President Bush’s decision not to attend the 95th annual National Association of Advancement of Colored People convention is not altogether a groundbreaking decision.

Bush declined to speak to the NAACP in 2003. Bush declined to speak in 2002. Bush declined to speak in 2001. And Herbert Hoover declined to speak at the NAACP conference — the last president to refuse the organization — back in the 1930s, three decades before the Civil Rights Act and the banning of poll taxes and literacy tests.

However, considering the Democratic leaning of the NAACP organization, Bush’s choice to skip the convention is not likely to affect his chances for re-election, said Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science.

“Blacks aren’t going to vote for Bush, even if he went to the NAACP convention,” Schmidt said.

Julian Bond, NAACP chairman, upset over Bush’s apparent snub of the organization, called for increased voter turnout in the coming election to oust Bush.

“They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division,” Bond said during the convention’s keynote address Sunday.

Despite Bond’s statements, Leonard Perry, ISU director of minority student affairs, said he isn’t sure the NAACP has a “concrete power” to change voting. Perry said Bush refusing to speak at the convention did not personally matter to him.

Schmidt said Bush will likely garner 10 percent of the black vote, and may gain more support than he did in the 2000 election from black communities due to increased education and income for blacks.

“Voting is much more by your income and education than it is your race,” he said.

Still, 2004 presidential campaigns are already using race as a focus in their tactics. At his speech at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, Bush spoke to one of the attendees in Spanish. Likely Democratic nominee John Kerry is launching campaign ads targeted toward blacks and Hispanics to the tune of $3 million.

Schmidt said the Hispanic community is the race “up for grabs” in the 2004 election, and is particularly important because it is now the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States.

“We have to start asking now how Hispanics will vote,” Schmidt said, estimating that one-third of Hispanic votes will go to the Republican ticket. “The only thing we don’t know is what is going to happen with the Cuban vote.”

The Cuban vote is uncertain due to new legislation enacted by Bush restricting travel to Cuba, Schmidt said. This could be a problem for Bush in the state of Florida — which has the largest Cuban population in the United States — because Hispanics in the state have been more supportive of Bush than in other states, Schmidt said. In the 2000 election, there was less than 1 percent difference between the two major parties in Florida.

Bush, though, is not ignoring the black community. He will address the National Urban League, a group focused on improving civil rights and economic issues for blacks, Friday. Kerry, who spoke at the NAACP convention, will speak to the Urban League Thursday.

Perry said the Urban League is more middle of the road than the NAACP.

“[The NAACP] is traditionally a Democratic stronghold,” Perry said.

Schmidt said the Urban League is less ideological and less liberal than the NAACP.

“I think there are a lot of African-Americans who don’t agree with the NAACP position,” he said. “They are very much in the pocket of the Democrats.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this article.