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The term Bradley effect, less commonly called[1] the Wilder 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.[2][3][4] 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 voters -- black as well as white -- to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a Black candidate, and yet, on election day, vote for his/her white opponent.[5]

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 open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. This effect is similar to people refusing to discuss voting choice at all. If you state you are undecided, you can avoid being forced into a political discussion with someone highly partisan. 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.

Origin

L. Douglas Wilder's margin of victory in the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election was narrower than predicted by pre-election and exit polls.

In 1982, Tom Bradley, the long-time mayor of Los Angeles, California, ran as the Democratic Party's candidate for Governor of California against Republican candidate George Deukmejian, who was white. The polls in the final days before the election consistently showed Bradley with a lead.[6] Based on exit polls, a number of media outlets projected Bradley as the winner; early editions of the next day's San Francisco Chronicle featured a headline proclaiming "Bradley Win Projected." However, Bradley narrowly lost the race. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than polls had predicted, and that previously "undecided" voters had voted for Deukmejian in statistically anomalous numbers.[3]

A month prior to the election, Bill Roberts, Deukmejian's campaign manager, predicted that white voters would break for his candidate. He told reporters that he expected Deukmejian to receive approximately 5 percent more votes than polling numbers indicated because white voters were giving inaccurate polling responses to conceal the appearance of racial prejudice. Deukmejian disavowed Roberts's comments, and Roberts resigned his post as campaign manager.[7]

Similar voter behavior was noted in the 1989 race for Governor of Virginia between Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, an African-American, and Republican Marshall Coleman, a white candidate. In that race, Wilder prevailed, but by less than half of one percent, when pre-election poll numbers showed him on average with 9 percent lead.[8][9] The discrepancy was attributed to white voters telling pollsters that they were undecided when they actually voted for Marshall Coleman.[10]

After the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election, the "Bradley effect" was sometimes called the "Wilder effect".[11][12] Both terms are still used; and less commonly, the term "Dinkins effect" is also used,[4] in reference to the 1989 election of David Dinkins as Mayor of New York City over Rudy Giuliani.

1983 to 1992

Other races which have been cited as possible demonstrations of the Bradley effect include the 1983 race for Mayor of Chicago, the 1988 Democratic primary race in Wisconsin for President of the United States, and the 1989 race for Mayor of New York City.[9][12][13]

The 1983 race in Chicago featured black candidate Harold Washington running against white candidate Bernard Epton. More so than the California governor's race the year before,[14] the Washington-Epton matchup evinced strong and overt racial overtones throughout the campaign.[15][16] Two polls conducted approximately two weeks before the election showed Washington with a 14-point lead in the race. A third conducted just three days before the election confirmed Washington continuing to hold a lead of 14 points. But in the election's final results, Washington won by less than four points.[9]

In the 1988 Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, pre-election polls pegged black candidate Jesse Jackson — at the time, a legitimate challenger to white candidate and frontrunner Michael Dukakis — as likely to receive approximately one-third of the white vote.[17] Ultimately, however, Jackson carried only about one quarter of that vote, with the discrepancy in the heavily white state contributing to a large margin of victory for Dukakis over the second-place Jackson.[18]

In the 1989 race for Mayor of New York, a poll conducted just over a week before the election showed black candidate David Dinkins holding an 18-point lead over white candidate Rudy Giuliani. Four days before the election, a new poll showed that lead to have shrunk, but still standing at 14 points. On the day of the election, Dinkins prevailed by only two points.[9]

Also sometimes mentioned are:

