We Don’t Do Obama Any Favors by Denying the Possibility of the Bradley Effect
Yes, the polls look great right now. Obama is ahead in by 8-11 points nationally, the Real Clear Politics map shows a possible Obama landslide, and absent some big event he’s starting to look unstoppable. But there’s still an elephant in the room, and we do Obama no favors by denying or ignoring it. If we want him to win, then we need to accept that because of who he is, Barack Obama is still the underdog and will be the underdog until the day he is inaugurated.
Named for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost the 1982 California governor’s race despite a large lead in pre-election polling, the Bradley Effect is a phenomenon in which pre-election polling overstates support for black candidates or, more commonly, understates support for the white candidate running against a black candidate (often by showing a high percentage of “undecideds” that are actually votes for the white candidate). There are several theories on why this has occurred, but the one that seems the most plausible to me is that people who harbor some racial prejudice but know that it’s socially unacceptable either lie and say they are voting for the black candidate or say they are undecided when they intend to vote for the white candidate. A related problem is the race of interviewer effect, in which voters are more likely to say they are voting for a black candidate if the person conducting the survey is black.
There are several other theories about the Bradley Effect, and I recommend this Pew article for some insight. But my purpose here is not to try to figure out why the effect might exist, but to argue that Obama’s supporters do him no favors when they deny even the possibility that there could be a Bradley Effect on November 4. Whenever the subject is raised in the progressive blogosphere it is shot down and treated as some sort of anti-Obama smear. People who raise the issue on this site and others like it are often called “concern trolls”. I suspect this stems from the primaries, when some people used the possibility of the Bradley Effect to make the case that Obama was less electable. But the primaries are over, Barack Obama is officially the Democratic nominee, and we don’t do him any favors if we deny the possibility that the polls could be overstating his support or understating McCain’s because of the historic nature of his candidacy.
Larry Sabato said that “Obama will need a clear pre-election poll lead over McCain to win; a tie isn’t going to do it for him, in all probability. It’s naïve to expect that there won’t be some racial leakage on election day.” Agree with him or not, shouldn’t we at least acknowledge the possibility that he could be right? How can we say for certain that he’s wrong when we’ve never had an African American presidential nominee before?
As a quasi-Washington insider, I know that some Democratic strategists are wondering if this is another 1996 and they should declare “Mission Accomplished” on the presidential race and put resources into down-ballot contests. I suspect that many grassroots volunteers and donors are wondering the same thing, debating whether to donate to Obama or to their Democratic House candidate, whether to volunteer for Obama or for a local progressive candidate. There are arguments to be made for focusing on down-ballot races as well as the presidential, but we would do Obama a great disservice if we put our time, money and effort into other races because we think he has this locked up.
Some skeptics have pointed out that the Bradley Effect seemed to subside during the 1990’s. This may be true, but we should keep in mind that people during the 1990’s may have gotten more used to seeing African American mayors, members of Congress, and even governors. But we’ve never had a black president before, and that may be a whole new comfort barrier for some voters to cross. For those who are tempted to argue that the Bradley Effect is a thing of the past, need I remind you that the exit polls during the primaries almost always showed Obama doing better than he ended up doing? Doesn’t the fact that he almost never won the late deciders in the primaries for whatever reason freak you out just a little bit?
Others will argue that Obama’s aggressive voter registration strategy and the omission of cell-phone-only voters in polls will act as a counter-weight to any Bradley Effect, and that could end up being true. But what if it isn’t? What if we wake up to a McCain presidency on November 5th because we got complacent and thought Obama had it wrapped up? Obama’s campaign seems aware of this possibility, and I think they put out that video last week showing McCain being declared the winner to make the same point I am making in this diary. Even if the Bradley Effect turns out to be a thing of the past, don’t we only improve Obama’s chances of winning and even winning big if we plan for the worst?
