Poll Tracker

Barack Obama has made huge strides among African-American voters since October, according to a national CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released today. This reverses what had been a 24 percentage point deficit to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the poll, 59 percent of African-American Democrats support Obama while only 24 percent support Clinton. Obama, who has a large lead over Clinton with African-American men, also has turned around his support with African-American women, once a strong support base for the female senator.

African-Americans also are now less likely to believe that Clinton "understands the problems and concerns of blacks." Only 74 percent of African-American Democrats polled responded that she does, compared to an 88 percent rating in April 2007. Obama currently garners 82 percent on this question.

Among African-American Democrats, 42 percent believe the country would be better off in an Obama presidency than it is right now. Thirty-five percent believe the same about Clinton.

In the poll of registered Democrats, Clinton still leads Obama 42 percent to 33 percent. But both of the leading candidates lost support since a similar poll was conducted Jan. 9-10. John Edwards appears to have picked up most of the difference and Dennis J. Kucinich has gained a bit of ground at the back of the race.

Interviews with 1,393 adult Americans, including an oversample of African-Americans, conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on Jan. 14-17. The margin of error for results based on the total sample is ± 3 percentage points. The sample also includes 513 interviews among African-Americans (± 4.5 points) and 743 non-Hispanic whites (± 3.5 points). The sample of 448 registered Democrats has a margin of error of ± 4.5 points.