  • The 1990 Senate race in North Carolina between black candidate Harvey Gantt and white candidate Jesse Helms. Gantt lost his race by six points. Two late polls showed Gantt ahead by four to six points, but one other showed a four-point Helms victory.[19][9]
  • The 1991 race for Mayor of the City of Houston between Texas State Representative Sylvester Turner and Bob Lanier (Turner, who is African American, was the leading candidate to become Houston's first black mayor where an investigative news story pertaining to insurance fraud derailed his first campaign. Lee Brown later became Houston's first black mayor. Turner ran again in 2003 finishing third where Bill White won the runoff election).
  • The 1992 Senate race in Illinois between black candidate Carol Moseley Braun and white candidate Richard Williamson. Braun won her general election race by 10 points, but polls indicated a margin of up to 20 points. However, polls had been just as erroneous, though this time underestimating Braun's support, during the primary election. Braun won that contest — also against a white candidate — by three points after polls predicted she would lose by double digits.[9]
  • During the early 1990s electoral contests with former Ku Klux Klan leader and Nazi sympathizer David Duke, many potential voters would not tell pollsters that they favored Duke (as they feared the ostracization that could result from being on record as being a Duke supporter), but would go on to vote for him anyway. The commentary at that time was that Duke "flies under the radar."

Mid 1990s

Colin Powell was reportedly warned of the Bradley effect when he was considered to be a potential 1996 presidential candidate.

In 1995, when Colin Powell's name was floated as a possible 1996 presidential candidate, Powell reportedly spoke of being cautioned by publisher Earl G. Graves about the phenomenon described by the Bradley effect. With regard to opinion polls showing Powell leading a hypothetical race with then-incumbent Bill Clinton, Powell was quoted as saying, "Every time I see Earl Graves, he says, 'Look, man, don't let them hand you no crap. When [white voters] go in that booth, they ain't going to vote for you.'"[20][12]

Possible diminished effects

Analyses of recent elections suggest that there may be some evidence of a diminution in the 'Bradley Effect'. However at this stage such evidence is too limited to confirm a trend.

2003 Louisiana gubernatorial election

A few analysts, such as political commentator and The Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes, attributed the four-point loss by Indian-American candidate Bobby Jindal in the 2003 Louisiana gubernatorial runoff election to the Bradley effect. In making his argument, Barnes mentioned polls that had shown Jindal with a lead.[21] Others, such as National Review contributor Rod Dreher, countered that later polls taken just before the election correctly showed that lead to have evaporated, and reported the candidates to be statistically tied.[22][23] In 2007, Jindal ran again, this time securing an easy victory, with his final vote total[24] remaining in line with or stronger than the predictions of the polls conducted shortly before the election.[25]

2006 Senate races

Polling numbers in Harold Ford's 2006 U.S. Senate campaign did not exhibit the Bradley effect.

In 2006, there was speculation that the Bradley effect might appear in the Tennessee race for United States Senator between Harold Ford, Jr. and white candidate Bob Corker.[26][27][19][28][12] Ford lost by a slim margin, but an examination of exit polling data indicated that the percentage of white voters who voted for him remained close to the percentage that indicated they would do so in polls conducted prior to the election.[12][29] Several other 2006 biracial contests saw pre-election polls predict their respective elections' final results with similar accuracy.[9]

In the race for United States Senator from Maryland, black Republican candidate Michael Steele lost by a wider margin than predicted by late polls. However, those polls correctly predicted Steele's numbers, with the discrepancy in his margin of defeat resulting from their underestimating the numbers for his white Democratic opponent. Those same polls also underestimated the Democratic candidate in the state's race for governor — a race in which both candidates were white.[9]

The overall accuracy of the polling data from the 2006 elections was cited, both by those who argue that the Bradley effect has diminished in American politics,[28][9] and those who doubt its existence in the first place.[30] When asked about the issue in 2007, Douglas Wilder indicated that while he believed there was still a need for black candidates to be wary of polls, he felt that voters were displaying "more openness" in their polling responses and becoming "less resistant" to giving an accurate answer than was the case at the time of his gubernatorial election.[31]

