By GBENGA OKE in Houston Texas, Hugo Odiogor & LAJU ARENYEKA (with Agency reports)

November 4, 2008—Nearly every African on the planet remembers when they first heard the news that Barack Obama was President of the United States of America. It did not matter whether they had ever been to the U.S. Even those who had no access to CNN mutilated. Obama tee-shirts, Obama jokes, Obama desktop backgrounds were the order of the day. Obama allegories permeated every airwave.

January 20, 2009—the day Martin Luther King’s dream became a reality, Maya Angelou’s prophecies came to pass, and the tears in Oprah’s eyes told the story. 44thPresident of the United States, and first black man in the white house, Obama made history with 95% of African American voters favouring him.

November 2012-A failing economy, controversial stance on gay and lesbian marriage, coupled with one bad debate. Could these issues cause the U.S President to remain in history?

Recent polls after the second debate show that about 92% of blacks still favour Obama, Analysts worry that the current issues might lead to a low turnout. Many blacks might not want to vote in a republican, but may not be enthusiastic enough to vote at all. As one analyst put it, “Even if he gets 95%, it would be 95% of what?”

But even if as little as 5% of black voters who supported the president in 2008 stay home on Election Day, he could lose states that helped him win four years ago, such as Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, where he won by just 14,000 votes despite a whopping 76% turnout rate among black voters.

“The enthusiasm gap this time has been a problem, and I think [the Obama campaign] has been struggling to overcome it,” said Marshall Ganz, a Kennedy School of Government professor at Harvard, credited with masterminding the Obama campaign’s field-organization model, adopted in 2007. “There’s a lot to recover there.”

Although blacks make up only 12 percent of the population, their unusually high 65 percent turnout in 2008 helped push Obama over the top. A dip this time could help drag him down, just as it did during the 2010 midterm congressional elections when Republicans trounced Democrats.

According to the National Post “This election — so tight a tie of 269 Electoral College votes is possible — is shaping up to be the year of the minorities: blacks, Hispanics and Jews could well decide the next president.

As many as 60,000 Hispanics become eligible to vote every month and are today the largest and fastest-growing minority population. Nobody thinks Jews will vote Republican at a rate much higher than 30%, but increasingly pro-Republican Orthodox Jews, for example, could help unseat the president if they happen to live in a state like Florida, where the 2000 election was decided by just 537 votes.

A large white turn out is something that the Democrats may have to adapt as according to the 2010 U.S census, whites still make up to 65.87% of the population, while Blacks, Hispanics and Asians make up the rest. A Pew poll released recently found that 57 percent of whites planned to vote for Romney, compared to only 37 percent for Obama.

That number would translate into the lowest share for a Democrat in a two-person race since Walter F. Mondale got 35 percent of the vote in 1984. By comparison, in Obama’s 2008 victory, 43 percent of white voters supported him.

Michael Dimock, Pew’s associate director for research, said that white voters without college degrees, who tend to have lower incomes and may be more likely to be suffering from sluggish economic growth, accounted for most of Obama’s falloff in the poll.

For Mr Mina Sekibo, he believes the racism factor will not hinder the victory of President Obama at the forthcoming polls adding that the younger generation of Americans seems not be a racist.

His words, “Racism is not of much of a problem because other factors are already coming to play. There are more mexicans in America now and they are increasing in number by the day while others like Latinos, Hispanics are as well growing in number by the day”.

“The Republicans have so far played a racist card and that is why the election became so tight but it is evident that the American younger generation are already looking beyond that because most schools in America are seriously a mix of black and whites” he maintained.

Alan Wirzick of the Boston Globe said:  “As recently as 2004, when George W. Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, Latinos were considered a swing constituency. Karl Rove, Bush’s political strategist, who said in a speech this month in Arkansas that the GOP would be doomed without winning over more Latinos, pushed the party to back immigration reform that year.”

But the effort stalled. In the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries, Republican candidates took hard-line positions on immigration. Romney opposed the Dream Act, which would allow children of illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

Since winning the nomination, the Romney campaign has campaigned for Latino votes with elected Latino Republican officials like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico. But his numbers do not seem to have budged.

There was a different perception about discrimination and racism when Barrack Obama became the first black President of the United States in 2008. Obama’s emergence seems to have laid to rest and softened racism in American politics but next week’s Tuesday Presidential election has once again raised the issue of racism.

Various polls conducted in America shows Republicans Mitt Romney being more popular among the whites especially men while President Obama has the full support of African American community as well as Latinos, Hispanics.

The issue of colour seems to have polarized the campaigns and President Obama appears to be a victim racism especially at the forthcoming elections. Washington post in a write up recently stated that this election is shaping up to be the most polarized along racial lines than any other Presidential election since 1988 and recent developments at various campaign trail has shown the race gap between the two candidates and President Obama seems to be more affected being an African American.

Obama recently got a racist attack from former Governor of New Hampshire and adviser to Mitt Romney, John Sununu had suggested that former Secretary of State, Colin Powell was supporting President Obama for second term because they are both Africans

Sununu in a reaction to Obama’s endorsement by Powell simply said, “Frankly when you look at Colin Powell, you will wonder whether that is an endorsement based on issue or whether he has got a different reason for supporting Obama”.

When Sununu was pressed further, he simply said “I think that when you have somebody of your own race that you are proud of being the President of the United States, I applaud Powell for standing by him”.  Although many supporters of Powell condemned Sununu for making a racial statement, some as well tagged Republicans a party of racist.

Few days after Sununu’s statement, another Romney’s strong supporter and businessman, Ronald Trump in a nationwide broadcast stated that American’s know little about President Obama and there is need for the President to release his birth certificate, his passport application, his college records and other necessary documents, a statement many of Obama’s supporters considers another racist statement.

Trump said, “If President Obama would release all those documents relating to his paternity and records, I would hand over to his choice charity a cheque of 5million dollars an hour later those documents are released”.

Obama’s campaign office did not respond but some of his supporters considered Trump’s statement racial as none of the former Presidents that are whites has never been asked to present their paternity records, they suggest all these are playing out simply because President Obama is not a white.

From various polls in recent times, it has shown that President Obama is trailing Mitt Romney among the whites, a situation that has once again brought to the fore-front the issue of racism.

When Vanguard to know why racism is playing out at the forthcoming elections, it was speculated that it is because of race factor being used by the Republicans, that is the reason why election became so tight between Romney and Obama.