Bradley effect
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. The theory proposes that some voters will tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, while on election day they vote for the white candidate. It was named after Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
Mayor
Mayor of Los Angeles, California
The mayor of Los Angeles is the chief executive officer of the city. He is elected for a four-year term and limited to serving no more than two terms. Under the California Constitution, all judicial, school, county, and city offices, including those of chartered cities, are nonpartisan...
Tom Bradley
Tom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...
, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race
California gubernatorial election, 1982
The 1982 California gubernatorial election occurred on November 2, 1982. The Republican nominee, Attorney General George Deukmejian, narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.-Primary Election Summary:...
despite being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.
The Bradley effect theorizes that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias
Social desirability bias
Social desirability bias is the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. It can take the form of over-reporting good behavior or under-reporting bad behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports,...
. Specifically, some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. Members of the public may feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed to be more publicly acceptable, or 'politically correct
Politically Correct
Politically Correct may refer to:*Political correctness, language, ideas, policies, or behaviour seeking to minimize offence to groups of people-See also:*Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, book by James Finn Garner, published in 1994...
'. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well. The race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor in to voters' answers.
Some analysts have dismissed the theory of the Bradley effect, or argued that it may have existed in past elections, but not in more recent ones. Others believe that it is a persistent phenomenon.
Similar effects have been posited in other contexts, notably the Shy Tory Factor
Shy Tory Factor
Shy Tory Factor is a name given by British opinion polling companies to a phenomenon observed in the 1990s, where the share of the vote won by the Conservative Party in elections was substantially higher than the proportion of people in opinion polls who said they would vote for the party.In the...
and spiral of silence
Spiral of silence
The spiral of silence is a political science and mass communication theory propounded by the German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann...
.
Origin
In 1982,Tom BradleyTom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...
, the long-time mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
of Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, ran as the Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
Party's candidate for Governor of California
Governor of California
The Governor of California is the chief executive of the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual State of the State addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced...
against Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
candidate George Deukmejian
George Deukmejian
Courken George Deukmejian, Jr. born June 6, 1928) is an Armenian American politician from California who as a Republican served as the 35th Governor of California and as California Attorney General .-Early life:...
, who is white (of Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
descent). Most polls in the final days before the election showed Bradley with a significant lead. Based on exit poll
Exit poll
An election exit poll is a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations. Unlike an opinion poll, which asks whom the voter plans to vote for or some similar formulation, an exit poll asks whom the voter actually voted for. A similar poll conducted before actual...
s, a number of media outlets projected Bradley as the winner and early editions of the next day's San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
featured a headline proclaiming "Bradley Win Projected." However, despite winning a majority of the votes cast on election day, Bradley narrowly lost the overall race
California gubernatorial election, 1982
The 1982 California gubernatorial election occurred on November 2, 1982. The Republican nominee, Attorney General George Deukmejian, narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.-Primary Election Summary:...
once absentee ballots were included. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than polls had predicted, and that previously undecided voters had voted for Deukmejian in statistically anomalous numbers.
A month prior to the election, Bill Roberts, Deukmejian's campaign manager, predicted that white voters would break for his candidate. He told reporters that he expected Deukmejian to receive approximately 5 percent more votes than polling numbers indicated because white voters were giving inaccurate polling responses to conceal the appearance of racial prejudice. Deukmejian disavowed Roberts's comments, and Roberts resigned his post as campaign manager.
Some news sources and columnists have attributed the theory's origin to Charles Henry, a professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Henry researched the election in its aftermath and, in a 1983 study, reached the controversial conclusion that race was the most likely factor in Bradley's defeat. However, one critic of the Bradley effect theory has charged that Mervin Field
Mervin Field
Mervin Field is an American pollster of public opinion in the state of California.- Biography :Field was born in 1921 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and graduated from Princeton High School in 1938. His subsequent formal education was limited to a few months each at Rutgers night school, the...
of The Field Poll had already offered the theory as explanation for his poll's errors, suggesting it (without providing supporting data for the claim) on the day after the election. Ken Khachigian
Ken Khachigian
Kenneth L. Khachigian is an American campaign strategist, speechwriter, and attorney. He was a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon and was chief speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan....
