Obama looks to new black voters, new young voters

BY OLYMPIA MEOLA
Media General News Service
Published: August 26, 2008

DENVER — New black voters and new voters under 40 will make the difference in Virginia for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, his campaign manager said yesterday.

Virginia’s promise for Obama lies in energizing groups who have previously not been registered or who were registered but did not vote, David Plouffe said at a news conference with reporters from battleground states.

“We have a great ability here to adjust the electorate,“ he said.

Nationally, Obama has more ways to get to 270 electoral votes than his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, Plouffe said. He said McCain must win Florida or Ohio to win the White House.

Obama’s campaign considers Virginia, which has 13 electoral votes, to be one of 18 battleground states. Collectively, the 18 states have 199 electoral votes.

Plouffe said 14 of the states voted for President Bush four years ago, and four voted for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. As of Aug. 1, Virginia’s State Board of Elections had logged 202,597 new registrations, and nearly 64 percent of those new voters are under the age of 65.

Virginians do not register by party, so it is hard to tell how those numbers will affect the election.

Plouffe said, “We know who they are.“

Plouffe also said former Gov. Mark R. Warner, now running for the U.S. Senate, is going to “win big” and “going to be very helpful to the Obama campaign.“