Political polls unpredictable when prognosticating on racial issues

There’s one hard, fast rule followed by political observers when they study the results of political polls – people usually don’t tell the truth when it comes to race.

Only the most hard-core member of the Ku Klux Klan is likely to come out and admit his honest view on racial issues. Most people will try to speak as neutrally as possible, particularly if their “honest” view is that they have a racial prejudice that would prevent them from voting for a particular candidate.

IT IS WHY black candidates running for office always wind up doing better in pre-Election Day polls than they do on Election Day itself. Some people walk into that voting booth and, when confronted with the actual moment of voting for someone unlike themselves, just can’t do it.

It doesn’t mean that black candidates can’t win. But it becomes a harder political brawl, and just about all the rules of “political science” are best ignored when race becomes involved.

Harold Washington, who was Chicago’s first black mayor, used to joke about the trend, quipping, “perhaps they don’t like the way I part my hair” in response to the fact that he won election to two terms by only the slimmest of vote margins.

The fact is that there are no polls that can accurately tell us how people are going to respond to the concept of Barack Obama as the first presidential nominee of a major political party. This is really a case where the cliché “the only meaningful poll is the one on Election Day” will be the ultimate truth.

SO WHAT SHOULD we make of the Gallup Organization’s latest study. Released Monday, it says that an overwhelming number of people say that race will not be a factor in the way they vote.

Of those surveyed, 78 percent of African-American people and 88 percent of white people claimed Obama’s bi-racial background made “no difference” as to how they would cast ballots come Nov. 4. Twelve percent of black people said his racial background made it “much more likely” they would vote for him, while 3 percent of white people said it was “much less likely” they would vote for him because of his race.

I’ll give Gallup one bit of credit. In their analysis of their findings, they alluded to the “hidden race” factor of people being less than honest in their answers to direct questions.

So they attempted to ask some indirect questions to get at how people feel about a non-white candidate having a serious chance to win a U.S. presidential election.

MORE THAN ONE-quarter of people (both black and white) said they think Obama’s Kenyan and Scottish-Irish ethnic mixture will be a detriment to his campaign, while just over one in five think it will be a plus. The remaining nearly half of the electorate say it will make “no difference” in how many votes Obama gets.

There’s also the matter of how the electorate expects the candidates to use racial issues. When it comes to the Democratic Party, black and white people think similarly – about one quarter of each racial group think the party is “very likely” to use race, “somewhat likely,” “not too likely” and “not likely at all.”

When it comes to the Republican Party, there is a racial difference.

White people express similar views about the GOP as they do the Democratic Party’s likely use of racial issues, but black people are more pessimistic about a race-free campaign from the Republicans.

FORTY-THREE PERCENT SAY it is “very likely” that race will be used as an issue, while 27 percent say it is “somewhat likely.” Only one out of every 10 black people surveyed think the Republicans are “not likely at all” to use racial issues during the upcoming campaign.

So what can we say about the possible racial overtones of the upcoming election?

A lot of people want to think “everybody else” is concerned about racial issues, but they’re not. A lot of black people are suspicious about what to expect in coming months.

But beyond that, it’s hard to predict anything at this point.

IT’S ALL TOO easy for people to want to shift the blame for anything nasty that happens in coming months to somebody else. It’s also hard to figure this issue, because it is not definitively explained exactly what is meant by “racial issue.”

There are people who feel that every time some political windbag insists on referring to the Democratic candidate as “Barack Hussein Obama,” that it is meant to be a reminder that this candidate is not a white man.

There are others who believe that his name ought to be fair game for their criticism. Some others even think that pointing out Obama’s bi-racial background is legitimate criticism in pointing out ways that he differs from a majority of people in this country. Why else would anyone try to make the Rev. Michael Pfleger’s outspoken demeanor into a campaign issue?

Many of those people would likely object strenuously to being accused of playing racial politics. They might very well deny that there is anything racial about their criticisms of Obama. Others will argue that their complaints are entirely racial.

THE BEST I can offer is this personal opinion. Race is going to be an issue.

This campaign will contain ugly overtones not seen by many people in decades. Even us Chicagoans likely will have to remember back to the brawls fought by Washington against Bernard Epton in 1983 for anything comparable.

Even in that campaign, Epton himself did little of the nasty cheapshots against Washington. They came from an electorate that couldn’t handle the thought of a black mayor of Chicago.

Many of the nasty attacks we’re going to see are going to come from the “527 organizations,” those private, tax-exempt groups that try to influence political campaigns while remaining independent of the candidates themselves.

I FULLY EXPECT McCain himself to remain above the fray of these racial cheap shots that will occur, but that won’t stop them from occurring. These shots got the nickname “swiftboating” when they were used successfully in 2004 against the presidential bid of John Kerry (by trivializing his legitimate military record as a swiftboat commander during the Vietnam War).

Will certain conservatives try to “swiftboat” Obama? Of course. Will it work? If we’re really as advanced as a society as the results of this poll would indicate, it won’t. Who knows, maybe in the future, successful political cheapshots will be known as “swiftboating,” while unsuccessful ones will become “Obamas.”

Becoming the candidate who can withstand negative racial campaigning could very well be Obama’s lasting legacy in the world of politics. We’ll have to wait and see.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The polls show Democrat Barack Obama with a small, but solid, (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/06/09/Obama_makes_gains_on_McCain_in_Gallup_Poll/UPI-46041213013517/) lead over Republican opponent John McCain.

One can look up the data themselves as to what the electorate expects the racial overtones (http://www.gallup.com/poll/107770/Most-Say-Race-Will-Factor-Their-Presidential-Vote.aspx) of the upcoming presidential campaign to be.

Some people think that any attempt to bring up racial issues in the presidential campaign against Obama (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121271038571350377-VL2loSSrxG1rIxxnhQ0Ap4TaPow_20080706.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top) would backfire by offending more people than it would please.

One plus of having Obama in the running for president is that we will get some hard evidence (http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080051989) from the Nov. 4 elections on how far this country has come on racial issues.