, a senior strategist and day-to-day tactician in Deukmejian's 1982 campaign, has noted that Field's final pre-election poll was badly timed, since it was taken over the weekend, and most late polls failed to register a surge in support for Deukmejian in the campaign's final two weeks. In addition, the exit polling failed to consider absentee balloting in an election which saw an "unprecedented wave of absentee voters" organized on Deukmejian's behalf. In short, Khachigian argues, the "Bradley effect" was simply an attempt to come up with an excuse for what was really the result of flawed opinion polling practices.
1983 to 1992
Other races which have been cited as possible demonstrations of the Bradley effect include the 1983 race for Mayor of ChicagoMayor of Chicago
The Mayor of Chicago is the chief executive of Chicago, Illinois, the third largest city in the United States. He or she is charged with directing city departments and agencies, and with the advice and consent of the Chicago City Council, appoints department and agency leaders.-Appointment...
, the 1988 Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
primary
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....
race in Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
for President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, and the 1989 race for Mayor of New York City
Mayor of New York City
The Mayor of the City of New York is head of the executive branch of New York City's government. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property, police and fire protection, most public agencies, and enforces all city and state laws within New York City.The budget overseen by the...
.
The 1983 race in Chicago featured a black candidate, Harold Washington
Harold Washington
Harold Lee Washington was an American lawyer and politician who became the first African-American Mayor of Chicago, serving from 1983 until his death in 1987.- Early years and military service :...
running against white candidate, Bernard Epton
Bernard Epton
Bernard Epton was an American politician who served in the Illinois House of Representatives. In 1983 he lost a close and contentious election for Mayor of Chicago; he would have become the city's first Jewish mayor, and its first Republican mayor since William "Big Bill" Thompson was defeated in...
. More so than the California governor's race the year before, the Washington-Epton matchup evinced strong and overt racial overtones throughout the campaign. Two polls conducted approximately two weeks before the election showed Washington with a 14-point lead in the race. A third conducted just three days before the election confirmed Washington continuing to hold a lead of 14 points. But in the election's final results, Washington won by less than four points.
In the 1988 Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, pre-election polls pegged black candidate Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
—at the time, a legitimate challenger to white candidate and frontrunner Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
—as likely to receive approximately one-third of the white vote. Ultimately, however, Jackson carried only about one quarter of that vote, with the discrepancy in the heavily white state contributing to a large margin of victory for Dukakis over the second-place Jackson.
In the 1989 race for Mayor of New York, a poll conducted just over a week before the election showed black candidate David Dinkins
David Dinkins
David Norman Dinkins is a former politician from New York City. He was the Mayor of New York City from 1990 through 1993; he was the first and is, to date, the only African American to hold that office.-Early life:...
holding an 18-point lead over white candidate Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....
. Four days before the election, a new poll showed that lead to have shrunk, but still standing at 14 points. On the day of the election, Dinkins prevailed by only two points.
Governor of Virginia
The governor of Virginia serves as the chief executive of the Commonwealth of Virginia for a four-year term. The position is currently held by Republican Bob McDonnell, who was inaugurated on January 16, 2010, as the 71st governor of Virginia....
between Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, an African-American, and Republican Marshall Coleman
Marshall Coleman
J. Marshall Coleman is a Republican politician in Virginia who ran for several statewide offices between the late 1970s and early 1990s.-Life:...
, a Caucasian candidate. In that race, Wilder prevailed, but by less than half of one percent, when pre-election poll numbers showed him on average with 9 percent lead. The discrepancy was attributed to white voters telling pollsters that they were undecided when they actually voted for Marshall Coleman
Marshall Coleman
J. Marshall Coleman is a Republican politician in Virginia who ran for several statewide offices between the late 1970s and early 1990s.-Life:...
.
After the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election, the Bradley effect was sometimes called the Wilder effect. Both terms are still used; and less commonly, the term "Dinkins effect" is also used.
