Don't Believe The Hype---Polls and the Bradley Effect

Last week, banging out similar political ideas and issues (read: commiserating) with a colleague during a break, we hit upon an "A-ha!" moment of truth which, I fear, will play a major, albeit covert role in the '08 election, possibly blowing away all indications of an Obama lead in current polls, but which no one will talk about or admit to. Voters' dirty little secret; their prrrrecious!

My colleague, a forty-something African-American woman of southern heritage and southerly, sunny disposition, took me aside to a remote café table, sat me down with some mild force applied to the elbow, and honestly decreed: "Look. I'm gonna tell you how it really went down. This is what happened to all those white Hillary supporters who all of a sudden, in a hissy fit, decided to swing their votes McCain's way. They shut the doors, closed the windows, sat down at their dining room tables and quietly, among themselves and their families decided: 'I'm not voting for some n#*%er for president. If I can't have a woman, I'm gonna go for the default: the old, outdated WHITE guy Washington insider. Anything but a black man in the White House." Her words, not even paraphrased (I have a good memory).

Having been brought up and lived in a majority African-American county outside of Washington D.C. in the 80s and 90s, I'd been privy to a child's handful of similar "A-ha!" moments---frank, honest, tough talk by members of the black community regarding racial issues and underlying, covert bias by the white majority toward anyone of color. And so not only did I believe my colleague when she laid it down with brutal honesty, I agreed with her. Because, being white (an immigrant, but still white), I have been spectator to those private, racially-divisive, dinner table conversations; some initiated by my own, conservative family.

There is some reason to worry. Throughout recent political history we've seen the jarring loss of voter support for a black candidate on Election Day, despite positive indications from the polls predicting otherwise; because no voter would willingly admit his/her racial bias when asked his/her preference by the Frank Luntzes or Celinda Lakes of the business.

Since 1982, people have talked about this "Bradley Effect," (named for Tom Bradley, former mayor of Los Angeles) where even last-minute polls predict a wide margin of victory for the black candidate, yet he goes on to lose. Bradley, then mayor, lost his race for governor despite large leads in the polls---the assumption being that voters lied to pollsters about their support for an African-American.

But pollsters and political scientists say concern about a Bradley effect is misplaced. It obfuscates what they argue is the more important point: there are several ways that race complicates polling. For example, Barack Obama could theoretically score a landslide in the southern states, based on positive, but withheld polled opinion of his ethnicity. And then there's the reverse Bradley Effect in which support for a black candidate is understated particularly in regions where it's socially acceptable to exhibit distrust of blacks. Factor in also those voters who are not captured by the polls.

Scott Keeter, Pew Research Center's director of survey research, says pollsters historically have a harder time reaching voters with lower levels of education. Less-educated whites are the kind Mr. Obama has been courting in this election. Conversely, young people are more likely to answer surveys, and they tend to favor Mr. Obama. The race of the questioner, as well, affects the poll and what those surveyed are willing to say or not say to a white or black pollster. (As does, of course, the way in which one frames the question.) It's not a coincidence that both camps employ their own survey-taking foot soldiers. These are the kinds of basic intangibles we Bachelor's Degreed elitists learn in your basic Stat 100 class.

There is plenty of hand-wringing for Obama supporters and fretters yet to be done--remember, the exit polls in 2004 predicted President Kerry. A majority of polls indicate the Obama/Biden ticket is leading by 6-8%---numbers within the usual sampling error allowed in most polls.

However, many insiders argue that race does not play a huge role in the election this year, because the economy has emerged as such a gargantuan issue, and Mr. Obama is not primarily identified by his race...according to polls. So then, what are we to make of all these numbers?

Ask Flava Flav. He'll tell you.

The Sarah Palin Poll

A few days ago, I received this email from a very Right member of my extended family:

PBS Poll on Sarah Palin - Takes 2 seconds !

Here's the link: http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html AFTER YOU VOTE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR LIST OF CLEAR THINKING PEOPLE, ASK THEM TO VOTE AND THEN ASK THEM TO FORWARD IT ON TO THEIR E-MAIL LISTS. LET'S SHOW PBS WHAT REAL AMERICANS THINK!

I am not what the author of this email would call one of the "clear thinking people" (and doubt he/she realized that leaving out the hyphen that should be between "clear" and "thinking" transforms the meaning of that phrase to "people who think and are also translucent"), because I think Gov. Palin is woefully underqualified, dogmatic, abrasive and easily-manipulated. So, I went to the link and clicked the button signifying my feeling that no, Palin is not qualified to be VP.

But the thing stuck in my craw for a while. I told TBO about it last night and conjectured that the desire to influence the results of the poll was particular to the right. I even went so far as to call the manipulation of this unscientific measure of reality part-and-parcel of Right ideology, as well-versed in reality-avoidance as they are, and suggested that this was something the Left, with our many tribes of focused interests, is less susceptible to. Such email campaigns wouldn't work on the Left, I ventured, because too many Letfies would have reservations about passing the thing along, and then made some drunken analogy to PC and Mac users and viruses.

Now I find that this was not the case. In fact, there were mobilization efforts on both sides, with wild swings in the results as either side crashed the servers before it settled into a 50/50 split (which should have been a tip-off).

And this saddens me, not because I find the effort to skew the poll results a silly waste of time that apparently my compatriots on the Left have accepted. It's what the desire to change affect the poll says about our political system. That this uncontextualized, issue-less metric would be given so much weight as to actually encourage mobilization efforts speaks to how shallowly much of the electorate actually engages. We have learned that presidential elections aren't about substantive issues but which side effectively projects their view of reality into the world.

I mean, really, a fucking yes/no/maybe online poll? It has about as much bearing on anything as that Sorting Hat quiz I took that kept putting me into Slytherin.

Maybe This Could Really Happen

I have been the most cynical of all my friends about the possibility of Obama getting elected. Most people I hang with have been convinced for a long time that he will do this. I tend to have a lot less faith in the American people, the same people who put our current idiot in office the last two elections (OK, so the Supreme Court put him in the first time and voter suppression in Ohio put him in the second time, but it shouldn't have even been close enough to be able to steal).

With the McCain camp's smear machine making up malicious accusations out of whole cloth about Obama and the racist core that our country has still not shaken off, I have been convinced that they would find a way to beat the "uppity nigger" and prove me right. Not that I want to be right on this. If there is one thing I would love to be wrong about, other than thinking the Cubs will find a way to blow it, this would be it.

There appears to be signs of hope. Quinnipiac University put out their newest swing state poll today and they have Obama up in the three big states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, and by significant amounts in all three. You can read Quinnipiac's summary here, but here is the important part:

"Florida: Obama up 49 - 43 percent pre-debate and 51 - 43 percent post-debate;
Ohio: Obama up 49 - 42 percent pre-debate and 50 - 42 percent post-debate;
Pennsylvania: Obama ahead 49 - 43 percent pre-debate and 54 - 39 percent post-debate.
Pre-debate surveys ended at 8 p.m. Friday with post-debate surveys Saturday-Monday."

I think the most encouraging part is the big jump he took in Pennsylvania after the debate. A state that John Kerry had no problem winning, Obama has been treated with a lot of suspicion by the white working-class voters there and has been having a hard time pulling ahead of McCain there. Maybe people really are hearing the truth through the muck that McCain has thrown out to distort and distract from the issues.

Could it be that I can allow myself to hope?

I'm not exactly sure how to deal with that emotion....