Free Republic

he prospect that Barack Obama is primed to be the nation's first black president has black voters giddy. But the better the news gets for Mr. Obama, with bigger leads in polls the closer Election Day draws, the more they fear it's too good to be true. It's especially so in the South, where a history of oppression, voter suppression and near electoral victories make blacks more skeptical than most. "Every day I watch the polls and get excited because I know Barack Obama is going to win the whole thing," said Corgins Banner, a 32-year-old Charlotte man who works...

Polling data suggests six percent of whites will not vote for Obama because he is black. But early voting trends in eight states suggest that Obama's under-the-radar black voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts will bring this voting bloc to the polls in record numbers. Thus the percentage of voters who will vote for Obama because he is black will be greater than the percentage of voters who will not vote for Obama because he is black - a "reverse" Bradley Effect. Read more here.

In a presidential campaign that has provoked an array of questions about race, one of the most persistent has been whether white people lie to pollsters about whether they would support a black candidate, a theory known as the Bradley effect. Pundits often discount black candidates' leads in polls, saying support never materializes at the voting booth. But many political experts say that while racism inevitably will play a role in whether some voters will choose Sen. Barack Obama, white people being surveyed seem to be pretty honest with pollsters about their biases. The Bradley effect is an idea based...

Two decades ago, Douglas Wilder watched as a 9% lead in the polls going into Virginia's gubernatorial election slipped to just one-tenth of 1% when the ballots were counted.He still won the election - becoming the first African-American to be elected a US state governor - but the narrowness of his victory led analysts to speculate that he had been a victim of a white hesitancy to vote for a black man. The theory goes that some white voters tell opinion pollsters they will vote for a black candidate - but then, in the privacy of the polling booth, put...

Is the lovable charismatic Barack Obama hiding the fact that he has a girlfriend? Or is he the victim of the 'Bradley Effect?' Rumors are swarming that Obama has committed adultery on Michelle Obama with a woman by the name Vera Baker. Vera baker is a staffer who worked for Barack Obama during his run for the United States Senate in 2004. Rumor has it that Michelle Obama was complaining about the supposed close friendship between Barack Obama and Vera Baker and before the public knew it, she was transferred to work at the Caribbean on the island of Martinique....

When the latest Field Poll showed Proposition 8 losing by 17 points, skeptical supporters of the measure that would ban same-sex marriage in California invoked a phrase coined in the 1980s: "the Bradley effect." Named after the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American who lost the 1982 California governor's race after polls showed him leading handily, the phrase refers to the tendency of respondents to lie to pollsters about issues of race. The Bradley effect has been referenced in presidential polls this year as Sen. Barack Obama seeks to become the first black president. And it is...

U. S. Sen. Barack Obama has moved yet another step closer to becoming America’s first Black president after an arguably bland debate Monday night that gave him strong leads over Sen. John McCain in several key polls. But, some political observers say the polls may not reflect a racial ...

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) - It's a question that comes up whenever anyone of African-American descent is a candidate for office, and this year is no exception: is the so-called "Bradley effect" going to play a role in the 2008 presidential race? Many pollsters doubt it, and think there's an even more fundamental question to be asked - whether there ever was such a phenomenon. If there was, they seriously doubt that with all the time that has passed since the late Tom Bradley lost a close gubernatorial race in California 26 years ago - despite being ahead in late polls...

Has anyone been paying attention to the bogus polls that are intentionally adding in blacks to the tally of surveved voters to apparently increase Obama's percentage in said polls? 1.) Here's one such poll: From The ABC News/Washington Post poll: "This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 27-29, 2008, among a randon sample of 1,271 adults, including an oversample of African Americans weighted to their correct share of the national population, for a total of 165 black respondents." There is no need to increase the number of blacks into this poll or any poll, because over time...

Polling place surveys frequently overstated Obama vote during primaries NEW YORK - Barack Obama’s tendency through the Democratic primaries to perform better in exit polls than he actually does at the ballot box has some media organizations nervous heading into Election Night. Television networks want to avoid having their performance become an issue for the third straight presidential election. Their political experts hope that experience gained during the primaries will help things run smoothly Nov. 4.

Polling Methods May Tilt Obama Results, Exec Says Wednesday, September 17, 2008 7:31 PM By: Ron Kessler Most polls may be overstating Barack Obama’s support by 5 to 10 percentage points because those surveyed may not be telling the truth about voting for him, ad executive Gabe Joseph III tells Newsmax. It is possible that, when live callers ask for a respondent’s name, the individual is more likely to say he will vote for Obama, says Joseph, president of ccAdvertising, which conducts polls for a range of candidates and members of Congress. When automated dialers do the polling, respondents are...

Is the Bradley Effect evenly distributed, or does it vary by state or region? My guess — again, just a guess — is that it varies, and maybe pretty widely. Counterintuitively, perhaps, I’d say there’s less of an effect in the South. People there deal with race (not — ahem — always very successfully) almost every day, and in ways the rest of the country never had to. And frankly I’d expect a southerner to be more willing on average to tell a pollster exactly what he or she really thinks. In liberal bastions like California and New York, the...

Prominent Democrats only whisper when they compare Obama, the first African-American with a serious chance to be president, with what happened to Los Angeles' black Mayor Tom Bradley a quarter of a century ago. Exit polls in 1982 showed Bradley ahead for governor of California, but he actually lost to Republican George Deukmejian. Pollster John Zogby (who correctly predicted Clinton's double-digit win Tuesday) said what practicing Democrats would not. "I think voters face-to-face are not willing to say they would oppose an African-American candidate," Zogby told me.The escape route from this dilemma only a few months ago seemingly was indicated...

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,...