Obama banking on black turnout

Obama's formula for energizing blacks while appealing to whites relies in part on demonstrating independence from the more militant traditions of black politics and using rhetoric that spans race. He has opposed monetary reparations for descendants of slaves, for example. And he has said that he does not think his daughters should benefit from affirmative action, because they have had a "pretty good deal," and he has expressed openness to programs that could help disadvantaged whites, Latinos and women.

That enables Obama's campaign to mobilize black voters while shielding him from being portrayed as the black candidate, supporters say. "No community can complain of being shortchanged," said Virginia Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, who in 1989 became the nation's first African American elected governor.

Party strategists believe that Obama's competitive showing in primary contests proves that the approach will work. In some primaries, notably North Carolina and Virginia, he ran strong among white voters, but his victory margins came from drawing blacks, including new African American voters, to the polls in overwhelming numbers.

Major get-out-the-vote efforts in 2004 managed to increase black voter turnout just 3 percentage points, to 60%, compared with 64% of voters overall. Obama's campaign believes it can far surpass that this time.

David A. Bositis, an expert on black voting trends at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, predicts that turnout could rise by as much as 20%, and some Democratic strategists feel they can spur black turnout in the battleground states to as high as 75% of registered voters.

"This will be a completely new precedent," said Bositis. "This year we're going to be looking at record territory, and this will be a level of black turnout that's never been seen before."

The pursuit of black voters is part of the Obama campaign's broader strategy of targeting constituencies that have been underrepresented in past general elections but that proved crucial to his victory over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Another key target is voters of all races under 35, including college students and even high-schoolers who will be 18 by election day. In Virginia, for example, nearly 90,000 people 34 or younger have registered in recent months -- and the Obama campaign is targeting many more who have not registered. Florida strategists have identified about 600,000 young Democrats with "little to no voting history," according to an internal memo. The campaign is applying the same effort to reach unaffiliated Latinos in New Mexico and Nevada.