Posted on 01/11/2008 8:19:40 PM PST by neverdem
WASHINGTON -- Pollsters and pundits were quick to discount race and the so-called "Bradley effect" as factors in Barack Obama's narrow loss to Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. Given that the same pollsters and pundits (OK, me too) were so wrong about the outcome, I think we ought to take a closer look.
The phenomenon is named after the late Tom Bradley, who in 1982 seemed certain to become the first black governor of California. Pre-election polls showed Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, with a double-digit lead over his white opponent, George Deukmejian. But Bradley lost.
Subsequently, several high-profile races involving black candidates followed the same pattern in which apparent leads somehow evaporated on Election Day. The polls said David Dinkins would beat Rudy Giuliani by more than 10 points in the 1989 New York mayoral race; Dinkins ended up winning with 50 percent of the vote to Giuliani's 48 percent. That same year, the polls gave Douglas Wilder an 11-point lead over Marshall Coleman in the Virginia governor's race; Wilder squeaked into office by less than half a percentage point. In 1990, the polls said Harvey Gantt would handily defeat incumbent North Carolina senator Jesse Helms; Gantt lost, and it wasn't even close.
Was it that voters told pollsters they intended to vote for African-American candidates and then, in the privacy of the voting booth, chose white candidates instead? Not really. In each of these instances, pre-election polls were quite accurate in predicting the black candidate's vote. What happened was that the polls greatly underestimated the vote for the white candidates. Unusually large numbers of self-described...
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Women voted in unusually large numbers -- they outnumbered men at the polling places by 57 percent to 43 percent -- and they went heavily for Clinton over Obama.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
I thought is was the phenomenon by which whomever Senator Bill Bradley endorsed-lost!
That guy said a whole lot of nothing.
That's because that guy IS a whole lot of nothing. He once wrote in the Washington Post that Marion Barry was not a racist.
I think it was written in crayon.
LOL! I thought it was going to be about Bill Bradley too. But then I thought WHAT effect?
Yes but in this case those extra "white voters" were good old boy gun owners. On the ballot with Bradley and Deukmejian was Proposition 15 a handgun ban. That measure drew out low propensity conservative voters in droves. Despite what the press want to believe, it wasn't about race.
Especially those from Massachusetts and other states, the dead ones and the virtuals.
True enough, but the New England white liberoids were eager to tell pollsters they were ‘inclusive’ only to pull the level for a whitey on primary day.
Maybe they call it the “Bradley Effect” after the way he ran Los Angeles into the ground.
There's nothing like the local color from the aroused potential victims of gun grabbers. Thanks for the backround.
I sure enjoyed the explanation Rush provided for this phenomenon... The Oprah Effect!!! (the chickification of America) Hillary became a victim ("Iron my shirts") and brought on mass "womens rage" at men with raging hormones... Thinking "Screw yew, mister!" (too funny!)
I also enjoyed watching Shelby Steele on LBJ's press secretary's (can't think of his name right now) PBS show last night, explaining why Obama AND Oprah are so popular with white folks. He said they are "bargainers," as opposed to "challengers!"
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