Poll Data Doesn't Reflect Bradley Effect

Numbers Suggest White Voters Gave Honest Answers To Pollsters On Obama Support

(AP)  Whether whites supported Barack Obama or not, they don't seem to have lied to pollsters about it.

Obama's election triumph on Tuesday presented no evidence of the so-called Bradley effect, in which whites who oppose a black politician mislead pollsters about whom they will vote for. Instead, national and state pre-election polls were generally accurate in reflecting voters' preferences in the presidential contest.

"I certainly hope this drives a stake through the heart of that demon," Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and polling authority, said of the Bradley effect.

The phenomenon is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who in 1982 lost the race for California governor after leading in the polls. There were similar contests over the following decade in which black candidates facing white opponents had comfortable leads in polls, only to lose or narrowly win the elections.

Critics have said such turnabouts might have been largely the product of poor polling. Others have concluded that some whites, nervous about appearing to harbor anti-black feelings, in fact misled pollsters up through the early 1990s but that such behavior has faded over time.

Obama, who will become the first African-American president, defeated Republican John McCain on Tuesday by 52 percent to 46 percent with nearly all votes counted.

If the Bradley effect were a factor, pre-election polls should have consistently overstated Obama's share of the vote, or understated McCain's. Instead, most did a solid job of previewing how the vote would go, both nationally and in crucial states.

Shortly before Election Day, an NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey showed Obama ahead 51 percent to 43 percent among likely voters. The Gallup Poll showed a 53 percent to 42 percent Obama lead, while CBS News had Obama up 51 percent to 42 percent.

An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll in late October had Obama ahead 51 percent to 43 percent. An AP-GfK poll in mid-October showed a virtual tie, 44 percent for Obama to 43 percent for McCain.

Web sites that combine major polls to estimate support also performed well. Among some popular sites, www.pollster.com had Obama ahead 52 percent to 44 percent, www.realclearpolitics.com saw Obama up 52 percent to 45 percent, and www.fivethirtyeight.com gave Obama a 52 percent to 46 percent advantage.

Such accuracy was a relief to pollsters rattled last winter when widespread projections of an Obama victory in the New Hampshire primary were upended after Hillary Rodham Clinton won narrowly.

"We're getting much more sophisticated estimates," said University of Michigan political scientist and polling analyst Michael Traugott, citing improved techniques.

Among them is the increased polling of people who have cell phones but no landlines. A Pew Research Center report in September, and exit polls of voters conducted Tuesday for The Associated Press and the television networks, suggest that people who have only cells tend to vote more Democratic than people like them with only landlines.

Many state surveys were impressively accurate also.

For North Carolina, www.realclearpolitics.com gave McCain a pre-election edge of less than 1 percentage point. That state finally was awarded to Obama on Thursday, when he had a 14,000-vote lead out of 4.2 million votes cast.

Pre-election polls by Quinnipiac University, Mason-Dixon and AP-GfK all showed Obama ahead by 2 percentage points in Florida, which the Democrat won by 3 points. The combined estimate for Pennsylvania by www.pollster.com put Obama up 8 points, and he won by 11.

None of this means race was not a factor on Tuesday.

Whites nationally preferred McCain by 12 percentage points, while 95 percent of blacks backed Obama, according to exit polls. Seven percent of whites said race was important in choosing a candidate, and they backed the Republican 2-1.

Analysts said any reluctance to support Obama because he is black may have been overwhelmed this year by a desire to support the candidate people thought would fix the struggling economy. They also said the Bradley effect has faded as Americans have become used to blacks winning local elections and as the 1990s' more intense focus on crime and welfare has ebbed.

The Bradley effect was "a product of a particular political environment that seems to have passed us by," said Daniel Hopkins, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who wrote a study this summer concluding that the phenomenon has disappeared.

[toolmangler-2009]

This election had nothing to do with Race. It had everything to do with stupidity and did we want 4 more years off it, The answer was a reounding H--- No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[standlee5]

Poll Data Doesn''t Reflect Bradley Effect


Yeah, really. Now can they quit telling us how racist we are.

