Obama's prospects
Enjoying massive black, Hispanic and young white support, Obama will win in a landslide.
Polls show that the first Democratic African-American presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, enjoys in the range of 90 per cent of African-American support and a high percentage of Hispanic support. If he holds this massive support among African-American and Hispanic voters, Obama might need only 30 per cent support of white voters to win in a landslide. This is also within his reach, as vast majority of young white voters seem to support Senator Obama.
On the other hand, his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, has the support of barely four per cent of African-American and 20 per cent support of Hispanic voters. The tight race shows his support coming almost exclusively from middle-aged whites who support him by a massive margin. However, these polls are highly misleading as phone-in polls have no way to reach young white voters as most of them use only cell phones and have no land phone lines. As such, Senator Obama's lead over Senator McCain may be far more substantial than the polls suggest.
Senator Barack Obama has galvanised African-American, Hispanic and young white voters who are likely to turn up massively on the election day to hand him a landslide victory, unless partisan Republican electoral officials resort to massive disenfranchisement of black voters as they did in 2000 Florida race. But the world, including young American soldiers who are risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of democracy, will be watching.
It may also be pointed out that most commentators fail to realise that democracy is not about leaders, but about the people and their right to choose. As Mr. Obama so correctly said: "It is not about me, it is not about any political party, it is about you the people." It is the cross-sections of American people belonging to various demographic groups, not just the middle-aged whites, who will elect Senator Barack Obama as the next president of the United States of America.
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