During this very important election year I have been saving various newspaper issues that I think are significant. I was perusing my collection the other day and came across a very surprising statistic. In the Sept. 23 issue of USA Today, there was a poll published that asked 1,941 adults who they were likely to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. The poll was taken from Sept. 11 to 14. USA Today organized the results into categories by race, with results for whites, blacks and Hispanics. The overall poll showed Barack Obama leading John McCain 47 percent to 45 percent. The results for whites had McCain leading 56-36. For Hispanics, Obama was leading 57-33. None of these are too surprising. What completely took me aback was the breakdown for blacks. Obama was leading 92-4. That’s not a typo — Obama was leading among blacks 92 percent to 4 percent. Now it’s hard for me to believe that only 4 percent of black people are Republicans. If that assumption is correct, then this is a clear case of people voting for a candidate solely based on the race of that candidate. There is a name for that — it’s called racism. Can you imagine the public outcry if these results had been reversed and 92 percent of white people had favored for McCain? The country would be in an uproar. Both candidates have been downplaying the role race is taking in this election, and rightly so, but a statistic like this scares the crap out of me. It means people aren’t voting because of the issues, they are voting based on appearances, and that is just not right.

Jeff Tomlinson

Freshman

Engineering