Former Democratic Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first black governor, said Thursday he has told Barack Obama that his race makes the electoral task ahead of him more difficult, but political experts and his committed superdelegates say America is ready to elect a black president.
Wilder said in aninterview with Bloomberg News that he told Obama he can win, but that “it’s going to be very difficult, particularly running against a woman. And racially it’s going to be even more difficult.”
In Pennsylvania, where Clinton beat Obama by 10 percentage points Tuesday, exit polling data suggest race remains a formidable obstacle in Obama’s election prospects — 65 percent of white Democrats voted for Clinton. In addition, 76 percent of whites who said race was an important factor in their decision voted for Clinton.
The Pennsylvania results resembled those in Ohio, where Obama lost to Clinton after failing to win over working-class, white voters. In that primary, 70 percent of white Democrats voted for Clinton.
Analysts dismissed the exit poll results Thursday as an inaccurate way of determining voter behavior in a general election between presumptive Republican nominee John McCain or either Democratic candidate.
“It’s a little suspect to make inferences from the primaries to the general election,” said University of Michigan political science professor Vincent Hutchings, whostudies race and the campaign. “It’s too simple to say that whenever Obama loses it is because of race.”
Hutchings said Obama’s loss could be attributed to a variety of factors, such as voter dissatisfaction with his message. Obama said after his Pennsylvania defeat that his main struggle was winning over older voters who are overwhelmingly loyal to Clinton.
Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Obama backer, said the campaign is not worried it will lose because of race.
“The overwhelming majority of voters indicate race is not a factor,” Fattah said. “Senator Obama has captured more white votes than any of the other Democratic candidates to date.”
In addition to Virginia, Obama has won the nearly all-white states of Iowa, Washington and Wyoming.
Ron Walters, director of the University of Maryland’s African American Leadership Center, said it is impossible to determine from current exit polls whether Obama’s race would hurt him in a general election.
“He’s won a significant amount of white votes,” Walters said. The white voters who have rejected him because of race, he said, “are a marginal group, but it’s a group that can swing an election, so in that sense it is an important group. If he is the nominee, the question of how many people will not vote for him because he is an African American we have no way of knowing.”
