President Barack Obama's presidency doesn't seem to have improved the state of race relations in the country, according to a new POLITICO poll. Only 6 percent of voters in battleground elections this fall believe that race relations have improved under the first African-American president, with nearly half claiming that they've gotten worse.
Following weeks of racial tension after a white police officer shot an unarmed 18-year-old African-American in Ferguson, Mo., 46 percent of surveyed voters said race relations have worsened since Obama took office in 2009, while 48 percent said they have remained the same.
Among white voters, 49 percent said relations are worse while 4 percent said they are better. On the other hand, 13 percent of African-Americans believe they have improved, while 38 percent said they had gotten worse, according to Politico.
Forty seven percent of both white and African-American voters said they remain the same.
Among Hispanic voters, 56 percent said relations have stayed the same, 30 percent said they have worsened and 14 percent said they have improved
Although Obama's campaign in 2008, where he referred to himself as son of a "black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas," was widely seen as a watershed moment in the history of racial relations, he has often avoided confronting racial issues since he took office. Most recently, he sent Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson to address the increasing protests after the shooting of Michael Brown.
However, there have been some exceptions where Obama has directly waded into controversial incidents, according to Politico.
After the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager in Florida, Obama said, "You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."
Additionally, "he also hosted a 'beer summit' with Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard professor, and a white police officer who arrested Gates for disorderly conduct. And Obama has launched an initiative called My Brother's Keeper, aimed at helping 'boys and young men of color' achieve their potential."
The poll, conducted Aug. 29-Sept. 7, surveyed voters in the most competitive midterm states and districts of the cycle.
The POLITICO poll of 917 likely voters in competitive House and Senate races was designed by SocialSphere Inc. and conducted online by the research firm GfK. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points for the full sample.