Exit polling

Inaccurate polling statistics attributed to the Bradley effect are not limited to pre-election polls. In the initial hours after voting concluded in the Bradley-Deukmejian race in 1982, similarly inaccurate exit polls led some news organizations to project Bradley to have won.[32] Exit polls in the Wilder-Coleman race in 1989 also proved inaccurate in their projection of a ten-point win for Wilder, despite those same exit polls accurately predicting other statewide races.[33][9][8] In 2006, a ballot measure in Michigan to end affirmative action generated exit poll numbers showing the race to be too close to call. Ultimately, the measure passed by a wide margin.[34]

Causes

The causes of the polling errors are debated, but pollsters generally believe 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.[28][35] 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.[4] Andrew Kohut, who was the president of the Gallup Organization during the 1989 Dinkins/Giulianai race and later president of the Pew Research Center, which conducted research into the phenomenon, 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.[36] [37]

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, worked on the 2006 campaign of black U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr., and Brodnitz indicated that he did not find the race of the interviewer to be a factor in voter responses in pre-election polls. Brodnitz 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.[4] Additionally, with regard to the 1982 contest between Bradley and Deukmejian, Mark DiCamillo, Director of the The Field Poll, which was among those that had shown Bradley with a strong lead, said that the organization's own internal examination after that election identified other possible factors that may have contributed to their error.[38] California Progress Report

While the 1982 California gubernatorial contest is not the only race where the race of the candidate has been thought to be a factor in polling gone awry, there are a number of other reasons why the Field Poll may not have been accurate. I spoke with Mark DiCamillo, Director of the Field Poll—whose phone has been ringing off the hook about this today. He told me that there was a memo done by the polling organization shortly after the election to try to understand what had occurred (not available online as it predated the internet) that identified four possible factors: 1. A late shift in voter preference after the poll, which could have reflected bias. 2. A well organized GOP absentee ballot program (Bradley won the day of election results). 3. The presence of a handgun initiative on the same ballot that brought out a skewed electorate different from the model used to predict likely voters. 4. Lower turnout by minorities because Bradley did not turn out the base of black voters.

One prominent skeptic is Gary Langer, who serves as the director of polling for ABC News. Langer has described the Bradley effect as "a theory in search of data." He has argued that inconsistency of its appearance, particularly in more recent elections, casts doubt upon its validity as a theory.[30][39] However, other analysts cast doubt on that hypothesis, saying that the polls underestimated Clinton rather than overestimated Obama.[40] Still other sources point out that Obama's performance in precincts using hand-count vote tabulation was precisely in line with exit polling data, and that the dissonance occurred only in districts using easily-compromised Diebold (now Premier Election Solutions) optical scanners, suggesting that fraud rather than any voter bias might be at fault. [41]

After the Super Tuesday elections of February 5, 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. For example, many general election polls in North Carolina and Virginia assume that blacks will be 15% to 20% of each state's electorate; blacks were around a quarter of each state's electorate in 2004.[42][43] This high support effect has been attributed to high black voter turnout in the primaries in those states. Blacks supported Obama by margins often exceeding 97%. By comparison, with only one exception, in each state with inaccurate opinion polls for the Democratic contest involving Obama, those same polls accurately predicted the outcome of that state's Republican contest, featuring only white candidates.[44]

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.[45] An inspection of the discrepancy between pre-election polls and Obama's ultimate support [2] 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.[46]

See also

  • Social desirability bias
  • Flora MacDonald, candidate for leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 1976, whose worse-than-expected showing gave rise to the term "Flora Syndrome," positing a similar effect for a female candidate

