Barack Obama named most influential man in 2008

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has been named the most influential man in 2008. The Illinois Senator gained highest scores in the opinion poll by AskMen.com, which the website conducted online among 200,000 male visitors. The Los Angeles-based website is devoted to issues of fashion, habits and needs of the male population of the United States.

Photo: Barack Obama named most influential man in 2008

The poll, the results of which the website posted Tuesday, showed that Apple’s chairman Steve Jobs was the second most influential man in the USA. Swimmer Michael Phelps, the winner of multiple Olympic gold medals, was ranked third.

Actor Robert Downey Jr., political commentator Stephen Colbert, showman and chef Gordon Ramsay, actor Christian Bale, the Rock Band video game creator Rob Kay and Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo were listed among other most influential males. Obama’s rival, Republican John McCain closed the top ten of the list. Obama’s first place on the list is a reflection of the public interest in the pre-election race in the United States, AskMen’s editor-in-chief, James Bassil believes.

Barack Obama has outstripped John McCain in popularity ratings and left the Republican candidate ten percent behind at this point, a poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal and NBC showed.

About 52 percent of US electors are ready to vote for Obama, whereas 42 percent support McCain. It is worthy of note that the Republican candidate for the position of vice president, Sarah Palin, has been losing her popularity in the States recently, About 47 percent of the polled said that they had a negative attitude to the Alaskan governor, whereas 38 percent said that they were ready to support her.

Fifty-five percent of the polled said that Palin was not the professional who could act as the president of the nation in critical circumstances. This point of view was shared by 50 percent of respondents two weeks ago.

The historical candidacy of Dem. Senator Barack Obama enjoys the record support among the Afro-American electors, the poll held by the Washington-based Center for Political and Economic Studies showed.

Eighty-six percent of the Afro-American voters are ready to support Obama at the elections. His rival, John McCain, has the support of only six percent of black voters.

Obama has all chances to win the support of 94 percent of his black country-fellows. Lyndon Johnson had a similar support during the elections of 1964. The poll also showed that 73 percent of Afro-Americans referred to themselves as Democrats.

In the meantime, the rating of George W. Bush’s popularity, or infamous popularity, to put it mildly, sets a new anti-record. Only 13.3 percent of Afro-Americans have a positive attitude to the outgoing US president, whereas 80.2 percent of black voters say that they do not respect Bush.