As our presidential elections near their finale, and as the vitriol directed at our black presidential candidate, Barack Obama, intensifies, we begin reading more and more about the so-called “Bradley Effect.”
Most recently—on October 6, 2008—TMV contributor, ELROD, referred to it in “McCain’s Death Throes.”
He said, referring to the McCain campaign “descending further and further into Michelle Malkin-land”:
The key here is timing. If McCain piled this stuff on in July and August then I would say it was the latter. But in October, with voters already voting in many states and polls consolidating behind Obama, these attacks look like mere flailing more than anything else. It’s as if the McCain campaign has nothing but the Bradley Effect to bail itself out. And I doubt that will work.
But, what exactly is the Bradley Effect?
Andrew Sullivan, back in January 2008, in The Daily Dish “The Return of The Bradley Effect,” explained it as follows:
The term Bradley effect or Wilder effect refers to a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voter opinion polls in some American political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate. Specifically, there have been instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots. White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the black candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate. This reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well.
Researchers who have studied the issue theorize that some white voters give inaccurate responses to polling questions because of a fear that they might appear to others to be racially prejudiced. Some research has suggested that the race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor into that concern. At least one prominent researcher has suggested that with regard to pre-election polls, the discrepancy can be traced in part by the polls’ failure to account for general conservative political leanings among late-deciding voters.
Well, it turns out that it is not only Americans who are interested in and concerned about the Bradley Effect, but Europeans also.
The Belgian periodical, Het Nieuwsblad, has an article in its October 13 edition titled, “Is Obama te zwart voor de Amerikanen?” (“Is Obama Too Black for Americans?”)
In the article, the reporter, Evita Neefs, discusses how the present polls, albeit indicating a healthy lead for Obama, could be misleading, because of the Bradley Effect, and how “racism could cost Barack Obama the presidency.”
Neefs says:
Obama now has an average lead of about 7 percent. The big question is whether those polls reflect the true intentions of the voters, or whether there is a “Bradley effect,” an over-estimation of the score because respondents do not dare to admit that they will never vote for a black candidate.
That phenomenon was named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley who, during the 1982 California gubernatorial elections, had already ordered the champagne, because he was so far ahead in the polls. To the dismay of many, he lost. Professor Charles Henry of UC Berkeley, the discoverer of the “Bradley effect,” is of the opinion that Obama can only set his mind at rest when he has a lead of at least 10 percentage points.
I am sure we’ll continue to hear about this “phenomenon,” from our own media but, to read more about how Europeans view our elections, please go the translation of this article in Watchingamerica.com.
Of course, if you don’t give a hoot as to how the world views us, please don’t go there.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.