if he gets into office.
Racism? Bulls**t!!
Per every person who wont vote for him because he’s black, there are gaggles voting for him for no other reason than because he’s black.
If Obama loses his election, because white liberals vote for Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader that is his fault. If anything, Obama’s homophobia and opposition to marriage equality are what will cost him the election.
I don’t find these results surprising; like the song in Avenue Q “everyone’s a bit racist”. I would like to have seen the story include how “blacks” feel about “whites” as a comparison. I am a strong Obama supporter — if anyone is a stereotype in this election it is Palin, the face of the ugliest of white stereotypes. I can’t imagine, looking at the policies of the two tickets, that anyone would choose McCain/Palin over Obama/Biden even if they are racist. If the U.S. re-elected Bush to a second term (legally or not) I believe anything is possible this November.
So if Clinton won we would be reading this article: “Gender Issues with Dems Could Cost Clinton Election”. And in the article there would be stats on how a percentage of Obama supporters could not support a woman and others who would be supporting McCain. I think polls showed people were slightly more averse to electing a woman than a black man president. Either way people had hesitations. Maybe the only way they could had the best outcome is if they were on the same ticket, but then we’d lose supporters who didn’t like the other candidate. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
Also, it’s hilarious that some “Dems” as mentioned in the article think McCain would be more likely to bring about the change they want. What the eff are they talking about?!?! I’d really like to know how they define “change”. The article leaves us hanging.
This is nonsense. This is more propaganda from the republican controlled media empires to send unwarranted fears for some and hope for others. This is no different that what the republicans do with terror and threat assessments just in time for elections.
Democrats ARE the party of Diversity. Do not believe this crap. After the Palin debacle, women of all kinds are voting for Obama in percentage points LARGER than 68%. That leaves all the little republican woman who are part of GW BUSH’S Base. Yet Republican Media certainly isn’t reporting this FACT.
Get informed. Operation Chaos is a republican funded government operation – illegal at best!
No worries. Obama has got this!!!!!
TimD,
I think we can make an educated guess as to what the converse version of that little word association game might look like:
“Greedy, arrogant, selfish, self-righteous, dishonest, untrustworthy, sexually perverted, cruel, sadistic, and evil”
Did I miss anything?
So if Clinton won we would be reading this article: “Gender Issues with Dems Could Cost Clinton Election”. And in the article there would be stats on how a percentage of Obama supporters could not support a woman and others who would be supporting McCain. I think polls showed people were slightly more averse to electing a woman than a black man president. Either way people had hesitations. Maybe the only way they could had the best outcome is if they were on the same ticket, but then we’d lose supporters who didn’t like the other candidate. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
Also, it’s hilarious that some “Dems” as mentioned in the article think McCain would be more likely to bring about the change they want. What the heck are they talking about?!?! I’d really like to know how they define “change”. The article leaves us hanging.
The democrats have to be careful about bringing up the race issue. The candidate is unqualified which makes it easy (too easy?) for people to say they do not like him. Just because people do not find him qualified does not make them racists. There is a strong case that people do not care for Obama because of his lack of back bone which could be called bigotry or at the very least lack of good judgement.
Don’t play the race card unless it is exactly that.
I don’t care if a person is blue, violet, or purple or green so long as person can relieve us of 8 years Bush and maybe 4 years of McBush and do the good job our country needs.
I read in the Washington Post that Todd Palin can’t stay out of the way of his wife the governor. He is not even elected yet he is there with his wife prying into the halls of the Alaska legislature. He assert himself into every facet of what his wife is doing. He will do the same thing if his wife is our VP, helping to run the country when he wasn’t elected to her office by anyone.
We don’t need those kinds of scenarios of Todd Palin inserting himself into the running of our land where he has no business at all. He is needed as husband helping to raise the kids, nothing more.
The same with the Clinton while Bill was president. Hillary was helping to run the country when noone elected her. And husband Bill was just as unable to let Hillary run her own campaign show getting in the way when he would have been more useful on the home front. Same for Todd Palin, he is the Republic version of can’t leave the spouse as candidate be.
So, bring on the right person for the times we live. Race and gender are of course supremely irrelevant to doing the best job humanly possible to turn this country around.
Content of character is of course all
that counts.
A woman for US president, of course. Woman have been presidents and prime ministers of India, Ireland, Iceland, Israel, UK. The chancelor of Germany is a woman talking to the Russians
about getting out of their neighbor Georgia.
