Dissecting the Bradley Effect

The Bradley Effect has been a hot topic of discussion in the last few weeks, as pundits question whether it will diminish Obama's substantial lead in the polls. There are those who say it could cost Obama as many as 6 points on Election Day.

In 1982, Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley, who ended up serving five terms in this position from 1973-1993 (makes you think about New York's current situation) and incidentally looks like a wax figure, ran for Governor of California. Polls were generally in his favor, and on the eve of the election, as voting stations were closing, Bradley was the projected winner in the media. The next day, however, it became apparent that his opponent, the Republican Attorney General George Deukmejian was actually the victor in the race. At the time, this failure of the polls to predict the outcome was perceived as a deep and festering racism on the part of the voter majority, who said one thing to the pollsters, but then voted the other way once they were in the booth, you know, out of fear of the black man. Thus the effect was conceived.

Of course, this is not the sole case in the study. In 1989, African American L. Douglas Wilder barely beat out his Republican counterpart Marshall Coleman to win the gubernatorial seat in Virginia, even though polls predicted his margin to be much larger. Also in 1989, Former Mayor of the Great City of New York, David Dinkins barely eeked out a victory against the next Former Mayor Rudy Guiliani, though only a week before he had held an 18 point lead in the polls.

So, in the years since these races, has race taken a back seat in dictating the electoral process? It seems the answer is both yes and no, and that it may not fit the formula the Bradley Effect has provided.

While no one, not one single person who discusses this effect, denies that race absolutely plays a factor in an election, many critics of the perceived trend cite individual reasons to re-examine the idea. In both an NPR Interview and a NY Times op-ed piece, former Bradley campaign staffer Blair Levin discusses the academia known as the Bradley Effect against the actual events that unrolled that election race. He explains it better than I, so here are his words:

While it’s no surprise that this has become a topic of discussion as John McCain and Barack Obama near the finish line, as someone who worked for Bradley’s campaign, I think it’s worth pointing out that the effect has been widely misunderstood.

On election night in 1982, with 3,000 supporters celebrating prematurely at a downtown hotel, I was upstairs reviewing early results that suggested Bradley would probably lose.

But he wasn’t losing because of race. He was losing because an unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated, giving Mr. Deukmejian a narrow victory.

Deukmejian turns out was Armenian; his parents were born in the Ottoman Empire in places that are hard to pronounce, like Gaziantep and Erzurum. If Californians felt like being racist that year, they probably would not have elected the Ottoman.



I'd like to include two slightly less eloquent excerpts in this post to help illustrate the other side of the point which is this: while there are many people who are openly racist and will not vote for Obama because of this, there are also people who are openly racist and will vote for Obama anyway, and the reason why is not hard to find, its called THE ECONOMY STUPID. While I do not condone the language used in either of these, I can't help but find the idea really fascinating.

The first comes to us from, of all places, the Cafferty File. Crazy old Jack asking lefty questions, this time around his question was the following: Has the financial crisis changed your mind on who to vote for?

Mitchell from Arkansas writes:

yes. absolutely. i will be changing my vote to the intelligent black fella.
president bush failed us, and john mccain will finish the job. we must have someone who is at least on top of these things. a more transparent executive branch is the most important issue of all ,after the last 8 years. i’m fed up with the elitists who have overran my beloved GOP. i’m still republican ,but, i will be voting for obama

Well, at least Mitchell from Arkansas in honest. The second excerpt comes from my favorite Pollster blog, FiveThirtyEight, and describes the experience of a canvasser walking door to door in Western Pennsylvania,

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

So you see, and as 538 goes onto explain, "in this economy, racism is officially a luxury." When people step into the booths this time around, their minds are not on the social issues that once dominated the national political arena. Issues that dragged war heroes like John Kerry through the mud until he came out looking like Bill Ayers, are now more or less obsolete, and even if they don't like it, Americans trust the middle-class looking Obama on the economy more than they trust 7-house, 13-car John McCain.

After all, who could ever not trust this face?