John Kerry - Not the Second Black President

I didn’t exactly swear off of polls last night – I just said I find them too confusing. Especially this one:

In the race breakdown, the Bush-Cheney ticket is buoyed by an amazing 17 percent from African-Americans. (Kerry receives 76 percent of the black voters and Nader only 1 percent.)

Although 17 percent is still less than one in five, it is more than twice the tiny 8 percent turnout that the Bush-Cheney ticket received in the 2000 election.

Also on Tuesday, a poll with a much larger sample of black voters was released by the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a leading think tank on black-oriented issues. It showed a very similar African-American boost for the Bush-Cheney ticket: 18 percent versus 69 for Kerry and 2 percent for Nader.

Since the center’s poll proved remarkably prescient in the 2000 presidential election, showing 9 percent black support for Bush (only 1 point short of what the ticket actually received), I wondered if a virtual black blowout for Bush was on the way.

Add that to other recent polls showing that the Republicans’ “gender gap” with female voters has shrunk considerably. In a close race, it probably wouldn’t take many defections of women and African Americans to Bush to determine the outcome.

But I’m still dubious about all of it.

UPDATE: Much more here.