National Public Radio (NPR)
October 14, 2008 Tuesday
SHOW: All Things Considered 8:00 PM EST NPR
As Obama 
Leads Polls, Bradley Effect Examined
LENGTH: 804 words
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In most polls, Barack Obama is leading John McCain. But
what if that lead is being exaggerated? For years, pollsters and
political analysts have argued about something called the Bradley
effect. That's the theory that some people tell pollsters they will
vote for a black candidate but end up pulling the lever for the white
candidate. Here's NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
MARA
LIASSON: In 1982, Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los
Angeles, was running for governor of California. He was leading in the
polls by double digits, but Bradley lost narrowly to the white
candidate, George Deukmejian. Something similar happened in 1989 to
Doug Wilder in his race for governor of Virginia. Public polls showed
him up by nine to ten points. He ended up winning, but only by a few
thousand votes.
Governor DOUG WILDER (Democrat,
Virginia): The guy who ran under me as lieutenant governor, he was
unknown, but he got double-digit numbers. And so the real question was,
oh, what happened? Well, we are coming in an emerging evolutionary
stage in America as it relates to race, and I think that was a good
example of it. I like to remind people, however, that if the Wilder
effect plays in this election, it will be good, because I won.
LIASSON:
A lot has changed since then. In 2006, for example, Harold Ford, an
African-American running for a Senate seat in Tennessee, received just
as many votes as pre-election polls suggested he would. So did Ron
Kirk, the black mayor of Dallas, when he ran for senate in Texas in
2002. During this year's Democratic primaries, University of Washington
social psychologist Tony Greenwald did a study to see if there was a
Bradley or Wilder effect at work in the contest between Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama. What he found was surprising. In a few states - California, Rhode Island and New Hampshire - Obama did
do worse than polls predicted. But in 12 state primaries, he actually
did better. Greenwald calls it a reverse Bradley effect.
Dr. ANTHONY GREENWALD (Professor of Psychology, University of Washington): What we found is that Obama was
most under-predicted - meaning he did better than the polls said - in
states that have relatively high black population, and this is mostly
states in the old Confederacy. And what we think is going on there is
that people who get the call to participate in the poll, they're asked
to say if it's Obama or Clinton. They
give an answer that's easier to give in their region. And in that
region, it's easier to say that you favor the white candidate than that
you favor the black candidate.
LIASSON: Ron
Walters, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, isn't
convinced the phenomenon of white voters misrepresenting their views to
pollsters about black candidates is completely extinct, but he's sure
it will play a smaller role this year.
Dr. RONALD
WALTERS (Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland):
The Bradley effect this time will likely be overwhelmed by the new
registrations and by the shifts in little things, like black
Republicans voting for Barack Obama. It's not a normal election.
LIASSON: The Obama campaign is adamant that the Bradley effect is no longer a factor. Obama aides say they know there are people who won't vote for Obama because
he's black, but that's a different problem altogether. And they believe
there are fewer of them this year, as well. Cornell Belcher is the
DNC's pollster. He also advises Obama. He
agrees with Ron Walters that this is not a normal election, because,
Belcher says, this year voters' concerns about the economy are so
overwhelming, they may help diminish traditional resistance to a black
candidate.
Mr. CORNELL BELCHER (Pollster,
Democratic National Committee): The economy is, to a certain extent,
what terrorism was in 2004. The bad guy at the door isn't someone who
may be out to blow you up. The bad guy at the door is a guy in a
pinstripe suit with a foreclosure notice. So, it's a very dramatically
different issue landscape then we saw in 2004.
LIASSON: But, says Ron Walters, that doesn't mean race isn't playing a role in the campaign.
Dr.
WALTERS: The presidency is almost an anthropological leadership
position. And I mean by that that it represents the head of a tribe to
a lot of people. They want the president to be like them, look like
them, etcetera. And to that extent, there's a lot of emotional content
about who the president of the United States is. Barack Obama - part of the politics of this election is that he's been trying to overcome that cultural barrier.
LIASSON: So the consensus seems to be that while there are people who will not vote for Obama because
he's black, there are probably a lot fewer of them who are willing to
lie about it to pollsters. Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.