Obama says more blacks will vote if he's nominated

CONCORD, N.H. — Barack Obama predicted that black voter turnout would swell by at least 30 percent if he wins the presidential nomination, giving Democrats victory in Southern states that have been voting Republican for decades.

"I'm probably the only candidate who having won the nomination can actually redraw the political map," Obama told a Democratic voter skeptical that he could defeat a Republican candidate.

"I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I'm the nominee, goes up 30 percent around the country, minimum," Obama said. "Young people's percentage of the vote goes up 25-30 percent. So we're in a position to put states in play that haven't been in play since LBJ."

Lyndon Baines Johnson ran for president in 1964 and won in a landslide. But since then the South has turned into a Republican stronghold.

Obama noted that in Mississippi, blacks make up more than a third of the state's population, but make up a smaller share of the electorate.

"If we just got African Americans in Mississippi to vote their percentage of the population, Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state," Obama said. He said Georgia would also turn Democratic and South Carolina would be in play.

Obama rival John Edwards has been arguing that he is the most electable candidate in the South because he is from North Carolina and Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have never run in the South.

"Senator Edwards is the strongest Democratic nominee because it's his bold transformational ideas that will increase turnout by 30 percent amongst African Americans, whites, women and all Americans," said Edwards spokesman Chris Kofinis.