Sep 14 2008
White People LIE to Pollsters
The statement “White People LIE to Pollsters” seems inflammatory. It is not meant to be. It is known as the “Bradley Effect.”
We realize that pre-election polls are limited in how accurately they can predict how a person will vote in the privacy of the voting booth. If fact, even exit polls can not accurately account for how persons actually voted.
Exit polls are conducted at selected polling stations based on demographics of the locale, and are the basis for media projections of winners. Perhaps you have noticed that network television will wait until the polls close at a certain location, e.g., a State or a Congressional District, and then immediately project the winner. Exit polling is how they do that. Sometimes, exit polling has been WAY off! When does that happen? When one of the candidates is Black!
I say this because of research that was conducted following certain elections where the pre-election polls differed greatly from the election outcome. And, in additional research conducted with regard to vote tallies that did not match EXIT polls, voters who just cast their ballots were found to often lie to pollsters who were conducting exit polls.
Oftentimes, White people who had said they favored the Black candidate, would “evidently” change their mind in the voting booth, and then, upon exiting the building, they would LIE to the pollster and say they voted for the Black candidate.
Research conducted as a result of the 1982 California Governor’s race, in which Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, with a significant lead in the polls just prior to election day, LOST to George Deukmejian, who was white. Other research has also shown that a White person was more likely to lie if the pollster himself or herself, was Black! Thus has been coined the term, “the Bradley Effect.”
That was not the only election where this “Bradley Effect” has been noted. Wikipedia also details several other elections with similar outcomes. The most recent citation, or suggestion, of the Bradley Effect was in this year’s New Hampshire primary, when The Nation Magazine suggested that Barack Obama was a victim of White people saying one thing and doing the other. The Article, written by John Nichols , states that pre-election polls showed Obama ahead by 13 points, but on primary election night he lost to Hilary Clinton by 3 points.
The above link to that article works as of when I am writing this. Here also, is a link to Wikipedia on the Bradley Effect.
There is also one other rather interesting theory this year with regard to Barack Obama: it is call the “Reverse Bradley Effect” in which Black voters may be reluctant to tell pollsters that they are planning to vote for the Black candidate, for fear that the media will set upon the Black community as supporting Obama “just because” he is Black. This plays out in states with a very high proportion of Black voters, with Blacks voting for Obama in far greater numbers than the polls might indicate. We shall see. We shall see.
All this simply adds to our understanding of why we can’t put too much faith in polls at ANY STAGE of an election campaign, and perhaps, with the Bradley Effect, we must remember to have less faith in polling during THIS campaign than most.
Matt, I’ve been thinking the same thing. The trends mostly are that the race tightens up and the poll differences narrow as election day nears. Not ALWAYS though.