The Island of Logic

In 1982, Tom Bradley a candidate for governor in the state of California lost by the narrowest of margins after having polled ahead of his opponent. In the 1983 mayoral race in Chicago, Harold Washington polled as high as 14 points a few days before the election, but won the election by only 4 points. In 1989, David Dinkins running for mayor of New York against Rudy Giuliani, polled about 14 points ahead of Rudy a few days before the election, but only prevailed by about 2 points on the day of the election. The thing all of these candidates had in common was they were black and they were running against white opponents. Since that 1982 race this has become known as the Bradley Effect. The Bradley Effect states that for sociological reasons white voters will often tell pollsters that they are for a black candidate, but in the privacy of the voting booth will vote for the white candidate. Now there could be several reasons for this phenomenon. However, I believe that the two primary ones are that either these white voters are actually racist and would never vote black, or they are simply afraid of opening themselves up to criticism even though they prefer the white candidate for policy and ideological reasons. I would call this reverse racism. I believe that the latter is more often true then the former for being the cause of the Bradley Effect. There are more white people today that are trying to overcorrect the past problems of racism then those that are actually racist. White racism against blacks is not dead, but it has by no means the strength that it had in the 50′s and 60′s. Now some studies have shown that since 1996 that the Bradley Effect seems to have faded, and it no longer has an effect on elections. I contend however that it will have an effect on the coming Presidential election and I will tell you why. The University of Washington professor Anthony Greenwald conducted a study that found that the Bradley Effect was at play in the 2008 Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Greenwald noticed that the margins between the polls and the actual results depended on the number of blacks living in a state. The polls taken in states with a small black population tended to overestimate his performance and states with large black populations actually underestimated his performance. This indicated that there may be a Reverse Bradley Effect in play. The Reverse Bradley Effect would mean that blacks would tell pollsters that they were not voting for the black candidate even though they would pull the lever for the black candidate in the voting booth. The reason for this would not be the same as for the white voters in the Bradley Effect, but the absolute antithesis. The cause of the Reverse Bradley Effect would be that black voters would not want pollsters to think that they are simply voting for a candidate because he or she is black, but because they agree with that particular candidates policies. They want to appear as informed voters to the pollster. Ok, now you’re going to say that won’t the Reverse Bradley Effect and the Bradley Effect simply eliminate each other and create a zero sum game. In the Democratic Primaries that may be true however black voters are a minority so the Reverse Bradley Effect won’t completely eliminate the Bradley Effect, but I don’t think that is going to be the reason that the Bradley Effect will be at play in the General Election. First of all the Reverse Bradley Effect will not apply to the General Election because blacks traditionally vote more than 90% for the Democratic candidate. They will have more social pressure of being called an Uncle Tom if they would say that they are going with the Republican candidate than the pressure of appearing uninformed because they are saying they will vote for the black candidate. The Reverse Bradley Effect did apply to the Democratic primary because all the choices were obviously Democrat. In the General Election however many white independents and moderates will poll that they are voting for Obama even when they agree more with McCain’s policies. When it comes down to actually voting they will vote for policies and ideological beliefs rather than social pressure. I don’t know yet how much this is going to effect the November 4^th election, but I am going to guess that the Bradley Effect is probably giving Obama anywhere from 5-8% in the polls. Heads up Conservatives!! It isn’t over till the fat lady sings.

Tags: Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton

Trackback URI | Comments RSS