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New Poll Shows Romney Gets Zero Support From Black Voters

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Black voters overwhelmingly support President Obama by 94 percent to zero percent for Mitt Romney.

Nobody has been under the illusion that Mitt Romney would get much support from African-American voters. But zero? According to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, that's exactly the percentage of support the presumptive Republican nominee has among Black voters, compared to 94 percent for President Obama. The remaining 6 percent said they were undecided or had no opinion.
That's bad news for the Romney campaign, which has made a few attempts to resonate with African-Americans. In 2008, Sen. John McCain got just 4 percent of their vote and George W. Bush won 11 percent in 2004.

"It's no surprise that President Obama enjoys a majority of the Black vote. But that doesn't discount the fact that he hasn't delivered on promises he made to the Black community. Fully 36 percent of African-Americans say that the country is not better off since President Obama was elected," Romney senior adviser Tara Wall told BET.com. "It is our hope that more Black Americans will see that a Romney-Ryan ticket is the right path to restoring those broken promises."

According to David Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, that likely won't happen.

"Ninety four to zero speaks for itself," he said. "But his issue positions [aren't attractive]; he has no history with Black people whatsoever; he's Mormon, a religion that until very recently was prejudiced against Black people and at the present moment in time African-Americans have totally and completely soured on the Republican Party."

The poll found that Obama also leads among Latinos (by a 2-to-1 margin), voters under 35 years old (52 to 41 percent) and women (51 to 41 percent).
But hope springs eternal, and Bositis thinks Romney could get some of the 4 percent of Black support that McCain won four years ago.

"The Republican Party has written off minorities for this election and appear to be writing off women," Bositis said.


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(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

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