The Bradley Effect Will Be Reborn as the Obama Effect

The "Bradley Effect" is one of those oft-repeated myths in politics. The idea centers around believing that whites would tell a pollster that they intended to vote for a black candidate but then in the privacy of the voting booth would change their minds and vote for the other candidate. The more extreme view is that an individual would outright lie about supporting a black candidate in order to sound racially accepting knowing full well that as a voter he or she could never vote for a black candidate. In Tom Bradley's case, though he was favored by 10% in polls leading up to election day in 1982, he lost his bid for the California governorship to Republican George Deukmejian.

But let's break this notion down. Why would a voter lie to a pollster, i.e. would someone with overt racial prejudice state for some reason an intention to vote for a black candidate? Does a voter stating an intent to vote for an opponent of a black candidate somehow automatically imply racial bias? Seems like a stretch to me. Then I found out from listening to Tell Me More on NPR and following up by reading an op-ed in the New York Times, the Bradley Effect is--surprise--an oversimplification! The only racial bias is that used by the media in attempting to explain the results of a complex election with the simplest of explanations. What may also have lost Bradley the governorship was that Republicans had a ballot issue on guns that year which energized Republicans (guns, God, and gays!) to come out and vote. In addition, more than a million absentee ballots were cast that year (another stealth effort of the Republicans) and their votes were not included in any of the pre-election polling models.

So the Bradley Effect, as it is widely understood, had little to nothing to do with racial politics. And in fact, I would submit that this year we may see an effect that should be called the Obama Effect. Kathleen Parker noted this last week in the Washington Post, and I'm quite sure after canvassing in Virginia, that there may be a considerable number of voters who would never admit intending to vote for the democrat to their families, co-workers, and friends. But in the privacy of the voting booth, seeing that the Republican party of today is bereft of its stated ideals, some voters who would never declare so in public may pull the lever for...Democrat Barack Obama.