Big Ideas in Politics: The Bradley Effect and Race in the Election

Does the so-called Bradley Effect still exist? If so, how is it effecting the Presidential election? What does it reveal about race in American society? What does it reveal about the psychology of polling and voting?

Here's some background on the theory from the PBS program Newshour:

These results suggest that the "Bradley effect" -- a term used to describe the fact that pre-election polls often overestimate support for black candidates -- may still play a role in elections, according to a new analysis by University of Washington researchers Anthony Greenwald and Bethany Albertson. But, the researchers say, the Bradley effect is complicated, and there may be evidence for a "reverse Bradley effect" in which pre-election polls underestimate support for black candidates in states with large black populations, such as in Alabama and Georgia.

The Bradley effect is named for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who narrowly lost the 1982 race for California governor to his white Republican opponent, George Deukmejian. Polls had suggested he had a comfortable lead, and researchers theorized afterwards that while many white voters told pollsters that they would vote for Bradley, they behaved differently once they entered the voting booth.

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The article also contains an interview with a social psychologist and a political scientist who are analyzing the polling inaccuracies in the recent primaries for evidence of the Bradley effect or the "Anti-Bradley effect."

Last week, they compared pre-election polls to actual results in the 13 states for which they could find multiple late pre-election polls, analyzing data in 11 Super Tuesday states plus New Hampshire and South Carolina. They found that in states where less than 10 percent of the population is black, including California, Arizona, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, polls over-predicted the Obama vote by as much as 12 percent. But in states where more than 25 percent of the population is black --Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia -- polls under-predicted Obama's lead by 15 percent or more.

Those numbers are intriguing, but they raise many more questions than they answer, the researchers and others say.