http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2007/09/14/news/12747974.txtThe results are in on a groundbreaking Winthrop/ETV poll, conducted exclusively with S.C. African-Americans between Aug. 19 and Sept. 9 as the Democratic presidential candidates battled for the top spot and talk was of Gen. Petraeus' testimony about Iraq.
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On the results themselves, Huffmon, who designed the survey with the assistance of Winthrop University's co-director of African-American Studies, Dr. Adolphus Belk, Jr., said the horse race results show that, "Early on, African-Americans threw their support to Hillary Clinton, primarily based on the Clinton legacy. However, as African-American voters have gotten to know Barack Obama, support for him has increased significantly. The real tipping point in the Democratic primary election may be undecided African-American female voters -- there are many more African-American female undecideds than males, and Clinton and Obama are dead even among African-American women. It may literally come down to whoever gets the African-American female vote. Clearly support for Edwards, etc. is coming from white voters. On another note, among African-Americans in South Carolina right now, George Bush is proving to be a much more polarizing figure than the Confederate flag."
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The horse-race results take on added significance by the fact that historically, African-Americans have made up to 50 percent of voters in Democratic primaries in South Carolina.
When the question was asked "If the Democratic presidential primary election were held today, which of these candidates would you vote for?" and broken down among both genders, male only, female only, and those who feel their race or ethnic background contributes a great deal to their identity, Barack Obama emerges as the winner in three out of the four match-ups, trailing Clinton in the fourth match-up (taken of women only) by .3 of one percentage point.
It'll be interesting to see if this trend shows up elsewhere around the country. People talking about Hillary's inevitability need to remember that although Obama is much closer to her in name recognition than he used to be, there's a big difference between just recognizing someone's name and knowing who they are and what they stand for. Most people are still learning about who Obama is. As they do so, I believe Obama will continue to pick up voters and gain ground on Hillary.