References

  1. ^ Kevin Drum, "East Coast Bias Watch", washingtonmonthly.com, July 23, 2008, citing a Google search: "3,820 hits for Wilder Effect compared to 44,900 hits for Bradley Effect"
  2. ^ Langer, Gary. (1989, November 8). “Election Poll Problems: Did Some Voters Lie?”, Associated Press
  3. ^ a b Reddy, Patrick. (2002, January 20). "Does McCall Have A Chance?", Buffalo News, p. H1
  4. ^ a b c d Elder, Janet. (2007, May 16). "Will There Be an 'Obama Effect?'", The New York Times
    "In high-profile contests where one of the major party candidates is black, pre-election telephone polls have often been wrong, overstating the strength of the black candidate. In polling circles this is known as the 'Bradley effect' or the 'Wilder effect' or the 'Dinkins effect.'"
    "During Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, Murray Edelman of CBS News and Rutgers University took a look at the effect the race of the interviewer might have had on the way people answered questions about who they intended to vote for. 'White respondents showed more support for Jackson when talking to black interviewers than the other way around,' said Mr. Edelman. 'The support for Jackson was less when white respondents talked to white interviewers.'"
    "Writing in The Polling Report, Mr. Brodnitz said the race of the interviewer was not a factor in their polling in 2006. Mr. Brodnitz said that problems in the final pre-election public polls had nothing to do with race, but were caused by methodology. Brodnitz contends that the public polling in the Ford race and perhaps the earlier errors in races with black candidates can be attributed in part to polling not taking full account of the types of voters who make their decisions very late in campaigns. He said those voters tended to be older married white women who were either political moderates or conservatives."
  5. ^ [1]
  6. ^ Nelson, Colleen McCain. (2002, August 10). "Race makes state races hard to call", Dallas Morning News
  7. ^ (1982, October 13). "AIDE TO COAST G.O.P. CANDIDATE RESIGNS AFTER REMARKS ON RACISM", The New York Times
  8. ^ a b Shapiro, Walter. (1989, November 20). "Breakthrough in Virginia", Time
    "All the published pre-election surveys had shown Wilder leading his Republican rival J. Marshall Coleman by margins of 4% to 15%. Even an initial television exit poll had anointed Wilder with a 10 percentage-point triumph. But by the time Wilder felt comfortable enough to declare victory, his razor-thin lead had stabilized about where it would end up: just 6,582 votes out of a record 1.78 million ballots cast."
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Keeler, Scott and Nilanthi Samaranayake. (2007, February 7). "Can You Trust What Polls Say about Obama's Electoral Prospects?", Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
  10. ^ Black, Chris. (1989, November 9). "POLLSTERS SAY SOME VOTERS LIE", The Boston Globe
  11. ^ Bacon, Perry Jr. (2007, January 23). "Can Obama Count On the Black Vote?", Time
    "More than most politicians, Wilder knows personally how difficult it can be for a black candidate; during his gubernatorial campaign, the gap between his numbers in the final polls and in the actual election showed such a dramatic drop-off that it became known as the 'Wilder Effect.'"
  12. ^ a b c d e Polman, Dick. (2007, January 21). "Barack Obama's race seems to be a second-tier issue", The Philadelphia Inquirer, "The American Debate"
    "One can also argue, however, that the wind at Obama's back might not be nearly as strong as it seems. Despite the fact that Americans seem downright bullish about backing a qualified black presidential candidate - in a December Newsweek poll, 93 percent said they would vote for such a person - there is also the nagging possibility that a lot of people don't really mean it, that they merely want to sound PC when the pollster calls.
    There's even a name for this kind of behavior. Actually, several names. 'The Bradley effect' is named for black Democrat Tom Bradley, who ran for governor of California in 1982 after serving as mayor of Los Angeles. Whites told pollsters they were pro-Bradley, but on election day they voted for the white Republican, costing Bradley the race. Then there is the 'Wilder effect,' named for black Virginia Democrat Doug Wilder. While running for governor in 1989, he was thought to be ahead by 10 percentage points, buoyed by a big white vote. But in the end, he won in a squeaker because most white voters bailed out.
