April 9, 2008 3:00 PM
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Black Voter Registration Surges In N.C.
As polls continue to show Barack Obama maintaining a double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton in the May 6 North Carolina primary, The Associated Press reports that voter registration among blacks is soaring in the Tar Heel State.
Blacks have traditionally accounting for about a third of all voters in past North Carolina Democratic primaries, but Clyde Frazier, a professor of political science at Meredith College in Raleigh, told the AP, "I think everybody's expecting it to be higher than that this year."
The AP reports that over 45,000 blacks registered to vote in the first three months of this year, while about 106,000 whites signed up to vote during the same period. Those numbers are both way up from 2004, when just over 11,000 blacks and 47,000 whites registered during the first quarter of that year, but the percentage increase of new black registrants was much higher than new whites.
If Obama continues to generate the kind of enthusiasm among black voters he has garnered in other southern primaries, North Carolina looks to be his state to lose.
Blacks have traditionally accounting for about a third of all voters in past North Carolina Democratic primaries, but Clyde Frazier, a professor of political science at Meredith College in Raleigh, told the AP, "I think everybody's expecting it to be higher than that this year."
The AP reports that over 45,000 blacks registered to vote in the first three months of this year, while about 106,000 whites signed up to vote during the same period. Those numbers are both way up from 2004, when just over 11,000 blacks and 47,000 whites registered during the first quarter of that year, but the percentage increase of new black registrants was much higher than new whites.
If Obama continues to generate the kind of enthusiasm among black voters he has garnered in other southern primaries, North Carolina looks to be his state to lose.
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Scott Conroy Scott Conroy is a National Political Reporter for RealClearPolitics and a contributor for CBS News.
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