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 At the same time, blacks and whites have starkly different perceptions of Obama's credentials, the Associated Press-Ipsos poll said Wednesday. Blacks are significantly more satisfied than whites that the youthful Illinois senator has sufficient experience to be president.
Many blacks seem torn between the two. Obama would be the first black president, while the New York senator and former first lady, along with her husband, is widely popular among blacks.
"I'm a black person, but that's not the only thing I like about him," said Raymond Monroe, 63, a retired production supervisor from Abilene, Texas, who backs Obama but says he might shift. "He's young and has new ideas, but she's pretty sharp, too. Instead of good old boys all the time, I think we need a change."
Blacks make up about a tenth of voters overall. They are reliably loyal Democrats, voting nearly nine-to-one for the party's candidates in the 2004 and 2006 elections. And while blacks are few in New Hampshire and Iowa, they comprise about half the Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, another early voting state.
Their allegiance is especially strong to the Clintons, which will help the New York senator, according several black leaders from around the country.
"It's not so much Mrs. Clinton they're backing, it's that she's married to the ex-president," said Mayor Willie Adams Jr. of Albany, Ga.
In the late September poll, Clinton led Obama among whites by 35 percent to 18 percent, Blacks were essentially evenly divided, 40 percent for Obama and 38 percent for Clinton. Among all Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, Clinton led by 35 percent to 23 percent. All those measurements have been steady for months in the AP-Ipsos poll.
Faced with choosing between two potential White House firsts -- the first black president or the first female
-- black women split 47 percent for Clinton, 37 percent for Obama. Clinton has led decisively among all women nationally.
Mayor Gwendolyn Faison of Camden, N.J., the city's first female black mayor, said a breakthrough for women would appeal to her but she has yet to pick a candidate.
"Being a female, we don't have that many females in authority positions," said Faison. "We have to show the men that we, too, can do the job."
Black men leaned toward supporting Obama over Clinton by 44 percent to 28 percent, and he had an edge among younger black voters
-- the opposite of her lead among all men and young people. He also gets stronger support from college-educated blacks
-- one of the few areas where he leads Clinton overall.
The nation is evenly split over whether Obama has enough experience for the White House, but with clear racial differences. Besides almost three years in the Senate, Obama, 46, was an Illinois state senator, law professor, community organizer and Harvard University law graduate.
On an issue that pits those credentials against Clinton's longer resume, blacks by 66 percent to 23 percent said Obama is sufficiently experienced to be president. Whites said "no" by 48 percent to 40 percent, and even white Democrats divided evenly over whether his experience was satisfactory.
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 Toni Pena, 36, a homemaker in Odessa, Texas, said she preferred Clinton or former Vice President Al Gore to Obama because "they both obviously would have more experience than he would, being that both of them have been in the White House."
The experience question could be crucial for Obama. Democrats who say he has adequate experience prefer him over Clinton by 40 percent to 28 percent, while those who say he does not back Clinton by an overwhelming 47 percent to 4 percent.
Some blacks in the survey said doubts about Obama's experience represent a racial double standard because President Bush
-- deeply unpopular among blacks -- had only been Texas governor before his 2000 election victory.
"I hate to play the race card, but I don't remember people saying George Bush didn't have the right experience," said Patricia McCree, 70, a retired college administrator from San Diego who currently supports Clinton.
Asked about the survey, Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said it is "very impressive" that Obama is winning as much support as he is against Clinton, who is far better known. Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, said the black community "sees her as a champion for their issues."
About half of both blacks and whites said Obama would do a better job of representing blacks' interests as president. Thirty-nine percent of blacks
-- compared with 26 percent of whites -- said she would do better.
Blacks signaled more support than whites for Obama should he become the Democratic nominee. Eighty-three percent of blacks and 60 percent of whites said they would at least consider voting for him in November 2008, with the blacks who said they would definitely vote for him outpacing whites by nearly three-to-one.
The survey was conducted Sept. 21-25 and involved telephone interviews with 1,317 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Included were interviews with 368 blacks, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 5 percentage points,
and 865 whites were interviewed, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 points.
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On the Net:
http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com/
[Associated Press; by Alan Fram]
Trevor Tompson, AP director of
surveys, and Dennis Junius, AP news survey specialist, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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