With polls showing Barack Obama with a lead over John McCain both nationally and in battleground states, the conversation over the weekend turned to the reliability of these polls. With an African American running against a White candidate, it appears that the "Bradley Effect" is about to be tested.
The Bradley Effect (we in Virginia like to call it the Wilder Effect) is the supposed discrepancy between election results and the polls when African American candidates run against White candidates. It is claimed that some White voters lie to pollsters about voting for a Black candidate because of social desirability bias – in the voting booth however, they pull the lever for the White candidate. This phenomenon is based on the apparent discrepancy between the polls and the election results in 1982 when the African American mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, ran against a white candidate for Governor of California. Bradley lost narrowly despite being ahead in the polls.
However, there will be no Bradley Effect on November 4th. If Barack Obama loses the election it will not be because he underperformed the polls because of a hidden racial bias.
Ironically, it will be the smears against Obama that will eliminate any Bradley Effect this year. Throughout this campaign, there has been a whisper campaign against Barack Obama. Last week the smear campaign took center stage when Sarah Palin launched it publicly from the stump. Instead of overtly appealing to racist feelings of some voters – instead of running explicitly against Obama as a Black man – the McCain campaign and their supporters have taken the more palatable approach. They have tried to link Obama to terrorists, they have implied he is Muslim, and they have implied he is Arab. They have tried to scare the voter by making Barack Hussein Obama a scary Arab Muslim Terrorist Man. In their smear campaign, they have been overwhelmingly successful.
The smear campaign has flushed out those voters who may be too uncomfortable to publicly say they won’t vote for a Black man, but feel much more comfortable saying they are uneasy about Obama because he may be "foreign". This openness and acceptability of being anti-Muslim or anti-Arab in our post 9/11 world is channeling much of the latent bias that may have contributed to the Bradley Effect. Recent campaign events have fueled the notion that Arabs and Muslims are acceptable bogeymen. In Minnesota last week, John McCain finally stood up to his supporters and pushed back against a woman who claimed Obama was an Arab. He corrected her by saying that Obama was a "citizen", but left on the table the notion that being Arab may be a disqualifier for a candidate. It is telling that in interviews after the rally, the woman who posed the question to McCain still insisted that Obama was an "Arab terrorist."
So, the Bradley Effect may have succumbed this election cycle to the more acceptable form of bias in our society today – that against Muslims and Arabs. This bias is so acceptable that voters are able to be more truthful with pollsters when asked for their voting preference. They are able to rationalize their racist fear of a Black man by accepting that he may be Arab or Muslim. This has contributed to more accurate polling this election cycle. Indeed, in the primaries this year, there was little evidence of the Bradley Effect. Even with the smears against Obama in full effect, or perhaps because of them, most pre-primary polls were fairly accurate. In some cases (for example, the Virginia primary), Obama’s election results significantly outperformed the polls because the African American turnout was under-polled.
It is worth noting that even with the McCain campaign in full smear mode last week, the polls showed Obama expanding his lead. The smears, it seems, will have flushed out the Bradley Effect on voting day by moving those who will be moved by these biases early. However, those voting based on racial fears does not appear to be a large enough voting bloc to tip the election in John McCain’s favor. The racist vote is already factored into John McCain’s polling numbers. This last point may explain why the McCain campaign today shifted tactics away from the smear campaign to a more issues oriented approach.
I just find it so sad and upsetting that people can not just say that they don’t like a candidate because of his stance on something or his policies or even his voting in congress. They have to find some external thing to cling to-some characteristic, some different name choice of a parent, some far fetched associations.
I am proud to say that I do not like McCain now because of some of his senate choices, his views of what should be done with the war and his poor judgment of a running mate. I supported him when he ran against Bush and I thought that I would support him again this year, but the way he is running his campaign is just despicable. Nothing external-just my internal beliefs and thoughts and feelings.
I am also proud to say that my incredible great dislike of Palin is not because Mash told me to dislike her,or Obama told me bad suspect things about her and I believed him. I have enumerated my visceral sickening feelings and thoughts about this woman enough times in this forum, no need to now.
My dislike is based on my observations as seen through the media and my “bullshit filter”. Granted, I do tend to watch and read some liberal media (love you Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow), but that is only because I am liberal and have been for years. I listen to the criticisms of Obama through the intelligent CNN and some other talk shows, but these are criticisms of his policies, not his name or the fear that he is a terrorist or God forbid, an Arab.
