Worried About the Bradley Effect
Currently most polls have Obama leading nationally and most importantly in several battleground states. Obviously I’m happy that the polls are currently breaking this way as it seems to indicate that as long as the Obama campaign doesn’t have any faux pas he should be taking the oath of office in January.
However I’m very concerned with what is known as the ‘Bradley Effect’. The name comes from the surprising results of the 1982 California’s Governor’s race, where the black former Los Angeles Mayor lost despite being ahead in pre-election polls and exit-polls.
Similar discrepancies between poll numbers and voting results have occurred multiple times where a non-white candidate was matched up against a white competitor. Most notably in the 1983 race for the Mayor of Chicago, the 1988 Democratic Primary in Wisconsin and the 1989 race for Mayor of New York City.
The theory is that white people aren’t forthcoming about not wanting to support a black candidate, which leads to these discrepancies. For further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
Polls:
4 Responses to “Worried About the Bradley Effect”
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If you listen to this interview of some Virginians, you will be even more disturbed. They outright tell you, that they won’t vote for a Black man –> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95420457
Every time I think we have progressed, I hear stuff like this. And I am reminded that there are still a lot of ignorant people out there. Our country is so polarized right now, and it is not just race. Whatever you want to call it: Blue v. Red, Country v. City, Intellectual v. Folksy. It’s going to be a tight race.
The sentiment expressed by the Virginian woman in this piece always baffles me. There has never been a President (or candidate) that has ever represented my gender demographic, my religion, or my age group. I’ve always had to go on issues and look past “another straight, christian, old white guy”. I would have thought the sentiment expressed in this article would have been reserved for people that were truly faced with this being the first vote that didn’t represent their demographic, not a woman that has never been represented. There are two things I hate: people that hate people just because of where they are from and the Dutch.
So it may end up like the end of Head of State? There certainly are a lot of parallels from that movie to our current situation.
Did you just admit to watching “Head of State”?