[me4prezz]

I am so sick of hearing about race. This is not about the color of a man''s skin, but about the color of his character, political ideaology, and value system. America voted for the person who they felt best delivered on this and Obama won. Let''s move past the race card because for anyone to say any longer that race prevents them from achieving anything better is going to be lying through their teeth and need to stop using excuses for personal agendas and personal failures.

Move on America and find a new excuse.

[kansas1946]

I really never worried about the Bradley effect. People might lie to pollsters, but they aren''t likely to be enthusiastic about that support. Everyone that said they were supporting Obama were screaming it from the rooftops. I never asked anyone who they supported without getting pumped up responses about Obama, and luke warm responses from the McCain supporters.

[hatesthecolt]

Mcliar, good point.

[likeitis5050]

White boys and girls, brown boys and girls and every color in between came together and voted OBAMA because we are all tired of the ignorance, the hatred, the lies and the BS of redneck backwoods racist repubs!

You lost .... get over it you cry babies!




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Posted by txlakeside

We aren''t crying...we aren''t even angry...we know we are right. We will wait. We will even give him the benefit of the doubt and HOPE we are wrong...but we know we aren''t. So, where you come from they obviously don''t teach good sportsmanship, or you wouldn''t be running your mouth like you are now. We, on the other hand, just want you to know...we are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, unlike fools who get too drunk on poison kool-aid to know they are one foot in the grave and still blindly following. Calling anyone who doesn''t support Obama a racist is the newest form of bullying...and it''s old. Grow up.

You might just try looking at Obama more like you might look at someone who is promising the big box in their trunk has a $2000 entertainment system and they only want $200 for it, but you have to pay cash and get it out of their trunk right now! DUH!!!!! How many boxes of bricks did you have to buy before you figured out the game? Or did you ever figure it out?

[hatesthecolt]

They over whelmingly vote Democrat but not in the over whelming numbers they did in this election which indicates a vote for race....not the party.


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Posted by likeitis5050

I am not sure that''s entirely the case. THere are a lot of "Buppies" who had gone Republican because they did not view it as in their economic interest to vote Democratic. They were not wooed solely by Obama''s race because if so they would have voted for black Senatorial and House candidates when offered, and they didn''t. So there still has to be a bit more to it.

[likeitis5050]

Please name the last Presidential election when blacks did NOT vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate?

Since, in the past ALL those candidates were white, it is obvious that blacks don''''t have a problem voting for white candidates.

When was the last time (in any election) that YOU voted for a BLACK candidate?


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Posted by ofbyfor3

They over whelmingly vote Democrat but not in the over whelming numbers they did in this election which indicates a vote for race....not the party.

[likeitis5050]

Nothing short of 100% white approval is going to satisfy people whose livlihood is based on studying racism. 60% of whites voted for Obama yet no one on the issue of race relations has entered a satisfactory grade. Give me a break. Racism has become its own industry for too many who claim to want to see it wiped out in their lifetime...how can that happen when it''s actually financially supporting them? Only an idiot drawing a check from studying race relations would declare racism a thing of the past...but would agreeing that 60% of whites supporting Obama is a very healthy indicator be too much to ask for, please? And if not then why not start with questioning the people who study this c.rap as to why they won''t acknowledge the progress!

[hatesthecolt]

gglenc, I was almost with you until you said that Bradley v. Deukmejian qualified as ''minority vs. minority''. It''s intellectually dishonest to call a white male, even one with an Eastern European heritage, a minority. You really undermined an otherwise good argument with that one statement.

[gglenc]

PUHLEEZE!! There NEVER was a "Bradley Effect!" I was the Governors'' Assn. field director for the RGA. The Deukmejian campaign recognized that it would LOSE to Mayor Bradley unless Duke''s campaign could increase its "most likely" voters.

A bright young staffer offered to organize an "Absentee Voter Program" to RAISE the "Duke-turn-out." It worked.

On election day, as the polls revealed, Bradley received MORE votes than Deukmejian. BUT, when the ABSENTEE ballots were counted, Duke eked out a victory in 1982.