    Jesse Jackson had a similar experience in 1988. As a presidential candidate, he was supposedly cruising toward a primary season win in heavily white Wisconsin. But what the white Democratic voters had told the pollsters, and what they actually did, turned out to be very different, and Jackson was beaten. Colin Powell was well-aware of this syndrome when he was weighing a candidacy in 1995; a friend reportedly warned him, 'When they go in the booth, they ain't going to vote for you.'
    Some analysts have assumed that the same syndrome helped doom Harold Ford Jr., the black Democrat who lost a Senate race in Tennessee in November by only three percentage points; indeed, he was apparently hurt by a GOP TV ad that implied he partied with white girls. The facts, however, suggest otherwise. His projected share of the white vote, as measured by the pre-election polls, closely tracked his share on election day."
  13. ^ Derbyshire, John. (2007, May 15). "None of the Above", National Review Online
    "When David Dinkins, an African-American, ran for mayor of New York City, he won. He didn’t win by anything like the margin the pollsters were predicting, though, and Dinkins’s win left those pollsters scratching their heads. Where had the missing Dinkins voters gone? The common conclusion of the pollsters was that race is such a charged issue in the U.S.A. that people will lie about their intentions to vote for a black candidate all the way to the voting booth."
  14. ^ Citrin, Jack and Donald Philip Green and David O. Sears. (Spring, 1990). "White Reactions to Black Candidates: When Does Race Matter?", Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 74-96
  15. ^ Isaacson, Walter. (1983, April 11). "The Making of a Litmus Test", Time
  16. ^ Carr, Camilla. (1983, April 12). "Washington-Epton Race Was Often Ugly", WBBM-TV
  17. ^ Peterson, Bill. (1988, April 4). "For Jackson, a Potential Breakthrough; On Eve of Primary, Support From White Officials and Wisconsin Voters Appears Strong", The Washington Post
  18. ^ Dionne, E. J. Jr. (1988, April 6). "Dukakis Defeats Jackson Handily in Wisconsin Vote", The New York Times
  19. ^ a b West, Paul. (2006, October 6). "Ford plays against type in bid for Senate upset", The Baltimore Sun
    "An independent statewide poll by Mason-Dixon, released this week, has Ford ahead by 1 percentage point. But public opinion surveys are notoriously unreliable when one of the candidates is black. Campaign strategists often subtract a "racial slippage" factor, to account for surveys that might exaggerate a black candidate's strength by up to 9 percentage points.
    In North Carolina, a Mason-Dixon poll a week before the 1990 election gave black Democrat Harvey Gantt a 4-point lead over Republican Sen. Jesse Helms; Gantt lost by 6 percentage points.
    In the 1989 Virginia governor's race, L. Douglas Wilder, a black Democrat, had an 11-point poll advantage a week before the election; he won by less than 1 point.
    Citing the "Wilder effect," Vanderbilt University political scientist Christian Grose wonders whether many Tennesseans who say they're undecided - roughly one in seven voters - might simply be unwilling to tell pollsters they won't back a black candidate."
  20. ^ Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (1995, September 25). "Powell and the Black Elite", The New Yorker
  21. ^ Barnes, Fred. (2003, November 17). "The Wilder Effect", The Weekly Standard
    "Why did Jindal lose after leading his Democratic opponent, Kathleen Blanco, in statewide polls in the weeks before the election? In a word, race. What occurred was the 'Wilder effect,' named after the black Virginia governor elected in 1989. Wilder, a Democrat, polled well, then won narrowly. Many white voters, it turned out, said they intended to vote for a black candidate when they really didn't. Questioned by pollsters, they were leery of being seen as racially prejudiced."
  22. ^ Dreher, Rod. (2003, November 21). "Why Jindal Lost", National Review Online
