Poll: Obama candidacy not closing race gap

NEW YORK, July 16 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy for U.S. president isn't bridging the racial divide between black and white voters, a New York Times-CBS News poll indicates.

More than 80 percent of African-American voters said they had a favorable opinion of Obama, D-Ill., compared with about 30 percent of white voters, results from the poll released Wednesday indicated.

The results suggested that while Obama's candidacy is generating high enthusiasm among black voters, they don't see it as an improvement in race relations, pollsters said.

Among black voters Obama draws support from 89 percent, compared with 2 percent for his likely Republican challenger, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Among whites, McCain has 46 percent support to Obama's 37 percent.

Obama leads McCain 62 percent to 23 percent among Hispanics.

The poll indicated Obama leading McCain 45 percent to 39 percent among all registered voters.

The New York Times-CBS telephone poll was conducted July 7-14 with 1,796 adults and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points. To measure views of different races, the survey included larger-than-usual minority samples, 297 blacks and 246 Hispanics, with a margin error of 6 percentage points for each subgroup.