Obama, McCain have skin colour swapped in poster campaign

IT could be the issue that swings the US election and makes a mockery of months of campaigning of Barack Obama and John McCain.
The thorny issue of race has been highlighted in explicit detail in a poster campaign urging the electorate not to vote according to the candidates’ skin colours, but to focus on the policies of the two parties.
On the eve of the election, posters have been put up in Manhattan showing Obama as a white man and McCain as black.
Carrying the slogan ‘Let the issues be the issue,’ campaigners hope the images - designed by advertising agency Grey NYC - will serve to remind voters that skin colour should not be a determining factor when choosing the country’s president.
If the polls are to be believed, Democrat Barack Obama is already home and dry as America’s first black president.
But this year there’s a critical factor that could potentially skew the projections - race.
Pollsters have ended up with egg on their faces in the past when they’ve got their results wrong.
Now there’s the ‘Bradley Effect’ to add in as well. Put simply: have Americans been lying about their intentions because Mr Obama, 47, is black?
Have they told pollsters they’ll vote for him because they don’t want to appear racist, only to plump for 72-year-old white Republican John McCain in the privacy of the voting booth?
How many people still cannot face the idea of an African-American president, but are too embarrassed to admit it?
The pundits and highly-paid polling organisations just don’t know. Tom Bradley was a black Democrat and five-times mayor of Los Angeles who lost his bid to become governor of California in 1982 despite being 14 points ahead in the polls.