The Bradley Effect is alive and well

posted at 8:36 pm on March 4, 2011 by Steven Den Beste

Bruce Drake says:

About three-quarters of voters like President Obama personally, but a small majority don’t like his policies, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted Feb. 21-28.

I’m afraid not. About three-quarters of voters say they like President Obama personally. But sometimes people lie.

In 1982, Tom Bradley ran for governor of California. Going into election day he had a lead in the polls, but he didn’t win.

Bradley is black, and the man who defeated him (George Deukmejian) was white. And what has become clear is that statistically significant number of voters lied to the pollsters because they feared being thought of as racist. “Of course I’m going to vote for the black man!” It was the politically correct answer — even if it wasn’t always the honest answer.

This has become known as the Bradley Effect. And that wasn’t the only case where it happened.

Now we have a black President, and we’ve just spent two years of wild scattershot accusations of racism against anyone who ever says anything bad about him. It’s come out recently that Obama himself told reporters that anyone who criticized him or his policies did so because of racism. So there are a lot of people who are on a hair-trigger now to publicly proclaim their liking for the man — even if they don’t really — because they don’t want to be thought of as racist even by a stranger on the telephone.

When you read any poll, it is important to remember that pollsters are not telepaths. What they report is what people say, which may not necessarily be what they think. People sometimes lie about supporting what they perceive to be unpopular or politically incorrect positions.

That is one of the reasons why we have secret ballots.

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