Demise of the Bradley Effect

[jducoeur]

For those who were curious about how the supposed "Bradley Effect" (that people would tell pollsters that they were voting for the black guy, but not actually do so) played out in reality, I commend today's editorial column in electoral-vote.com.

Summary: they averaged the last round of polls for a bunch of swing states, scaled it to adjust for the undecideds, and compared it with the way the vote actually went. There's nary a hint of the Bradley Effect -- in no case did Obama do significantly worse than the polls said, and he actually did considerably *better* than the polls indicated in a couple of those states.

So the general verdict is that you can put a fork in this long-hypothesized political force: in its biggest test, there's no evidence that it had any noticeable impact.

Comments

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

The head of the Dukmejian campaign (the man Bradley ran against, and lost to) came out with a column a few days ago vigorously protesting the entire concept. He provided information suggesting that the "Bradley Effect" was a myth to begin with, and that Dukmejian's win was reasonable given all the polling data at the time.

[meiczyslaw.livejournal.com]

I saw an article that managed an interview with Bradley's internal pollster, and he was also of the opinion that there was no Bradley effect. He seemed to think that Mervin Field (he of the Field Poll) didn't account for the absentee ballots (which were new at the time) -- and then blew smoke instead of admitting a flaw in his model.

It's still not a good idea to trust the Field Poll. Among other things, they were totally wrong on Prop. 8 this year.

[jducoeur]

Yep -- actually, this point came out a fair while ago. I'm sure that I heard it made at least several weeks ago, maybe even a month or two. But it hadn't stopped people from asserting that The Bradley Effect was real, and would drag Obama down...