“The Bradley Effect”, sometimes called “The Wilder Effect” is the theory that when a black candidate and a white candidate are running against each other, white people who don’t want to appear to be racist will tell pollsters that they are voting for the black candidate, but when they get into the voting booth, they will pull the lever for the white candidate. Bradley refers to Tom Bradley, a black man who lost the California governor’s race in 1982 despite being ahead by several points in the polls. In 1989, Douglas Wilder, a black candidate for governor in Virginia won by 1/2 a point despite being up by 9 points in the last polls.
One thing that the media however constantly glosses over is that even Bradley’s internal pollster doesn’t think there was a “Bradley Effect”. Essentially, early election night exit polling was indeed consistent with the polling which came in ahead of election night, and Bradley’s pollster saw that happening, but when Bradley lost, and they examined the returns, what they found out was that the reason Bradley lost was an overwhelming support for the other candidate in absentee ballots. Those absentee voters were not properly accounted for in the pre-election polling. Today, Bradley’s own pollster says there never WAS such a thing as the Bradley Effect, it all boils down to good polling vs. bad polling. Wilder (who actually won his race but saw 8.5 points shaved off his lead) saw the same swing for the same reason…i.e. polling captured everything but the absentee voters who were overwhelming in favor of the other candidate.
Consider that in the 1980s, most of the absentee ballots that were cast were sent in by members of the military, and historically (at least until recently) the military has been a monolithic voting bloc for the Republicans (both these candidates were Democrats).
So, at minimum, one must conclude that the phenomenon of people lying to pollsters is highly overstated, and I believe the reason it is so hyped up is that the Republicans want to make sure to find some distraction to blame the outcome on should their efforts to steal the election pay off. But to make you feel better about that, remember that Obama is too far ahead in too many states where McCain has to run the table, AND Democrats have built a firewall by electing Democratic Secretaries of State in many of the places where problems have occurred in the past. Let’s just say if this looked to be a one or two point race, Republicans might be able to steal this one, in a race that will at minimum be 5 1/2 points, and I suspect closer to 9, not so much chanc eof this happening.
Now, there have been other examples that people have pinned on the Bradley Effect, but if you look at them, each has factors other than lying to pollsters. Pollsters in fact expect they will be lied to, but what you find is that for every person who says they’re supporting candidate a, but pulls the lever for b, there’s one who says he’s voting for b and pulls the lever for a.
The next most persuasive thing I can tell you is to look at our society in 1982 vs. our society today. In 1982, we were less than 15 year outside the civil rights movement, racism was a LOT more blatant. The only black people on TV were Arnold and Willis. We were not yet an integrated society like we are today. Today, there is still racism, but I think we’ve learned that racism is really rooted in fear, generally fear of the unknown…i.e., if you as a white person don’t see a lot of black faces in your neighborhood, they seem somehow “exotic”, “scary”, “different”. It used to be that black America and white America were really a long ways apart…I mean even 10 years ago is was shocking to hear a black rock star or a white rapper, now people of all races and walks of life are commonplace just about everywhere…except for the more rural areas of the country, which are by and large more conservative AND more racist.
People who live far away from population centers are conservative by and large, they don’t want to change, they want life the way it’s always been. Part of that change is at times racial, and that is new to some of these people…doesn’t make them bad people, just scared people. And when most of the racism is based on fear and ignorance, what you get is pockets of unabashed racism, wherein people really are not afraid to tell you what they think, because they’re sheltered enough that they can speak their minds in their own social circles and not be ridiculed for it. So the small town, rural racism we’re seeing, either the people are so scared by the idea of a black President that they will be the first to tell you they wouldn’t vote for Obama because he’s black (usually not even the word of choice in fact). But if ANYTHING, if you live among a society where everyone you talk to says they can’t vote for Obama, if anything you as an Obama supporter are going to be less forthcoming.