I should know. I was there. I DID that campaign on behalf of the Republican Governors Assn. Anyone who keeps using that bogus "so-called" "Bradley Effect" is an advocate of "racism," when the campaign was between an African-American (Bradley, the Mayor of L.A.), and an Amenian-American (Deukmejian, the Attorney General of Calif.). Minority vs. Minority.

So, PUHLEEZE STOP the "racist" fraudulent reports as IF a "Bradley effect" ever occurred. IT DID NOT!

Thanks.

[inketolstoy]

Why can''t we be honest. Race matters still, just not as much. Progress has been made, progress still needs to be made. As bad as the future may look for my children, I feel that racism will not be as big a challenge as it was for my parents. While I don''t feel that we made progress in this election with the quality of candidates, the acceptance of a black man into office and the rise of viable women candidates is a great thing. Two steps forward, one step back.

[chetthor]

I think that in future elections the topic will be "THE PALIN EFFECT"

In this election whites told the truth... if they said they were going to vote for Obama they did.

The racists didn''t lie about it either... they said they wouldn''t vote for a black democrat even if they had always thought of them selves as a democrat.

And there were a lot of people that became comfortable after seeing Barack Obama over and over, for many months, always presenting himself intellegently and staying on the topics that concered us.

A lot of them were republicans that were very unhappy with their choices.

I donated to Hillerys campaign and the Obamas... a lot. I voted once.

I''m as proud of today as I was in 1954, I was in the 10th grade in St Albans WV. We were integrated by federal court order. In hind sight, we did it well... no problems.. we were all Americans ( and sort of equal)

I believe that this election truly is another big step for humanity.

But... that isn''t why I voted for Obama... I voted for Obama because I believe that he will make the best President. He offers new hope... much like John F Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.

I really feel good... and hopeful.

[hatesthecolt]

Yeah, there are a couple of states where the difference in the poll results before the election and after can best be explained by the Bradley effect. WV is one of them. The race was polling MUCH TIGHTER than it came out.

[ofbyfor3]

Blacks flocked to the polls to vote for Obama, not because they thought he was the best candidate, because he was black, and they couldn''''t even get that right. I never want to hear a black person scream discrimination again.
Posted by Edward1975 at 12:24 PM : Nov 07, 2008

Please name the last Presidential election when blacks did NOT vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate?

Since, in the past ALL those candidates were white, it is obvious that blacks don''t have a problem voting for white candidates.

When was the last time (in any election) that YOU voted for a BLACK candidate?

[evian_ycnan]

Bradley effect? Maybe not nationally, but all politics is local and you need only look as far as West Virginia to see it.

56% for McCain, 46% for Obama

There are ~2 million registered voters in West Virginia

1 million registered as Democrats, and .5 million registered as Republican or Independent.

The WHOLE state was a Bradley effect!

[txlakeside]

Racist bigots ... yep blacks flocked to the polls all 17% of the total population ... idiots. Only a fool would think that 17% of any group could acytually sway the vote!

White boys and girls, brown boys and girls and every color in between came together and voted OBAMA because we are all tired of the ignorance, the hatred, the lies and the BS of redneck backwoods racist repubs!

You lost .... get over it you cry babies!

[edward1975-2009]

Blacks flocked to the polls to vote for Obama, not because they thought he was the best candidate, because he was black, and they couldn''t even get that right. I never want to hear a black person scream discrimination again. And to watch Jackson crying and Sharpton dancing around is an embarassment to their race. Two of the biggest bigots on the planet, all we needed was Rev Wright and the evening would have been complete.

[inventagod2]

The election results are pure and simple.
Greedy corrupt Bu$hCo killed the Republican Party, and handed the keys to Obama.
America could only swallow so much bile.

[ofbyfor3]

''On election night in 1982, with 3,000 supporters celebrating prematurely at a downtown hotel, ...early results ... suggested Bradley would probably lose.

But he wasn''t losing because of race. He was losing because an unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated, giving Mr. Deukmejian a narrow victory. ''

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/opinion/20levin.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Contributors