Obama Faces White Resistance In South, Polls Show

Thomas Edsall
Huffington Post

Columbia, S.C. -- Barack Obama is heading into the January 26 South Carolina Democratic primary powered by a solid lead in each of the most recent 11 polls taken here, with African American voters and a slice of the white electorate set to put him over the top next Saturday.

While Obama is expected to pick up one out of five white Democratic primary voters, his margin among such voters in this deep Southern state lags from three to fourteen percentage points behind his support among whites nationally, depending on the survey. This lag, which appears at present to hold across the entire South, challenges one of the central claims of the Obama campaign: that he is a more viable general election candidate than Hillary Clinton.

Additional poll data from Mason-Dixon and SurveyUSA studies also produce findings which run counter to the hopes and expectations of many of Obama's supporters here in South Carolina.

"Many of us remember Martin Luther King's impassioned speech calling for the day when his daughter would be judged on content of her character and not on her color," said former state Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian earlier this week. "We think that day is here, Barack Obama is that person."

Similarly, former Democratic Governor Jim Hodges said on January 17, "I've got to tell you that as a white Southerner, it gives me an immense amount of pride to see an African American who could really win the presidency. It would do great things for race relations in the country."

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