The Bradley effect

[SteveLaura 0]

Heard a discussion about this briefly on NPR yesterday. Any comments?

Bradley effect

The term Bradley effect... refers to a frequently observed discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in American political campaigns when a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. Named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in voter polls, the Bradley effect refers to a tendency on the part of white voters to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a Black candidate, when, on election day, they vote for his/her white opponent.

One theory for the Bradley effect is that some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will appear to the pollster to be racially prejudiced. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well. The race of the pollster conducting the interview may be a factor into voters' answers. Some pollsters believe that they do not receive deliberately false answers from white voters. The Bradley effect, these pollsters believe, is caused by pollsters' failure to account for general political leanings among voters who are undecided between Democrats and Republicans.

Another theory is that whites fear branding and abuse if they state their true poll preferences to a stranger...

The issue of which specific sets of circumstances have led to polling inaccuracies is debated, but a general belief among pollsters is that perceived societal pressures have led some white voters to be less than forthcoming in their poll responses. These voters supposedly have harbored a concern that declaring their support for a white candidate over a non-white candidate will create a perception that the voter is racially prejudiced. During the 1988 Jackson presidential campaign, Murray Edelman, a veteran election poll analyst for news organizations and a former president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, found the race of the pollster conducting the interview to be a factor in the discrepancy. Edelman's research showed white voters to be more likely to indicate support for Jackson when asked by a black interviewer than when asked by a white interviewer. Andrew Kohut, who was the president of the Gallup Organization during the 1989 Dinkins/Giulianai race... has suggested that the discrepancies may arise, not from white participants giving false answers, but rather from white voters who have negative opinions of blacks being less likely to participate in polling at all than white voters who do not share such negative sentiments with regard to blacks.

While there is widespread belief in a racial component as at least a partial explanation for the polling inaccuracies in the elections in question, it is not universally accepted that this is the primary factor. Peter Brodnitz, a pollster and contributor to the The Polling Report newsletter... suggested that late-deciding voters tend to have moderate-to-conservative political opinions and that this may account in part for last-minute decision-makers breaking largely away from black candidates, who have generally been more liberal than their white opponents in the elections in question...

After the Super Tuesday elections of February 5 [2008], political science researchers from the University of Washington found trends suggesting the possibility that with regard to Obama, the effect's presence or absence may be dependent on the percentage of the electorate that is black. The researchers noted that to that point in the election season, opinion polls taken just prior to an election tended to overestimate Obama in states with a black population below eight percent, to track him within the polls' margins of error in states with a black population between ten and twenty percent, and to underestimate him in states with a black population exceeding twenty-five percent. The first finding suggested the possibility of the Bradley effect, while the last finding suggested the possibility of a "reverse" Bradley effect in which black voters might have been reluctant to declare to pollsters their support for Obama or are underpolled...

While their cause continues to be debated—for example, many polls underpoll African-Americans and young voters—the pollsters' errors have raised expectations that as the presidential primary season progresses, Obama's polling numbers will be widely scrutinized as analysts try to definitively determine whether the Bradley effect has become a significant factor in the race. An inspection of the discrepancy between pre-election polls and Obama's ultimate support reveals significant bivariate support for the hypothesized "reverse Bradley effect." On average, Obama received three percentage points more support in the actual primaries and caucuses than he did during polling; however, he also had a strong ground campaign, and many polls do not question voters with cellphones, who are predominantly young.

Source

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The Persistent Myth of the Bradley Effect

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Interesting. I would add that people tend to have positive or negative feelings about a political party and some would never vote for a candidate not belonging to that party. For example, because the Republican Party has been in charge of the White House for 8 years and given their Party Leader's low approval rating, there are voters who simply will not vote for another Republican into office...at least not this time around. The same sentiment happened after Clinton was in office 8 years, albeit for different issues (bj's).

Each Party's Ticket and each candidate carries with them, their own negative impressions to voters, and with Obama, certainly his skin color will play a factor, but in terms of overall high negatives and high positive comparisons of the two tickets, I'm confident that the advantage goes to the Democratic Ticket.

Edited September 23, 2008 by Jabberwocky