It’s about time an African American or a woman was US president and for the glass ceiling under the presidency to crack into a thousand pieces. Walter Mondale and his VP Geraldine Ferraro running for the White House back then.
This country is a changin’ much as it hates to change. It is a very different place than when I was growing up 50 years ago. Hungary was rebelling against Communist rule when I was 3,Stalin died when in born in 1953. It never oocured to me years ago that I would live to see gay marriage anywhere in the world let alone the USA, or that I would ever see a nonwhite or a woman become a US president. I watched my grandmother scrub clothes on a scrub ooard and her use a washer with a wringer arm. Clothes would dry on a line had no dishwasher or clothes dryer in her house back then. Got to see records that I always took for granted become obsolete. The world had changed in so many different
ways in my life over the years.
Never dreamed that I would one day live for 18 years with another man. Or that people would one day be talking about gay rights. Gay wasn’t something I thought about, or a term I started to apply to myself until I was 26. And gay rights I didn’t have any thougth about until I wss in my late 30s.
That is why I am exited to live in the 21st century, possibilities are so many. not just for myself but for US especially with so many more advanced countries than the US to show the US the way.
But it is exactly that. While we cannot measure the precise influence race has on particular individuals’ decisions (only their attitudes), we can say with certainty that it plays some factor in the overall landscape. How much of a factor remains debatable. And it will probably be debated by statisticians until the next election.
But obviously, no politician would use race as a divisive issue if it wasn’t an effective way to win votes. And in elections from South Africa to Australia, it has had a significant effect one way or another.
Moreover, this survey is especially disturbing because it points to deeply entrenched racism buried deep inside the psyche of many Americans, including those who consider themselves liberal. That’s what word and image association is. It is a test designed to gauge snap judgments. You aren’t given time to think about your answers because that’s when the rationalizations and equivocations start to kick in. With this sort of survey, they flash a word or picture across the screen in front of you and expect an immediate response (agree / disagree; good / bad; yes / no).
AGAIN: Racism is a system of oppression that has historically and presently still TAGRETS members of certain out-groups, not just a bad feeing that one person has about another. And NOBODY says it’s heterophobic against straight people when Gays support each other. Especially when voting in IN THEIR OWN INTEREST ABOUT OTHER ISSUES- as most Black DEMOCRATS(DUH!!) believe they are. Why do people believe it is constructive, community support building when it’s their own group, but not when it’s another? I’m gonnna go with there was never a “brutal savage who will lash out at any moment without cause” mythology about gay men. There was never a law in this country that claimed that any group of adult male Gays congregating was equivalent to inciting a riot (even after the WAS a riot, whereas Black men hadn’t even rebelled yet when this fear was conjured in the White imagination) and therefore prohibited. There was never any deep-seated psychological fear, based in the guilty collective conscience, that given that chance and the power, “They” will do to “us” what “we” did to “them.” And I’m gonna go with stereotypes about Whites(and John, NONE of them are “sexually perverted”– that’s actually an old myth about minority sexuality that still pervades in Western Mainstream and fringe media, unless of course you’re counting fetishism and exoticism as stereotype about WHITE people. If anything WASP sexuality has always been considered the “norm,” but I don’t have to tell you that) are based more in statistical fact than intentionally constructed anti-truths and are certainly not based in psychological warfare on a WHOLE group of people. Let’s not get it twisted. Complaints of this sort completley ignore history and pretend that the present is anywhere near equal. Think about it: any “prejudice” of Blacks or any other minority against Whites is still largely IRRELEVANT to anything but hurt feelings (and a reality check to assumption that you should be liked by a member of another race- something minorities can rarely take for granted). When a majority of Whites start having trouble getting a job because of their address or how their name sounds, or for wearing the hair god gave them, or b/c they’re deemed “not a good fit” by WHOEVER’s in power, then maybe it will be something to mention.
While Obama’s youth and record make him a target in this year’s election, be mindful that ever since it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, there has been a strong correlation between “unqualified” and “member of a minority group,” regardless of what the ‘qualifications’ are. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a study showed that that’s what a good number of the people who say that really mean.
Anyone who thinks race doesn’t play a part in every facet of life in this country is naive or worse.
We will never know how much it plays into this election because most it’s no longer socially acceptable to be overtly racist so most won’t be honest about it.