Also sometimes mentioned are:
- The 1987 mayoral race in PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
between white former mayor Frank RizzoFrank RizzoFrancis Lazarro "Frank" Rizzo, Sr. was an American police officer and politician. He served two terms as mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from January 1972 to January 1980; he was Police Commissioner for four years prior to that.-Police Commissioner:Rizzo joined the Philadelphia Police...
and black incumbent Wilson Goode. Goode prevailed by a narrow margin, despite having had a significantly larger lead in pre-election polls. - The 1990 Senate race in North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
between black candidate Harvey GanttHarvey GanttHarvey Bernard Gantt is an American architect and Democratic politician active in North Carolina. He was Mayor of Charlotte from 1983 to 1987, and ran twice for the United States Senate....
and white candidate Jesse HelmsJesse HelmsJesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
. Gantt lost his race by six points. Two late polls showed Gantt ahead by four to six points, but one other showed a four-point Helms victory.
- The 1991 race for Mayor of the City of Houston between Texas State Representative Sylvester Turner and Bob LanierBob Lanier (politician)Bob Lanier is a businessman in the real estate industry who served as mayor of the city of Houston, Texas from 1992 to 1998...
.
- The 1992 Senate race in IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
between black candidate Carol Moseley BraunCarol Moseley BraunCarol Elizabeth Moseley Braun is an American feminist politician and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She was the first and to date only African-American woman elected to the United States Senate, the first woman to defeat an incumbent senator in an...
and white candidate Richard Williamson. Braun won her general election race by 10 points, but polls indicated a margin of up to 20 points. However, polls had been just as erroneous, though this time underestimating Braun's support, during the primary election. Braun won that contest—also against a white candidate—by three points after polls predicted she would lose by double digits.
- During the early 1990s electoral contests with former Ku Klux KlanKu Klux KlanKu Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
leader and Nazi sympathizer David DukeDavid DukeDavid Ernest Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in...
, many potential voters would not tell pollsters that they favored Duke (as they feared the ostracization that could result from being on record as being a Duke supporter), but would go on to vote for him anyway. The commentary at that time was that Duke "flies under the radar."
Mid–1990s
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
's name was floated as a possible 1996 presidential candidate, Powell reportedly spoke of being cautioned by publisher Earl G. Graves
Earl G. Graves
Earl Gilbert Graves, Sr. is an American entrepreneur, publisher, businessman, and philanthropist. A graduate of Morgan State University, he is the founder of Black Enterprise magazine and chairman of the media company Earl G. Graves, Ltd. He is the current director for Aetna and Executive Board...
about the phenomenon described by the Bradley effect. With regard to opinion polls showing Powell leading a hypothetical race with then-incumbent Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, Powell was quoted as saying, "Every time I see Earl Graves, he says, 'Look, man, don't let them hand you no crap. When
Possible diminished effects
Analyses of recent elections suggest that there may be some evidence of a diminution in the 'Bradley Effect'. However at this stage such evidence is too limited to confirm a trend.2003 Louisiana gubernatorial election
A few analysts, such as political commentator and The Weekly StandardThe Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...
editor Fred Barnes
Fred Barnes (journalist)
Frederic W. Barnes is an American political commentator. He is the executive editor of the news publication The Weekly Standard and regularly appears on the Fox News Channel program Special Report with Bret Baier...
, attributed the four-point loss by Indian-American candidate Bobby Jindal
Bobby Jindal
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal is the 55th and current Governor of Louisiana and formerly a member of the United States House of Representatives. He is a member of the Republican Party....
in the 2003 Louisiana gubernatorial runoff election
Louisiana gubernatorial election, 2003
The Louisiana gubernatorial election of 2003 resulted in the election of Kathleen Babineaux Blanco as governor of Louisiana.- Background :Elections in Louisiana—with the exception of U.S. presidential elections—follow a variation of the open primary system called the jungle primary...
to the Bradley effect. In making his argument, Barnes mentioned polls that had shown Jindal with a lead. Others, such as National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
contributor Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
, countered that later polls taken just before the election correctly showed that lead to have evaporated, and reported the candidates to be statistically tied. In 2007, Jindal ran again
Louisiana gubernatorial election, 2007
The Louisiana gubernatorial election of 2007 was held on October 20. The filing deadline for candidates was September 6. On the day of the election, all 12 candidates competed in an open jungle primary. With all precincts reporting, Bobby Jindal won the election with 54%.-Background:Elections in...
