The president is also appearing in commercials airing in Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Cleveland - cities with large black populations.
Dick W. Simpson, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former Chicago City Council alderman, said the effort "could be the defining feature" of the Senate race between Republican Rep. Mark Steven Kirk and state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat.
"Obama will drive out the turnout a bit and there is a major effort, one of them going on locally, where the Democratic Party has bought ads on the black radio stations from Obama," Mr. Simpson said. "It will drive out the turnout some; the question is whether it will drive out the turnout a lot."
Working against high turnout is the fact that Chicago doesn't have competitive House elections and Mr. Obama is not on the ballot.
In 2008, with Mr. Obama at the top of the Democratic ticket, black voters made up 12.1 percent of the vote, driven in large part by increases among black women and younger voters, according to the Pew Research Center. Mr. Obama won 96 percent of the black vote, according to exit polls.
His approval rating remains astronomical among black voters, but the question is whether Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats can translate that support into votes.
Former Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, who ran the House Republicans' campaign committee in 2000 and 2002, said Republicans are aware of the danger of awakening the massive base of black voters. He said that's one reason so many Republican attacks are against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rather than against Mr. Obama.
"Hitting Obama can stir up part of their base. The African-American base right now is napping. They're asleep," he said. "Democrats are just waiting for somebody out there to say something — they used to call it waving the bloody shirt, is what they called it — to get the old animosities and antagonism going."
One Democratic strategist said that the black vote will "make the difference" in gubernatorial and House races in Florida, Georgia and Ohio, and could be a factor elsewhere.
"It could decide the Texas governor's race," the strategist said. "The Texas governor's race a lot of people think is actually within reach for Democrats if black turnout in Houston is up."
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