Poll Gauges Blacks’ Take on Kerry

African American adults overwhelmingly prefer Sen. John F. Kerry over President Bush in the Nov. 2 election, but support the Democratic candidate less strongly than they favored Al Gore in 2000, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The survey of 850 blacks by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that focuses on issues affecting African Americans, found they preferred Kerry over Bush, 69% to 18%, with 2% favoring Ralph Nader and 11% undecided.

David A. Bositis, senior political analyst at the center, agreed with other independent experts that the poll probably understated Kerry’s support among black voters and overstated the support for Bush. Other recent polls have found the president getting roughly the same level of support among black voters as in the 2000 election: 9%.

“John Kerry is doing very, very well with African Americans,” Bositis said.

Among the apparent reasons for the discrepancy between the Joint Center’s findings and those of other polls: The survey’s goal was not designed to predict the outcome of the black vote, but to provide information on opinions among all African American adults on a range of issues; the poll did not break out results for those who are registered to vote, or are likely to vote.

The poll was taken from Sept. 15 through Oct. 10, an unusually long period for a public opinion survey in a political campaign. Still, Kerry’s favorability rating among blacks trails Gore’s in a similar Joint Center survey taken during the 2000 campaign. At the time, 86% of African Americans viewed Gore favorably and 7% unfavorably. The new poll found 78% of blacks view Kerry favorably and 16% unfavorably.

Bositis and other analysts cited two factors that could help Bush erode Kerry’s advantage among African Americans. One is Bush’s support of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, the other is his push for more public money to finance social services provided by religious groups.

Given the popularity of those stands among black conservative Christians, Bush could expand his share of the black vote to 12% or more, Bositis said.

But Ronald Walters, a government and politics professor at the University of Maryland, said those positions were unlikely to offset Bush’s intense unpopularity among blacks. He questioned whether the president could match his 9% share of the black vote in the 2000 race.

“I would expect him to come in at even less than that,” Walters said. “No question about it.”

The new poll found that blacks named the economy as the country’s most important problem, followed by the Iraq war, healthcare and terrorism.

The survey found that 74% of blacks saw the country as on the wrong track, 72% disapproved of Bush’s handling of Iraq, and 67% gave fair or poor grades to Bush’s education reforms.

The poll found that 46% of blacks opposed any legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships while 23% favored same-sex marriage and 24% supported civil unions.

Those findings were slightly more conservative than those of a separate survey of the general population conducted by the Joint Center during the same period. In the second survey of 850 adults, which included 58 blacks, 37% of the people opposed legal recognition of gay couples, 29% backed same-sex marriage and 28% favored civil unions.