, this time securing an easy victory, with his final vote total remaining in line with or stronger than the predictions of the polls conducted shortly before the election.
2006 Senate races
Tennessee United States Senate election, 2006
The 2006 United States Senate election in Tennessee was held on November 7, 2006. The election winner, Bob Corker, will serve between January 3, 2007 and January 3, 2013. Corker replaced Republican Bill Frist in the Senate, who retired upon the end of his second term in 2007. Corker was the...
between Harold Ford, Jr.
Harold Ford, Jr.
Harold Eugene Ford, Jr. is an American politician and was the last chairman of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council . He was a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives from , centered in Memphis, from 1997 to 2007...
and white candidate Bob Corker
Bob Corker
Robert Phillips "Bob" Corker, Jr. is the junior United States Senator from Tennessee. Before his election to the Senate in 2006, he served as mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee from 2001 to 2005. Corker was a businessman prior to holding public office.-Early life and family:Born in Orangeburg, South...
. Ford lost by a slim margin, but an examination of exit polling data indicated that the percentage of white voters who voted for him remained close to the percentage that indicated they would do so in polls conducted prior to the election. Several other 2006 biracial contests saw pre-election polls predict their respective elections' final results with similar accuracy.
In the race for United States Senator from Maryland
Maryland United States Senate election, 2006
The 2006 United States Senate election in Maryland was held on Tuesday, November 7, 2006. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes, Maryland's longest serving United States Senator, decided to retire instead of seeking a sixth term. Democratic nominee Ben Cardin won the open...
, black Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
candidate Michael Steele
Michael S. Steele
Michael Stephen Steele is an American politician who served as the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee from January 2009 until January 2011. From 2003 to 2007, he was the seventh Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, the first African American elected to statewide...
lost by a wider margin than predicted by late polls. However, those polls correctly predicted Steele's numbers, with the discrepancy in his margin of defeat resulting from their underestimating the numbers for his white Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
opponent, then longtime Representative Ben Cardin. Those same polls also underestimated the Democratic candidate in the state's race for governor
Maryland gubernatorial election, 2006
The Maryland gubernatorial election of 2006 was held on November 7, 2006. It was a race for the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. The winning candidates -- Martin O'Malley and Anthony G. Brown, who defeated the incumbent Gov...
—a race in which both candidates were white.
The overall accuracy of the polling data from the 2006 elections was cited, both by those who argue that the Bradley effect has diminished in American politics, and those who doubt its existence in the first place. When asked about the issue in 2007, Douglas Wilder indicated that while he believed there was still a need for black candidates to be wary of polls, he felt that voters were displaying "more openness" in their polling responses and becoming "less resistant" to giving an accurate answer than was the case at the time of his gubernatorial election. When asked about the possibility of seeing a Bradley effect in 2008, Joe Trippi, who had been a deputy campaign manager for Tom Bradley in 1982, offered a similar assessment, saying, "The country has come a hell of a long way. I think it's a mistake to think that there'll be any kind of big surprise like there was in the Bradley campaign in 1982. But I also think it'd be a mistake to say, 'It's all gone.'"
Exit polling
Inaccurate polling statistics attributed to the Bradley effect are not limited to pre-election polls. In the initial hours after voting concluded in the Bradley-Deukmejian race in 1982, similarly inaccurate exit polls led some news organizations to project Bradley to have won.Republican pollster V. Lance Tarrance, Jr. argues that the exit polls were wrong because Bradley actually won on election day turnout, but lost the absentee vote.
Exit polls in the Wilder-Coleman race in 1989 also proved inaccurate in their projection of a ten-point win for Wilder, despite those same exit polls accurately predicting other statewide races. In 2006, a ballot measure in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
to end affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
generated exit poll numbers showing the race to be too close to call. Ultimately, the measure passed by a wide margin.
Causes
The causes of the polling errors are debated, but pollsters generally believe that perceived societal pressures have led some white voters to be less than forthcoming in their poll responses. These voters supposedly have harbored a concern that declaring their support for a white candidate over a non-white candidate will create a perception that the voter is racially prejudiced. During the 1988 Jackson presidential campaign, Murray Edelman, a veteran election poll analyst for news organizations and a former president of the American Association for Public Opinion ResearchAmerican Association for Public Opinion Research
The American Association for Public Opinion Research , founded in 1947, is an organization of approximately 1900 survey research professionals from academia, non-profit organizations, polling firms, and government...
