U.S. House candidates seek black support

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- At least 10 white Democratic U.S. House of Representatives candidates are counting on black voters to win in November, an analyst says.

A surge of black voter turn-out will be necessary for them to help Democrats attain their goal of adding as many as 25 seats to their majority in the U.S. House, with many of them facing Republican incumbents in southern U.S. districts, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Black voters make up the majority of residents in the 10 districts and heavy turnout is expected: As many as 70 percent of voting-age blacks could cast ballots on Election Day, David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who studies black voter patterns, told the Post.

He said it would be ironic if black turnout worked to the Democrats' advantage in the districts because many of them were designed to favor Republicans by taking advantage of traditionally low minority voter turnout.

"Now, all of a sudden, you have an election … where African-Americans are enormously excited and mobilized," Bositis told the Post. "Not only that, you have the Obama campaign going out of its way to make sure these voters are registered and are going to turn out."