The New Nation - Internet Edition

PTI, New York

Americans are sharply divided on racial lines heading into the first presidential election in which an African-American will be the major party nominee, a new poll shows.

Barack Obama, who is attempting to script history by being the first black President of the United States, leads his Republican rival John McCain among all registered voters by 45 percent to 39 percent.

However, in a sign of how racially polarised US voters are, Obama draws support from 89 per cent of blacks, compared with two per cent for McCain, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Among whites, Obama has 37 per cent of the vote, compared with 46 per cent for McCain, said the poll reflecting the race relations in the country. In a finding that would require the 47-year-old senator to make a major effort to win White voters in the November election, more than 80 per cent of black voters had favourable opinion of Obama while only 30 per cent Whites had the same feelings for him. Nearly 60 per cent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites.

However, black and white Americans agree that America is ready to elect a black president, but disagree on almost every other question about race in the poll.

Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing.

About one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks, the poll found. The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics- Obama is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years, the Times said.