, found the race of the pollster conducting the interview to be a factor in the discrepancy. Edelman's research showed white voters to be more likely to indicate support for Jackson when asked by a black interviewer than when asked by a white interviewer.
Andrew Kohut
Andrew Kohut
Andrew Kohut is an American pollster. Kohut currently serves as the president of Pew Research Center and director of two of Pew's sub-projects: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and Pew Global Attitudes Project...
, who was the president of the Gallup Organization during the 1989 Dinkins/Giuliani race and later president of the Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center is an American think tank organization based in Washington, D.C. that provides information on issues, attitudes and trends shaping the United States and the world. The Center and its projects receive funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. In 1990, Donald S...
, which conducted research into the phenomenon, has suggested that the discrepancies may arise, not from white participants giving false answers, but rather from white voters who have negative opinions of blacks being less likely to participate in polling at all than white voters who do not share such negative sentiments with regard to blacks.
While there is widespread belief in a racial component as at least a partial explanation for the polling inaccuracies in the elections in question, it is not universally accepted that this is the primary factor. Peter Brodnitz, a pollster and contributor to the newsletter The Polling Report, worked on the 2006 campaign of black U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr.
Harold Ford, Jr.
Harold Eugene Ford, Jr. is an American politician and was the last chairman of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council . He was a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives from , centered in Memphis, from 1997 to 2007...
, and contrary to Edelman's findings in 1988, Brodnitz indicated that he did not find the race of the interviewer to be a factor in voter responses in pre-election polls. Brodnitz suggested that late-deciding voters tend to have moderate-to-conservative political opinions and that this may account in part for last-minute decision-makers breaking largely away from black candidates, who have generally been more liberal than their white opponents in the elections in question. Another prominent skeptic of the Bradley effect is Gary Langer, the director of polling for ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
. Langer has described the Bradley effect as "a theory in search of data." He has argued that inconsistency of its appearance, particularly in more recent elections, casts doubt upon its validity as a theory.
Of all of the races presented as possible examples of the Bradley effect theory, perhaps the one most fiercely rebutted by the theory's critics is the 1982 Bradley/Deukmejian contest itself. People involved with both campaigns, as well as those involved with the inaccurate polls have refuted the significance of the Bradley effect in determining that election's outcome. Former Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Mathews said that he talked to more than a dozen people who played significant roles in either the Bradley or Deukmejian campaign and that only two felt there was a significant race-based component to the polling failures. Mark DiCamillo, Director of The Field Poll, which was among those that had shown Bradley with a strong lead, has not ruled out the possibility of a Bradley effect as a minor factor, but also said that the organization's own internal examination after that election identified other possible factors that may have contributed to their error, including a shift in voter preference after the final pre-election polls and a high profile ballot initiative in the same election, a Republican absentee ballot program and a low minority turnout, each of which may have caused pre-election polls to inaccurately predict which respondents were likely voters.
Prominent Republican pollster V. Lance Tarrance, Jr. flatly denies that the Bradley effect occurred during that election, echoing the absentee ballot factor cited by DiCamillo. Tarrance also reports that his own firm's pre-election polls done for the Deukmejian campaign showed the race as having closed from a wide lead for Bradley one month prior to the election down to a statistical dead heat by the day of the election. While acknowledging that some news sources projected a Bradley victory based upon Field Poll exit polls which were also inaccurate, he counters that at the same time, other news sources were able to correctly predict Deukmejian's victory by using other exit polls that were more accurate. Tarrance claims that The Field Poll speculated, without supplying supporting data, in offering the Bradley effect theory as an explanation for why its polling had failed, and he attributes the emergence of the Bradley effect theory to media outlets focusing on this, while ignoring that there were other conflicting polls which had been correct all along.
Sal Russo, a consultant for Deukmejian in the race has said that another private pollster working for the campaign, Lawrence Research, also accurately captured the late surge in favor of Deukmejian, polling as late as the night before the election. According to Russo, that firm's prediction after its final poll was an extremely narrow victory for Deukmejian. He asserts that the failure of pre-election polls such as The Field Poll arose, largely because they stopped polling too soon, and that the failure of the exit polls was due to their inability to account for absentee ballots.