    "You might chalk it up to the "Wilder Effect," in which white voters tell pollsters they're going to vote for a minority candidate, but actually vote for the white one. If that were the case, though, Jindal's poll numbers would have held firm during the last week, and he would have received a shock on election day. In fact, his numbers collapsed steadily on the last week of the campaign, when Blanco's powerful commercial (featuring a Republican doctor in a wheelchair saying he was voting Blanco because Jindal is a heartless technocrat) began running in the state, and went unanswered by the Jindal camp. "
  23. ^ Hill, John and Mike Hasten, Melody Brumble and Michelle Mahfoufi. (2003, November 4). "New Orleans mayor crosses party lines, endorses Jindal", Capitol Watch
    "Based on his nightly polling data, Kennedy projected the race would be 50.4 percent for Blanco and 49.6 percent for Jindal, which is a statistical tie. As was the case when Jindal had an 11-point lead last week, voters shifted first from Jindal to undecided, Kennedy said."
  24. ^ Deslatte, Melinda. (2007, October 20). "Jindal wins La. governor's race", Associated Press
    " With about 92 percent of the vote in, Jindal had 625,036 votes or 53 percent -- more than enough to win outright and avoid a Nov. 17 runoff. His nearest competitors: Democrat Walter Boasso with 208,690 votes or 18 percent; Independent John Georges had 1167,477 votes or 14 percent; Democrat Foster Campbell had 151,101 or 13 percent. Eight candidates divided the rest."
  25. ^ Abade, Rene. (2007, October 10). "Southeastern Gubernatorial Poll: Jindal holds commanding lead", Southeastern Social Sciences Research Center
    "The Southeastern poll results, based on a statewide random sample of 641 registered voters, was conducted Oct. 1-7 and has an overall sampling error of plus or minus 4 percent ... Corbello said a surprising 29 percent of voters said they were undecided or refused to state a preference. However, when the undecided 'leaners' are apportioned among the candidates, Jindal has 49.6 percent, Boasso 11.2 percent, Georges 10.8 percent and Campbell 6.2 percent."
  26. ^ Cose, Ellis. (2006, October 30), "The 'Bradley Effect'", Newsweek
    "Is Harold Ford Jr. really doing as well as the polls suggest? Is he conceivably on his way to becoming the first black Southern senator since Reconstruction? The answer may well be yes, but Ford can hardly take that for granted. As black candidates reaching out to largely white constituencies have discovered in the past, when it comes to measuring political popularity there are lies, damned lies—and polls, on which they rest their fate at their peril."
  27. ^ Locker, Richard. (2006, November 1). "Is Ford's white support for real? — Political correctness can skew polling", Memphis Commercial Appeal
  28. ^ a b c Rowland, Ashley. (2006, November 12). "Impact of race on Ford's defeat debated", Chattanooga Times Free Press
    "Many experts predicted Rep. Ford would lose by a wider margin than he did because some of his white supporters would desert him — a pattern first documented in 1982, when former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost the California governor's race by a larger-than-expected margin. Researchers said white voters felt social pressure to tell pollsters they would vote for Mr. Bradley, who was black, but voted for his white opponent when they cast their ballots.
    Dr. Swain said the close margin of victory in the Corker-Ford contest shows whites did vote for Rep. Ford, and the 'Bradley effect' may be lessening."
  29. ^ Alter, Jonathan. (2006, December 25 - 2007, January 1). "Is America Ready?", Newsweek
    "One piece of encouraging news from Tennessee is that the returns showed no signs of the 'Bradley Effect,' in which white voters tell pollsters they will vote for the black candidate, then go into the voting booth and choose someone else."
  30. ^ a b Koppelman, Alex. (2008, January 24). "Will whites vote for Barack Obama?", Salon.com
    "'The argument of a specific Bradley effect,' insisted Langer, 'still looks to me to like a theory in search of data ... I don't see why this effect would be limited, before now, to a handful of elections 15 to 25 years ago. And I don't know how to understand its absence in so many other black-white races -- five [Senate and governors'] races in 2006 alone, as I note -- in which pre-election polling was dead on.'
    'Newton's Law of Gravity doesn't just work on Thursdays,' Langer said. 'You want an effect to be clearly established as an effect through analysis of empirical data, and maybe in more than one election. And to call it an effect you want it to be a consistent effect, or to explain its inconsistency'".
