By GROMER JEFFERS Jr. — The Dallas Morning News

Blacks worry about polls vs. reality in Obama campaign

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The prospect that Barack Obama is primed to be the nation’s first black president has black voters giddy.

But the better the news gets for Mr. Obama, with bigger leads in polls the closer Election Day draws, the more they fear it’s too good to be true. It’s especially so in the South, where a history of oppression, voter suppression and near electoral victories make blacks more skeptical than most.

“Every day I watch the polls and get excited because I know Barack Obama is going to win the whole thing,” said Corgins Banner, a 32-year-old Charlotte man who works for a bank. “Then it hits me. Something is going to happen. They are going to find a way to stop him.”

The long-running campaign has taken its emotional toll on some blacks who are jubilant one moment and fearful the next, and the mixed feelings were evident in interviews conducted last week.

Many simply don’t believe white voters are telling pollsters the truth about whom they’ll back, though recent elections involving high-profile black candidates, including Mr. Obama’s own primaries this year, suggest polls are fairly accurate. Some voters also suspect something more sinister – malfeasance in the counting of votes come Election Day.

“Racism is still alive and well in this country,” said Washington-based Democratic consultant Ray Strother, who contends that polls don’t reflect some white voters’ reluctance to back a black candidate. “There will be people who go into the voting booth intending to vote for Obama but won’t be able to do it.”

The uneasiness hasn’t shaken black voters’ resolve. Their backing was crucial to him winning several early primaries, and a strong black turnout is expected to boost Mr. Obama in battleground states, including North Carolina.

“He’s so close, and I want to believe he’s going to do it,” said Amber Hinton, a 20-year-old college student from Charlotte. “But it’s hard for me to believe that it’s going to happen. I don’t think America is going to let him win.” … [MORE]

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BOB HERBERT of The New York Times says:

The problem is the dog that isn’t barking.

Talk for more than a few minutes with an Obama supporter in a white middle-class or working-class area and you’ll hear about a friend or relative or co-worker who has a real problem with the candidate.

When Jack Davis’s wife, Joan, who also plans to vote for Senator Obama, was asked about Democrats that she knew who would not vote for him, she replied:

“My mother! She’s 85 years old. I’m sorry to say, but she will not vote for him.”

It is frequently the case that a statistically significant percentage of white voters will lie to pollsters — or decline to state their preference — in races in which one candidate is black and the other white.

After many years of watching black candidates run for public office, and paying especially close attention to this year’s Democratic primary race, I’ve developed my own (very arbitrary) rule of thumb regarding the polls in this election:

Take at least two to three points off of Senator Obama’s poll numbers, and assume a substantial edge for Senator McCain in the breakdown of the undecided vote.

[ READ MORE HERE ] — The race issue in Barack Obama’s campaign can come up in peculiar and jolting ways.

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