I’m only 24, but I know that candidates like Barack Obama don’t come along that often. I imagine that it will be at least 30 years before I get another chance to vote for a presidential candidate I believe in this much. I don’t want to wake up on November 5 and realize that we missed this chance because we got overconfident and didn’t do everything we could to get him elected. No matter what the polls say, we do Obama a disservice if we believe the polls and assume that he has it locked up. He is the first African American presidential nominee in a country with an ugly history of racism, and that by definition makes him the underdog no matter how good the polls look. Even if there’s only a slight chance of a Bradley Effect, isn’t it better to be prepared for it than to be unpleasantly surprised when it’s too late to make a difference?
If we lose, I’m moving out of the country. Seeing Palin’s hate-mongering in Florida today clinched that decision. I absolutely refuse to live in a country where her kind of degenerate slime propaganda has any type of political office. I’m way too progressive to survive in that kind of national climate.
I already moved out of the country and if Mccain wins I have no plans to return. If a democratic president does not take office after the worlds worst president in history from the opposite party, it will be proven that the people have no authority.
Get over yourself. You are a small fish in a big pond.
Whatever… I am so sick of hearing people say “I’m moving out of the country.” No you’re not. Do you even have a passport? Do you? You should apply now. They’re like $70 and take 6 months to get.
You got an Tier A1 work visa for the UK? Better start applying. You need at least a college degree and 2500 pounds ($5k USD) before they’re consider you.
Personally, no matter who wins, we’re gonna lose. Neither Obama or McCain will admit the troop surge didn’t work (they timed the surge when violence was going down anyway), neither stood up against the absurd bailout package, and both are in total control of the corporate mess that dictates reality to this country.
I want to move to New York or DC personally, where my voice will mean something.
Wake up America.
All I know is God help us all if McBush wins next month!
JIff
http://www.anonymity.at.tc
I agree wholeheartedly. A ten point lead does not make me comfortable at all. I think I might feel comfortable if it were a 20 point lead. I wish I could transfer my sense of urgency to other Obama supporters who, though they are behind him, don’t get into it so much that they read articles constantly, and therefore only take a casual look at poll #s and get complacent…
Excellent stance, written excellently. One thing I’d like to say:
“I’m only 24, but I know that candidates like Barack Obama don’t come along that often. I imagine that it will be at least 30 years before I get another chance to vote for a presidential candidate I believe in this much.”
i too, am 24. However, I do not anticipate EVER caring about a politician, a campaign, or an election, as much as I do now. And when I say “as much as i do now” actually mean EVER AGAIN.
In 30 years I will probably be living in a yurt and NOT participating. I anticipate that civialian participation in this ridiculous process will be a thing of the past.
But there will be a lovely portrait of Barack in my yurt.
Another thing to consider is the very unscientific nature of polls. The Bradley effect may not have anything to do with people lying, but poor methodology. This video and the following parts illustrate what is wrong with polls and why we should consider them completely inaccurate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y8cfhQx48U
This is the real Obama:
voted for FISA after he promised he wouldn’t
voted to fund the war (many times)
wants to INCREASE military spending
wants more troops in Afghanistan
voted to keep the patriot act
supported Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon
voted for sanctions on Iran and supports more
supports the National ID Act
against decriminalization of marijuana
a member by proxy of the CFR
a part of the New World Order
wants more government spending and taxes
He is not much better than McCain.
Google “New World Order” to see they have in store for us. It ain’t pretty.
The CFR is one of the NWO’s main organizations. Obama and McCains staff is full of CFR members.
You are quick to point fingers at whites who plan to vote for McCain because he is white and label them as racists. But, aren’t blacks who plan to vote for Obama because he is black racists too?
John: The point here is not whether whites are racist for not wanting to vote for a black person, or whether blacks are racist for voting for Obama solely because of skin color (that is a separate argument). The issue is how much people allow societal norms and pressures to influence their polling responses, and how this unmeasured bias will affect the outcome on election day. Given our country’s shaky history with race relations, it is perfectly reasonable to suspect that white voters might be more likely to try to hide their antipathy for a black candidate than black candidates are to try to hide their support for the same individual.
