Poll: Barack Obama could lose six percentage points on election day for being black

Six percentage points is the price Barack Obama could pay on election day for being black. That disturbing calculation was found in a groundbreaking new Associated Press-Yahoo News poll conducted with Stanford University which probes the effect of the Democratic presidential candidate's race on his historic campaign for the White House. "There's a penalty for prejudice, and it's not trivial," Stanford University political scientist Paul Sniderman said. In a close contest, racism "might be enough to tip the election," Sniderman said. The perception that voters in their 20s and 30s might go for Obama because they're less racially biased than their parents might be wrong. The survey found no meaningful differences in the way younger and older whites viewed black people. But older whites were more likely to say when they really think of blacks than the younger generations.