Mash, I am truly sorry that you have to listen to this crap about being fearful about your culture and your religion. Especially since you worked so hard and endured so much to become a citizen of this country (I remember!). It is crap and it is spewed by white people of whom I am ashamed to be associated with. Granted, Middle Eastern cultures as a whole lumped together haven’t had the best reputations in the last ten years, but I find it offensive that, as you stated, people will be more against him as a “foreign sounding man” than a “black man”.
It’s just crap and that crap should be thrown back at them-preferably on fire on their doorstep! Hee Hee!!
Thanks for this forum to get this off of my chest and out of my head! Sorry so long.
I beg to differ with Mash here — maybe it’s a matter of “semantics”… if Obama loses this election, it WILL be due to the Bradley effect. Lemme put it this way (as I said it elsewhere): “Arab” is the new “Black”!
And so Obama has a double whammy working against him: He is black, and he’s got an Arabic middle name. And who was among the first to bring it to the public’s attention? Ann Coulter (so now you can easily guess what their motives were).
It’s a sad commentary on human nature… and not just Americans, that this great and powerful nation still has such a long way to go towards becoming civilized.
Ikram, if race or Obama’s name influences the outcome (though I seriously doubt it – see below), it will already be reflected in the polls. What I am specifically arguing in the post is that that bias is already factored into the polls. I do not think we will see election results underperform the polls, i.e. the Bradley Effect. I think the acceptability of prejudice against Muslims or Arabs is making the polls more accurate, not less. People dont have to lie about not voting for a Black man, they can use the Arab/Muslim excuse.
As to how race may impact the race, I dont think it will be a factor in states that will matter. It doesnt matter how many racists live in Idaho (assuming that is the case), for example, even if all of them come out and vote for McCain it doesnt hurt Obama – McCain would win Idaho anyways and will get the same number of electoral votes no matter what the margin of victory there is.
The race will be decided in the battleground states, specifically Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada (note that Obama is already running away with Iowa). In these states race will not be negative factor for Obama. In the Southwestern states, the swing voting bloc are Hispanics. They are overwhelmingly going Obama’s way. In Virginia the demographics are pointing toward Obama – a combination of strong turnout in liberal (and densely populated) Northern Virginia and a strong African American turnout in Richmond and Tidewater (Newport News, Hampton Road, Virginia Beach, etc) can carry the state for Obama. Even if you assume that there are plenty of voters in the rural southwestern part of Virginia who will not vote for Obama because he is black, the populated regions can more than flip the state for him. On election night, watch turnout in NoVa and Richmond for a clue as to who will win. Obama hits 60% in NoVa he will win the state (and the presidency).
The only state that Obama needs to hold where race is a concern is Pennsylvania. The polls are showing him pulling away there, but I remain cautious about the outcome. Still, with Ed Rendell and Michael Nutter moving voters to the polls, the Philly area should be able to compensate for any votes Obama loses in the middle T of the state.
The good news is Obama doesnt need Ohio (even though its trending his way now) or Florida (which now seems to be solidly in Obama’s column). The bad news for McCain is that if Obama takes either OH or FL it will be a really early election night.
So, in sum, race is a factor, but probably not in states where it will matter.
Vick, always glad to hear from you. I dont think bigotry in the US is any more than in other places. We just discuss it more openly here. Elsewhere its often just not talked about. This in vogue bigotry against Muslims and Arabs gives racists who do not want to come out and say they wont vote for a Black man the cover they need. In a way, its a good thing. It brings them out into the open 🙂
As for McCain, it seems to me that his ambition to be president has overtaken his other qualities. He is now willing to do or say almost anything to win his prize. A columnist last week likened him to Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I think it was very apt. You could also consider McCain as Homer Simpson selling his soul for a doughnut:
Mash (#3): I see what you mean, and I hope your predictions are right, esp in PA!
Re: #4, I feel McCain’s transformation over the past few years has been quite in line with what the Republican party has undergone nationally, and esp in the state where I live: see “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” and then take your own observations and we can safely conclude the senile senator does serious insult to the name Maverick (unless they interpret “maverickin'” to be doing whatever its takes to become the next dictator… i.e. after GW Bush).