Dear purplestatepundit,
I usually don’t comment on articles like this, but I feel compelled to reply since this article is ranked so highly on Reddit. I find your article on the likelihood of a Bradley Effect in November unsubstantiated, particularly this section:
“For those who are tempted to argue that the Bradley Effect is a thing of the past, need I remind you that the exit polls during the primaries almost always showed Obama doing better than he ended up doing? Doesn’t the fact that he almost never won the late deciders in the primaries for whatever reason freak you out just a little bit?”
In reality, there was no Bradley Effect in the primaries, and Obama tended to outperform polls by an average of 3.3 points on election day. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com demonstrates and explains this effect here: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/persistent-myth-of-bradley-effect.html
There are four main reasons why this myth persists today, which I’ll reproduce here:
1. Misunderstanding the Bradley Effect. Denying the existence of the Bradley Effect does not mean denying that some people vote on the basis of race. I have no doubt that some people will vote against Barack Obama because he is black. Indeed, I suspect that almost all of us either know such people, or know people who know them (friends and relatives of friends). I also have no doubt, by the way, that some people will vote for Barack Obama because he is black.
But the Bradley Effect is not an argument about whether people vote based on race. It’s an argument about whether people will lie to pollsters. So long as race-based voters are honest about their intentions, Barack Obama’s position is no worse than it appears to be in the polls.
2. Confusing Past with Present. There is fairly strong academic evidence that the Bradley Effect used to exist back in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, the evidence is just as strong that it does not exist any longer. The people who vouch for the existence of the Bradley Effect are not wrong so much as they are relying on dated evidence.
3. Confusing Exit Polls with pre-Election Polls. Unlike the normal, pre-election polls, exit polls conducted on the day of the election did substantially overstate Barack Obama’s margins throughout the primaries. This is something to keep in mind at about 5 PM on November 4, when Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty begin to leak exit poll results. It is not anything to worry about now, when we are trying to forecast the outcome from pre-election polling.
Nor is it clear the the discrepancies in the exit polls have anything to do with race; John Kerry, somewhat infamously, also underperformed his exit polls. The mechanics of conducting an exit poll are rather haphazard, involving a bunch of college kids and temp workers running around outside a polling place with clipboards and attempting to pass out survey forms to every Nth voter who leaves the ballot booth. This is not much easier than it sounds, and introduces a lot of human error and other forms of sample bias. For this reason, exit polls are not really intended to be used as they so frequently are in the panicked hours before ballot counting begins — the results need to be calibrated and weighted, and exit polling firms rely on comparing their polls against actual voting results in order to do so.
4. Cherry Picking Results. The notion of the Bradley Effect gained a lot of currency after the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary Clinton did much better than anyone expected and won the state. However, the 8.9-point gap separating the pre-election polls and the actual results in New Hampshire represented only the seventh-largest error in the primaries. There were bigger discrepancies in Iowa, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin and Mississippi, all of which favored Barack Obama. These discrepancies did not receive as much attention as New Hampshire because they did not change the outcome of the election. But mathematically speaking, they were just as important.
A related phenomenon is that the media often cherry-picks polling results within a given state. The Zogby poll that had Barack Obama ahead by 13 points in California received widespread attention; the SurveyUSA result that had Clinton 10 points ahead did not. Over the course of the primaries, polling results that had Barack Obama performing well generally made for better copy, since until at least mid-February, Obama was considered the underdog. But an informed reading of the polls, such as the Pollster.com method, reveals that Clinton did not overperform in states like California and Ohio nearly so much as the media tried to imply.
So, while I don’t think that the Bradley Effect should be a taboo subject in the blogosphere, it’s very important to actually examine the evidence before getting overly worried about it.
One thing I would like to point out is that the primaries had mostly democrats voting in it. If there is a Bradley effect still going on I would guess its more likely to happen in the election when you have a lot more indie and repub voters.
better headline would be, [Polls can be faked, Obama needs YOU on Voting Day!]