But in 1982, we were starting to intergrate, we were starting to come together a bit, and whites if anything may have been seeing their sheltered existences come apart a little via intergration, it was becoming acceptable to point a finger at a white person and say, “that’s racist”, and there may well have been SOME people who felt guilty that essentially they were supporting the white guy when they knew the black guy was the better candidate, so that may have been a tiny factor. But now, NO ONE in a bigger urban area is going to feel that way…really what you have to look at is the rural voters who live in sheltered pockets where racism is a way of life, proudly embraced. Those who break from what is acceptable in polite society are the only ones who need fear anything (in ‘82 racism was not part of polite society and the spectre of being labeled a racist may have been scary to some who were coming to terms with intergration), so if ANYTHING, you will see a REVERSE Bradley Effect.
But what is most persuasive to me is that there has been no credible evidence to suggest any Bradley Effect anywhere in the US in any election in the last 10 years on the national stage. Indeed, most people who study it believe that if it ever existed in the first place, it disappeared in the early to mid 1990s once and for all.
And in case you hadn’t heard, the primary elections from all 50 states were studied by researchers at the University of Washington. What they found was that in states where there is a black population of 8% or less, there may have been a modest Bradley effect, in states with more than 25% black population, the reverse was true, and everywhere else it did not exist. Now, if you look at the states which have less than 8% African Americans, none of them are mysteries, they are either solidly McCain or solidly Obama. The vast majority of the country falls into the category of states where there is between 8 and 25%. And I think most visibly, there is one state, Georgia, which has a black population of over 25%, which is polling within a couple points for Obama, and I believe Georgia will go blue this time around because of the Reverse Bradley Effect.
But don’t take my word for it, go to www.fivethirtyeight.com and look at the Bradley Effect tag. They have debunked this thing so many times in so many ways that it’s no longer even funny when I hear someone say that is going to matter. They are in the business of aggregating polls and correcting for pollster introduced errors, plotting historical trends and coming up with a clear picture of what the polls really mean (because any one poll by itself can say anything in the world…but you have hundreds upon hundreds of polls telling you the same thing, it makes a coherent picture…that’s what 538 does, spend some time there, you will feel a lot better).
There are however 3 things that I think will play a significant role in this election:
1) The Cell phone problem. 538 did a recent piece on this too. Many younger voters (who happen to overwhelmingly support Obama) don’t even have land lines, and some pollsters aren’t reaching them. Remember what I said about absentee ballots being the factor that swung elections….cell phones will be this year’s absentee ballots.
2) Ground game. Another thing 538 has reported on constantly. They’ve gone to McCain HQ’s around the country to find them closed, or staffed by one person, repeatedly, but they’ll go to an Obama office in the same precinct (in fact they’ll say there are 2, 3, even 10 offices to every one McCain has) and they will be crammed with people and bustling with activity. Republicans have relied on a 72 hour get out the vote drive in past years, but Obama supporters have been pushing much harder than any given day in any past Republican 72 hour push, pretty much every day since June. The 72 hours wouldn’t be enough, and McCain has had to pretty much scrap the 72 hour plan this year to spend money in defensive advertising when Obama started advertising in North Dakota and Montana and Arizona!
3) New voters. This is the most important and feeds into #2 to a degree, but realize that in 2004, when Bush got 61 million votes and Kerry got 59 million, that 120 million was out of 210 million who COULD have voted, so there were 90 million people who didn’t vote. Obama has been reaching out to those people…something no on in recent history has done. And Obama’s ground game has been trying to get those less reliable, first time voters to the polls first via early voting.
Remember also that Obama has 5,000 lawyers on the ground ready to fight this battle if something happens.
So yeah, I don’t even think it’s close. I think if Obama ends up with less than 400 electoral votes, it’s an indicator of some fraud somewhere. But I think the Republicans were hoping it would be close enough that they could do a little selective cheating in 2 or 3 swing states, and then when people were shocked that it seemed like Obama was a couple points ahead in Ohio and Florida, so that when it got tipped by a couple points in a few counties here and there, the pre-packaged, much touted answer would be “Bradley Effect”, it’s all the media would talk about, and some computer geek somewhere who analysed the county by county results and found inconsistencies would never become newsworthy.
Don’t worry, Obama will win.
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