In a New York Times op-ed, former CBS News political director Martin Plissner claims that a 1996 exit poll shows that Americans are ready to vote for a black presidential candidate:

On Nov. 5, 1996, Voter News Service — the organization hired by the TV networks to do exit polling — asked people at the polls, who had just given Bill Clinton 49 percent of the vote, Bob Dole 41 percent and Ross Perot 8 percent, how they would have voted if the Republican candidate had been Gen. Colin L. Powell. In an exit poll sample of 3,697 (three times the size of a standard high-grade public opinion survey), the result was this:

Powell: 50 percent.

Clinton: 38 percent.

Perot: 9 percent.

…[I]t does suggest there was a day when Americans, had they been given a choice of major party candidates, one of whom was black, would very likely have chosen the black one.

Most significantly, General Powell would have won the race because of the support of white voters — Bill Clinton outpolled him 2 to 1 among the blacks surveyed. Among white voters, whom Senator Dole had carried very narrowly (too narrowly for him to win), General Powell clobbered the incumbent, 53 percent to 33 percent.

Any poll analysis has to be hedged with qualifications, and this one more than most. Bill Clinton and Bob Dole had just been through bruising year-long campaigns and exposed to more than $100 million of take-no-prisoners advertising. Colin Powell had not. He was still being acclaimed for his role as the country’s top soldier in its only clear victory since World War II.

Still, even with these qualifiers, there is a pretty good, if not quite conclusive, case that America has for some time been ready to elect a black president. The question for Barack Obama is whether this time around it will be ready for this one.

I’m hopeful that Americans are ready to vote for an African American president too, but I’m not sure how much evidence this exit poll provides. As Plissner admits, Powell had received virtually no criticism at the time; indeed, he was one of the most widely praised nonpartisan figures in America. Needless to say, it’s impossible to make it to Election Day with that kind of profile.

Moreover, the hypothetical vote itself is cheap talk; what matters is who people actually vote for when they’re alone inside the voting booth. And unfortunately, many black candidates have underperformed their poll numbers because putative white supporters don’t vote for them when it counts.