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

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

And Sean and Brett visited the campaign office I worked out of (though I wasn't there at the time) and wrote a glowing article about it. Bonus!

(I was actually in touch with Sean by email, and I like to think they picked that office when they were in Northern Virginia because I suggested it.)