  31. ^ Walker, Adrian. (2007, January 4). "Sharing the Pride", The Boston Globe
    "I warned [Deval Patrick], you've got to watch those polls. But I think people are becoming less resistant to saying, 'I'm going to vote for the person whether it's a woman, or gay, or whatever.' There's more openness — but we've still got to watch it."
  32. ^ Henry, William A. III. (1982, November 15). "Fighting the Last War", Time
    "The most tangled polling errors came in California, where almost no one forecast Republican George Deukmejian's 50,000-vote victory over Tom Bradley. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times ran a frontpage story on election morning about the lineup of local politicians vying to succeed Bradley as the city's mayor. The San Francisco Chronicle's first election extra bannered: BRADLEY WIN PROJECTED. While ABC was predicting Deukmejian's victory, its affiliate stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco were using exit polls of their own to call the race for Bradley instead."
  33. ^ Rosenthal, Andrew. (1989, November 9). "The 1989 Elections: Predicting the outcome; Broad disparities in votes and polls raising questions", The New York Times
  34. ^ Cooper, Desiree. (2006, December 12). "Let's talk to break a White House tradition", Detroit Free Press
  35. ^ Biegelsen, Amy. (2008, January 9). "Obama's Wilder Lesson", Style Weekly
    "In 1989, nobody saw it coming save Paul Goldman, Wilder’s longtime political Svengali, and Wilder — now Richmond’s mayor — himself. Thanks in part to advice from campaign pollster Michael Donilon, who went on to advise John Kerry’s 2004 bid for the White House, Goldman assumed that anything short of a definitive commitment of support from a white poll respondent couldn’t be trusted and weighted his poll’s statistical model accordingly. His poll indicated a virtual tossup, putting Wilder’s chances at 50-50. ... 'This was a historic campaign,' Goldman says. 'Everybody was talking about it — race, race, race — so you give whatever answer’s the socially acceptable one.'"
  36. ^ Kohut, Andrew. (2008, January 10). "Getting It Wrong", The New York Times
  37. ^ "Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews. I’ve experienced this myself. In 1989, as a Gallup pollster, I overestimated the support for David Dinkins in his first race for New York City mayor against Rudolph Giuliani; Mr. Dinkins was elected, but with a two percentage point margin of victory, not the 15 I had predicted. I concluded, eventually, that I got it wrong not so much because respondents were lying to our interviewers but because poorer, less well-educated voters were less likely to agree to answer our questions. That was a decisive factor in my miscall."
  38. ^ Russo, Frank D. (2008, January 9). The "Bradley Effect" on Obama-Clinton Polling in New Hampshire May Be Overstated
  39. ^ Siddique, Haroon (2008-01-09). "Did racist voters cost Obama the primary?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-01-09.
  40. ^ Andrew, Tanenbaum. "News from the Vote Master". Retrieved 2008-01-13.
  41. ^ "Chris Matthews: Raw EXIT POLL Data 'Indicated Significant Victory' for Obama in NH". Retrieved 2008-1-10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Text "publisher \ The Brad Blog" ignored (help)
  42. ^ http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/downloads/uploaded/56_InsiderAdvantage%20Majority%20Opinion%20Research%20NC%20Pres%20Poll%20Cross-Tabulations%208%2019%2008%20rev.pdf
  43. ^ http://www.nccivitas.org/files/NCPRESIDENT-CT-808.pdf
  44. ^ Schwarz, Joel. (2008, February 6). "Super Tuesday results indicate race card may be a joker in primaries", University of Washington Office of News and Information
  45. ^ Robinson, Eugene. (2008, January 11). "Echoes Of Tom Bradley", The Washington Post
    "We'll have plenty of chances in the coming weeks to measure pre-election polls against actual results – including in states with much more racial diversity than New Hampshire. The only prediction I'll make is that following Tuesday's big surprise, embarrassed pollsters and pundits will be especially vigilant for any sign that the 'Bradley effect,' unseen in recent years, might have crept back."
  46. ^ Blumenthal, Mark. (2007, July 3). "Cell Phones and Political Surveys: Part 1", Pollster.com
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