Blair Levin, a staffer on the Bradley campaign in 1982 said that as he reviewed early returns at a Bradley hotel on election night, he saw that Deukmejian would probably win. In those early returns, he had taken particular note of the high number of absentee ballots, as well as a higher-than-expected turnout in California's Central Valley by conservative voters who had been mobilized to defeat the handgun ballot initiative mentioned by DiCamillo. According to Levin, even as he heard the "victory" celebration going on among Bradley supporters downstairs, those returns had led him to the conclusion that Bradley was likely to lose. John Phillips, the primary sponsor of the controversial gun control proposition, said that he felt as though he, rather than polling inaccuracies, was the primary target of the blame assigned by those present at the Bradley hotel that night. Nelson Rising, Bradley's campaign chair, spoke of having warned Bradley long before any polling concerns arose that endorsing the ballot initiative would ultimately doom his campaign. Rejecting the idea that the Bradley effect theory was a factor in the outcome, Rising said, “If there is such an effect, it shouldn’t be named for Bradley, or associated with him in any way.”
In 2008, several political analysts discussing the Bradley effect referred to a study authored by Daniel J. Hopkins, a post-doctoral fellow in Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's Department of Government, which sought to determine whether the Bradley effect theory was valid, and whether an analogous phenomenon might be observed in races between a female candidate and a male candidate. Hopkins analyzed data from 133 elections between 1989 and 2006, compared the results of those elections to the corresponding pre-election poll numbers, and considered some of the alternate explanations which have been offered for any discrepancies therein. The study concluded finally that the Bradley effect was a real phenomenon, amounting to a median gap of 3.1 percentage points before 1996, but that it was likely not the sole factor in those discrepancies, and further that it had ceased to manifest itself at all by 1996. The study also suggested a connection between the Bradley effect and the level of racial rhetoric exhibited in the discussion of the political issues of the day. It asserted that the timing of the disappearance of the Bradley effect coincided with that of a decrease in such rhetoric in American politics over such potentially racially-charged issues as crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
and welfare. The study found no evidence of a corresponding effect based upon gender - in fact, female Senate candidates received on average 1.2 percentage points more votes than polls had predicted.
2008 United States presidential election
Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008
Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007. On August 27, 2008, he was declared nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election...
of Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, a black United States Senator, brought a heightened level of scrutiny to the Bradley effect, as observers searched for signs of the effect in comparing Obama's polling numbers to the actual election results during the Democratic primary elections. After a victorious showing in the Iowa caucuses
Iowa Democratic caucuses, 2008
The Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus occurred on January 3, 2008, and was the state caucuses of the Iowa Democratic Party. It was the first election for the Democrats of the 2008 presidential election. Also referred to as "the First in the Nation Caucus," it was the first election of the primary...
, where votes were cast publicly, polls predicted that Obama would also capture the New Hampshire Democratic primary election
New Hampshire Democratic primary, 2008
The 2008 New Hampshire Democratic primary on January 8, 2008 was the first primary in the United States in 2008. Its purpose was to determine the number of delegates from New Hampshire that would represent a certain candidate at the National Convention. In a primary, members of a political party—in...
by a large margin over Hillary Clinton, a white senator. However, Clinton defeated Obama by three points in the New Hampshire race, where ballots were cast secretly, immediately initiating suggestions by some analysts that the Bradley effect may have been at work. Other analysts cast doubt on this hypothesis, saying that the polls underestimated Clinton rather than overestimated Obama. Clinton may have also benefited from the primacy effect in the New Hampshire primary as she was listed ahead of Obama on every New Hampshire ballot.
