Washington ( CNN ) -- African-Americans are extremely supportive of President Obama , but their enthusiasm appears to have dramatically dropped from earlier this year , according to a new national poll . The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey , released Tuesday , also indicates that Obama 's presidency appears to have made blacks more optimistic about race relations , but less than one in five believe the new president has ushered in a new era of race relations in the country . More than nine in 10 blacks questioned in the poll approve of the job Obama 's doing in the White House , far higher than 42 percent of whites who approve of his performance as president . But when asked how they personally feel about Obama 's presidency , only 42 percent of black respondents say they 're thrilled , with nearly half of those questioned saying they are happy but not thrilled . The 42 percent who are thrilled is down from 61 percent in January , when Obama was inaugurated . `` African-Americans are still big fans of the first black president in U.S. history , but the thrill is gone , '' said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland . According to the poll , 51 percent of African-Americans say Obama 's presidency has brought some improvement in race relations in the U.S. , but only 18 percent feel it 's the start of a new era . Another 23 percent say they 've seen a real change in race relations over the past 11 months and 7 percent say things have gotten worse . The survey indicates that three-quarters of blacks believe race relations will improve eventually , which is up from 49 percent of blacks who felt that way a year before Obama was elected . `` Whites take a dimmer view of Obama 's effect on race relations , with a third believing that the new presidency has not changed race relations in the country and 15 percent of whites saying that Obama has made race relations worse , '' Holland added . `` Not surprisingly , whites are less supportive of Obama , although for a notable number of whites , their negative view of the president is due to the perception that he 's not been liberal enough . '' The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted December 16-20 , with 1,160 adult Americans , including 259 African-Americans and 786 whites , questioned by telephone . The survey 's overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points and plus or minus 6 percentage points for the African-Americans sample . CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser contributed to this story .
CNN/Opinion Research Corp . Poll released Tuesday . Poll : 51% of Americans say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who is running on the issue, while 43% say it doesn't matter and only 4% said it makes no difference. Black respondents saying they 're `` thrilled '' down 19 points from January . Approval rating more than twice as high among blacks than among whites .