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WASHINGTON (AP) — Deep-seated racial misgivings could costBarack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to anAP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbornegative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy,""violent," responsible for their own troubles.The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that thepercentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his racecould easily be larger than the final difference between the candidatesin 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He's anally of an unpopular president and would be the nation's oldestfirst-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all whiteAmericans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and thatincludes many Democrats and independents. More than a third of all white Democrats and independents —voters Obama can't win the White House without — agreed with atleast one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, andthey are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those whodon't have such views.Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for thehistory books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot atthe presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45thanniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, aseminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution."There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but thatdoesn't mean there's only a few bigots," said Stanford politicalscientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a closerace with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favorDemocrats. President Bush's unpopularity, the Iraq war and a nationalsense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does thatfact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.The findings suggest that Obama's problem is close to home —among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters.Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama,compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who backMcCain.The survey also focused on the racial attitudes of independent voters because they are likely to decide the election.Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey foundthey weren't voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicanswouldn't vote for any Democrat for president — white, black orbrown.Not all whites are prejudiced. Indeed, more whites say good thingsabout blacks than say bad things, the poll shows. And many whites whosee blacks in a negative light are still willing or even eager to votefor Obama.On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat isdrawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, thoughthat probably wouldn't be enough to counter the negative effect of somewhites' views.Race is not the biggest factor driving Democrats and independentsaway from Obama. Doubts about his competency loom even larger, the pollindicates. More than a quarter of all Democrats expressed doubt thatObama can bring about the change they want, and they are likely to voteagainst him because of that.Three in 10 of those Democrats who don't trust Obama's change-making credentials say they plan to vote for McCain.Still, the effects of whites' racial views are apparent in the polling.Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama'ssupport would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were nowhite racial prejudice.But in an election without precedent, it's hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.The AP-Yahoo News poll used the unique methodology of KnowledgeNetworks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people onlineafter randomly selecting and screening them over telephone. Numerousstudies have shown that people are more likely to report embarrassingbehavior and unpopular opinions when answering questions on a computerrather than talking to a stranger.Other techniques used in the poll included recording people'sresponses to black or white faces flashed on a computer screen, askingparticipants to rate how well certain adjectives apply to blacks,measuring whether people believe blacks' troubles are their own fault,and simply asking people how much they like or dislike blacks."We still don't like black people," said John Clouse, 57, reflectingthe sentiments of his pals gathered at a coffee shop in Somerset, Ohio.Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives thatmight describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word "violent"strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with "boastful,"29 percent "complaining," 13 percent "lazy" and 11 percent"irresponsible." When asked about positive adjectives, whites were morelikely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.Among white Democrats, one third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by askingabout factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding:More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that "if blacks would onlytry harder, they could be just as well off as whites."Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn't.Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. Forexample, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks"intelligent" or "smart," more than one third latched on the adjective"complaining" and 24 percent said blacks were "violent."Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they "try harder."The survey broke ground by incorporating images of black and whitefaces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are sodeeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. That testsuggested the incidence of racial prejudice is even higher, with morethan half of whites revealing more negative feelings toward blacks thanwhites.Researchers used mathematical modeling to sort out the relativeimpact of a huge swath of variables that might have an impact onpeople's votes — including race, ideology, party identification,the hunger for change and the sentiments of Sen. Hillary RodhamClinton's backers.Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wantedObama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton's white backersplan to vote for McCain.Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice aslikely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjectivedescribed blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supportersin the primaries — particularly whites with high school educationor less — were motivated in part by racial attitudes.The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. It hasa margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

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