After the Super Tuesday
Super Tuesday
In the United States, Super Tuesday, in general, refers to the Tuesday in February or March of a presidential election year when the greatest number of states hold primary elections to select delegates to national conventions at which each party's presidential candidates are officially nominated...
elections of February 5, 2008, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
researchers from the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
found trends suggesting the possibility that with regard to Obama, the effect's presence or absence may be dependent on the percentage of the electorate that is black. The researchers noted that to that point in the election season, opinion polls taken just prior to an election tended to overestimate Obama in states with a black population below eight percent, to track him within the polls' margins of error in states with a black population between ten and twenty percent, and to underestimate him in states with a black population exceeding twenty-five percent. The first finding suggested the possibility of the Bradley effect, while the last finding suggested the possibility of a "reverse" Bradley effect in which black voters might have been reluctant to declare to pollsters their support for Obama or are underpolled. For example, many general election polls in North Carolina and Virginia assume that black voters will be 15% to 20% of each state's electorate; they were around a quarter of each state's electorate in 2004. This high support effect has been attributed to high black voter turnout in those states' primaries. Blacks supported Obama by margins often exceeding 97%. With only one exception, each state which had opinion polls incorrectly predict the outcome of the Democratic contest, had polls which accurately predicted the outcome of the state's Republican contest (which featured only white candidates).
Alternatively, Douglas Wilder
Douglas Wilder
Lawrence Douglas "Doug" Wilder is an American politician, the first African American to be elected as governor of Virginia, and the second to serve as governor of a U.S. state. Wilder served as the 66th Governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. When earlier elected as Lieutenant Governor, he was...
has suggested that a 'reverse Bradley effect' may be possible because some Republicans may not openly say they will vote for a black candidate, but may do so on election day. The "Fishtown Effect" is a scenario where prejudiced or racist white voters cast their vote for a black candidate solely on economic concerns. Fishtown, a mostly-white and economically depressed neighborhood in Philadelphia, voted 81% for Obama in the 2008 election. Alternatively, writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is an American writer known for her novels in the Chick Lit genre.-Early life:Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her father, Nelson Valdés, is a retired sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and emigrated from Cuba in the early 1960s...
suggested another plausible factor is something called the "Huxtable effect", where the positive image of the respectable African American character, Cliff Huxtable, on the 1980s landmark television series, The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992...
made young voters who grew up with that series' initial run comfortable with the idea of an African American man being a viable Presidential candidate, which enhanced Obama's election chances with that population.
This election was widely scrutinized as analysts tried to definitively determine whether the Bradley effect is still a significant factor in the political sphere. An inspection of the discrepancy between pre-election polls and Obama's ultimate support reveals significant bivariate support for the hypothesized "reverse Bradley effect." On average, Obama received three percentage points more support in the primaries and caucuses than he did during polling; however, he also had a strong ground campaign, and many polls do not question voters with only cell phones, who are predominantly young.
Obama went on to win the election with 53% of the popular vote and a large electoral college victory.
Following the 2008 presidential election, a number of news sources reported that the result confirmed the absence of a 'Bradley Effect' in view of the close correlation between the pre-election polls and the actual share of the popular vote.
However, it has been suggested that such assumptions based on the overall share of the vote are too simplistic because they ignore the fact that underlying factors can be contradictory and hence masked in overall voting figures.
For instance, it has been suggested that an existent Bradley Effect was masked by the unusually high turnout amongst African Americans and other Democratic leading voter groups under the unique circumstances of the 2008 election (e.g. the first black candidate).
See also
- Flora MacDonald (politician)
- Shy Tory FactorShy Tory FactorShy Tory Factor is a name given by British opinion polling companies to a phenomenon observed in the 1990s, where the share of the vote won by the Conservative Party in elections was substantially higher than the proportion of people in opinion polls who said they would vote for the party.In the...
- Social desirability biasSocial desirability biasSocial desirability bias is the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. It can take the form of over-reporting good behavior or under-reporting bad behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports,...
- Spiral of silenceSpiral of silenceThe spiral of silence is a political science and mass communication theory propounded by the German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann...
- Silent majoritySilent majorityThe silent majority is an unspecified large majority of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly. The term was popularized by U.S...
External links
- Raphael SonensheinRaphael SonensheinRaphael J. Sonenshein is a political science professor at California State University, Fullerton. He is also the current chairman of the department. An instructor at the university since 1982, Sonenshein holds a bachelor's degree in public policy from Princeton University and a doctorate in...
(October 2008), The Bradley Effect. Legacy.com.