Polls: The racial effect that wasn't
All the ominous predictions, all the fretting about hidden votes and closeted racists frustrating a victory for the nation's first African-American president came down to this: the so-called Bradley effect did not exist.
People did not lie — to pollsters or to themselves — about whether they would vote for a black man. The polls, national and statewide, generally predicted the results with accuracy.
"The unambiguous answer is that there was no Bradley effect," said Mark Blumenthal, the editor and publisher of Pollster.com, a Web site that publishes and analyzes poll results.
A different question, of course, is whether race was a factor in how people voted, and for a small group of voters — 19 percent — it was, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls. But race turned out to be less of an issue than predicted even three months ago, when twice that percentage in a CNN poll said it would be at least a small factor in their vote.
Read entire article at International Herald Tribune
People did not lie — to pollsters or to themselves — about whether they would vote for a black man. The polls, national and statewide, generally predicted the results with accuracy.
"The unambiguous answer is that there was no Bradley effect," said Mark Blumenthal, the editor and publisher of Pollster.com, a Web site that publishes and analyzes poll results.
A different question, of course, is whether race was a factor in how people voted, and for a small group of voters — 19 percent — it was, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls. But race turned out to be less of an issue than predicted even three months ago, when twice that percentage in a CNN poll said it would be at least a small factor in their vote.