WASHINGTON (AFP) — Black voters could help hand a massive victory to Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama and a drubbing to his Republican rival John McCain in the US presidential election in two weeks, a poll released Tuesday showed.
"Many of the states that will be critical to the outcome of the presidential election ... have significant black voting populations," David Bositis, a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said as he presented the findings of a poll on African Americans' political attitudes at a news conference.
The survey showed huge support among black voters for the Democratic Party, not least because it is the first of the major US parties to field an African-American nominee for the White House.
Eighty-four percent of the 750 black voters polled over three weeks in September and October said they want Obama to win the election on November 4. Six percent were for McCain, and 10 percent were listed as undecided.
One of the states in which Bositis predicted black voters could help tip the balance in favor of Obama was the southern state of Georgia, where Republican President George W. Bush defeated Democratic rival John Kerry 58 to 41 percent in 2004, winning the state's 15 electoral college votes.
"Recent surveys have shown only a two-point difference between John McCain and Obama in Georgia, where around one-third of all voters are African American," Bositis said.
Four years ago, around one-quarter of voters in Georgia were black, according to a CNN tally.
"If Senator Obama wins Georgia, he probably will end up with something like 375 electoral votes and the election won't be even close," said Bositis.
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidential race.
Among other states that could see a shift towards the Democratic Party were Virginia, "where polls suggest Obama is going to be the first Democrat in 44 years to win," Bositis said.
North Carolina, which last voted Democrat in a presidential election in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was elected, was also up for grabs, as was Indiana, which has been won by the Republican presidential candidate since 1964, he said.
Bositis predicted that most blacks who said they were undecided in the survey would eventually cast their ballot for Obama on November 4, thus giving the Democrat 94 percent of the African-American vote against six percent for McCain.
That would equal a record of support among blacks for a Democratic presidential candidate that has stood since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson got 94 percent of the black vote and Barry Goldwater, who like McCain is a senator for the state of Arizona, got six percent.
The survey by the Joint Center -- a non-partisan group founded in 1970 to empower black leaders and expand black political participation -- was conducted among African Americans with a landline telephone over three weeks in September and October.
Studies that include mobile phone users, who tend to be younger than landline users, would probably have taken a few points off McCain's score and handed them to Obama, Bositis said, adding that he "would not be surprised" if McCain finished with a record-low four percent of the black vote.
Obama is viewed favorably by 90.4 percent of African Americans and his vice presidential pick, Senator Joseph Biden, by 68 percent, the survey showed.
In contrast, only 22.8 percent of African-Americans viewed McCain favorably and even fewer -- 18 percent -- had a positive view of the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the survey said.
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