Racial prejudice may cause Obama to lose up to six percent of votes this fall, according to a new AP-Yahoo News poll.

The poll suggests that there is a large divide between black and white voters, with white Americans possessing negative feelings towards blacks.

Another issue the poll addressed was the amount of influence blacks have in politics, and the results proved that Obama would have a much easier time attaining the presidency if he were white. While approximately three-quarters of blacks claimed that white people have too much influence in politics, only 12 percent of white Americans concurred. In fact, when asked if blacks have too little influence in the country’s politics, three times as many blacks agreed than did whites.

This separation of races in respect to beliefs can be attributed to the lack of racial relations in our country today. According to David Bositis, a writer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, “There’s still a lot of estrangement out there…There’s still an enormous amount of segregation.”

Racial discrimination is thought of differently depending on which race is being asked. Only 10 percent of whites believe “a lot” of discrimination exists against blacks, compared to the 57 percent of blacks who took this same stance.

With neither presidential candidate gaining a significant lead, a little factor like race may make a world of difference.