Barack Obama’s supporters seem to find racism wherever they look, and have argued quietly that racism is keeping down Obama’s overall numbers. But Obama is polling about the same as previous Democratic nominees among white voters. In the latest CBS poll, McCain leads Obama by four points among white voters. Time has him up by seven among white voters. Rasmussen only releases crosstabs for their daily tracking polls to premium members, but on July 29 their polling reported that McCain held a 14 percentage point lead among white voters. So how does this compare to previous Democratic candidates? Kerry lost whites by 17 points. Gore lost them by 12. Both of those were close elections of course, suggesting that they offer pretty good points of comparison for the close race this year. In 1996 by contrast, Clinton won in a landslide — and even he lost the white vote by 3 points.
