Voters Still View U.S. Race Relations As A Mixed Bag
Voters of all races nationwide continue to view relations between whites, blacks and Hispanics as a work in progress.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% of Likely U.S. Voters think relations between white and black Americans are getting better these days. Twenty-one percent (21%) feel these relations are getting worse, down six points from 27% this time last year. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say relations between the two are about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
When it comes to whites and Hispanics, 20% feel the relationship is getting better. Forty-three percent (43%) feel white-Hispanic relations are getting worse. That’s down from 50% last October. Thirty percent (30%) think the relationship is about the same.
Only 11% of voters nationwide say relations between blacks and Hispanics are getting better these days, down from 16% last year. Thirty-one percent (31%) say relations between blacks and Hispanics are getting worse, while just as many (31%) say they’re about the same. Another 27% are undecided.
Still, only 17% of voters believe most Americans are racist, down from 24% in January 2008 which suggests Americans think the country has grown less racially prejudiced during the Obama years.
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The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 30-October 1, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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