The Mis-Reading of the ‘Bradley Effect’

The Mis-Reading of the ‘Bradley Effect’
The Politics of Race
By Sherry Bebitch Jeffe 10/21/08 4:50 PM


Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (The Atlantic)


Political pundits are hyperventilating over the possibility that Sen. Barack Obama’s lead in presidential polls is overstated and that the so-called “Bradley effect” — named for the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley — could kick in and upend predictions.

In 1982, Bradley, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in California, had led in pre-election surveys, and was declared the winner in pollster Mervin Field’s exit polls. Bradley was poised to become the nation’s first elected African-American governor. But when the votes were counted, the Republican nominee, California Atty. Gen. George Deukmejian, had eked out a narrow victory.

Political analysts declared that race was the reason for Bradley’s loss — and that the discrepancy between polls and the actual vote was due to white voters’ fudging their responses to the “horse race” question, because it was deemed socially unacceptable to admit opposition to a minority candidate.

But the talking heads pretty much got it wrong. A lot more than race cost Bradley the governorship.

Lance Tarrance, who polled for Deukmejian in 1982, got it closest to right. Recently, he wrote: “{A}]nalysis of the 1982 election revealed the weakness in the Bradley Effect theory as Bradley actually won on Election Day turnout, but lost the absentee vote so badly that Deukmejian pulled ahead to win. That Bradley won the vote on Election Day would hardly seem to suggest a hidden or last minute anti-black backlash.”

In fact, this reveals that Bradley’s liberal supporters had bungled an important strategic decision. In hopes of increasing Democratic turnout, they qualified Proposition 15, a hand-gun control initiative, for the November 1982 ballot. Every gun owner in California was furious.

The National Rifle Assn. endorsed Deukmejian; and the first large-scale, aggressive absentee ballot campaign was launched by the GOP.

Prop. 15 lost by a nearly 2 to 1 margin. It was defeated in every county except San Francisco and Marin. According to the California Journal, “it was obliterated in rural California,” where turnout ran about 10 percent higher than in urban areas. And the absentee ballot count was lopsided in favor of the Republican.

Tens of thousands of gun lovers registered their vote against gun control and stuck around to mark their ballots for Deukmejian.

Nonetheless, Mervin Field’s exit polling was, to some extent, accurate. Field did not account for absentee ballot voters. His survey—like the actual results—showed a Bradley win at the ballot box.

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http://washingtonindependent.com/13883/bradley-effect

that the last poll was done some two weeks before the elections.

Many whites might not want to be seen as supporting a black man and therefore if they are polled for these questions, especially if others are in earshot or can see their choices. However in the private voting booth, they might still vote for Obama anyway, if some of the more intelligent ones see their financial situation and realize that something needs to be done to fix this economy, and that Obama is the only one that offers real hope of changing the system to help them out.