Michael Steele has an uphill battle to fight if he is going to win a seat in the US Senate on Tuesday.
He is running in Maryland, a strongly Democratic state, in what most people expect to be a Democratic year - and Mr Steele is a Republican.
But he is fighting a stronger campaign than many expected, which some say is because a number of influential local Democrats have endorsed him.
The Democrats who are backing him have two things in common with the Republican Mr Steele - they are from the same county, and they are African-American.
And in a state like Maryland - where the black population is about 30%, more than twice the national average - African-American support could make the difference between victory and defeat.
It is not clear that Mr Steele has made large inroads into the black vote, even though some black celebrities have fought his corner, such as boxing promoter Don King.
Polls suggest that he has 12-14% support among blacks, only slightly higher than the national average of African-American backing for Republicans.
High-water mark
But whether he wins or loses on Tuesday, he is part of an important trend, insiders say.
"This is going to be a historic year for black candidates regardless of the results," Democratic party strategist Donna Brazile told the BBC News website.
No fewer than five African-Americans are running for state-wide office this year - three Republicans and two Democrats.
There have only been five black senators in US history, and only one black state governor.
At least one black politician seems almost certain to win on Tuesday - Deval Patrick, who is running for governor of Massachusetts.
Race is not an issue in the liberal north-eastern state, says David Bositis, an expert on black electoral politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
But it is playing a role in two other contests - including one that has no black candidate.
Virginia's Republican Senator George Allen was considered a safe bet for re-election until he was caught on videotape referring to a man of Indian descent as a "macaca" this summer.
The comment - replayed endlessly on television and YouTube - was regarded as a racial slur, and since Mr Allen made it, he has been slipping in the polls.
His Democratic challenger, James Webb, has courted the African-American vote assiduously in the final weeks of the campaign, visiting 12 black churches on one Sunday in late October and appearing with the enormously popular mixed-race Senator Barack Obama days before the vote.
Democrats should not have to work hard to woo black voters this year.
Polls suggest four out of five African-Americans are convinced that the country is on the wrong track, with 86% disapproving of President Bush's performance.
'Using race'
Black voters could play a critical role in Tennessee, the other state which Mr Bositis says could turn on race.
Democrat Harold Ford Jnr - the scion of a powerful Tennessee political dynasty - is aiming to become the first African-American to win a Southern Senate seat since the aftermath of the Civil War.
But he appears to be slipping behind his opponent Bob Corker in the race for an open seat.
Hitting below the belt?
He had been polling even until the Republican party unleashed a commercial featuring a blonde woman winking and urging Mr Ford to call her - an appeal to the Old-South fear of sexual relations between blacks and whites, experts say.
"Given that the Republicans have resorted to using race, I suspect that the [contest] leans slightly in favour of his opponent," Mr Bositis says.
The results in Tennessee could have repercussions far beyond the state's borders, he adds.
"It is one of the more likely places [in the South] that a black candidate could be elected, so if Harold Ford loses, that would be a sign that things aren't changing that much."
One man who may be watching for signs of change is Senator Obama, who recently refused to rule out running for president in 2008.
Donna Brazile is also not ruling him out.
"We have seen African-Americans break so many barriers. I believe that after this election cycle we will be moving towards the first black president, the first Hispanic president, the first woman president."
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