New voters may not vote, poll indicates

NEW YORK, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The crush of newly registered voters may skew for Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race but they may not show up to vote, a poll indicates.

A national poll of Americans eligible to vote for the first time or who missed the 2004 elections but are registered, found new voters back Obama, D-Ill., over Republican challenger, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, by 61 percent to 30 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The poll -- conducted by the Journal, NBC News and the MySpace social networking Web site -- also indicates that 49 percent of the new voters said they were "very interested" in the Nov. 4 election. By comparison, 70 percent of all age groups said they were "very interested" in the election in a Journal-NBC News national poll a week ago.

The latest poll is the first to survey new and lapsed voters, the Journal said. More than 75 percent of the sampling of 614 voters registered for the first time this year and mostly were young adults. The remaining were older voters who registered previously but said they skipped the 2004 elections.

The survey included interviews conducted on the Internet and by telephone and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.