you *hope* that the Bradley effect kicks in? Ugh.

Yeah. Ugh. Can’t you hope for something a little less hateful, like chunks of toilet ice from passing airliners knocking gargoyles off cathedrals throughout America, which in turn hit hotdog venders whose dying reflexes are to squeeze mustard bottles with such force that huge globs of French’s hit every Obama supporter square in the face, drowning us all on the way to the polls? I mean really, “hoping” for widespread, gut-level racism is cynical, even for DKL.

We found out today that our ward is being split next Sunday. That, and our impending school bond election in my school district, has more of a hold on my thoughts. But I do think it’s a fait accompli. I early-voted, and I had a couple more Democrats on it than Republicans, but that’s largely because of how I approach the electing of Supreme Court judges in Texas (vote out incumbents). I spent way more time agonizing over the school bonds than I did over my undervote for president.

Ardis, I am emphatically not hoping for racism. Interpreting the Bradley effect as “racism” is a profoundly hateful interpretation of the data.

The Bradley effect is an instance of what scientists call “social desirability bias.” This occurs when a person tells other people what she thinks she’s supposed to say instead of the truth. For example, a survey asking about illicit drugs is liable to social desirability bias, because respondents may tend to feel reticent to admit that they have used drugs. On an informal level, social desirability bias explains Barry Goldwater’s statement to the effect that he never met anyone who didn’t claim to have voted for him.

In our own race-bating, pro-affirmative-action culture, many people are reticent to admit that they’ll vote against a black Democratic candidate, because they fear being perceived as a racist. (It’s interesting to note that the Bradley effect has never been observed to occur with black Republicans — probably because Republicans do not tend to build careers off of claims of racial guilt and victimhood.)

Your accusation that I’m hoping for something “hateful” or “‘hoping’ for widespread, gut-level racism” is an outrage, even for the bloggernacle.

I do, however, find it interesting that I can’t hope that a black Democratic candidate will underperform his polls without being accused of fanning the flames of racism and hatefulness.

So, DKL, what see you on Prop 8?

DKL, I am waiting in vain for a journalist to emphasize that the Bradley Effect is not some sort of flaw in voting, as if the polls are the proper measure of voter preferences and the actual election results are somehow flawed or biased. The Bradley Effect, if there is one, just means the polls were wrong. Properly explained, it does nothing to discredit the voting or th candidates. It simply discredits pollsters and their inadequate methods of polling.

And the likely impact (if there is one) of the Bradley Effect is to overstate the support of the affected candidate in pre-election coverage, which probably works a net benefit to the “victimized” candidate. If Obama wins, you won’t hear a word about it. If he loses, it will be trotted out by the media to flay those who voted for McCain.

That’s an excellent point, Dave. The reason why we vote by secret ballot is to overcome social desirability bias.

anon, as Dave points out, social desirability bias doesn’t impact voting, because voting occurs in secret. It impacts polls that try to predict voting (including exit polls), and whether you misrepresent your voting preferences is a question that only you can answer. That said, personally, I’d vote for the Republican.

I’d vote for him to go on a mission.

mike d, I don’t see that as a tremendously unlikely scenario, it’s just not what I think will happen based on history. The Democrats in Virginia and North Carolina have targeted blacks for decades telling them that the Republicans are racists who will return them to Jim Crow days. Personally, I don’t see some sudden upswell now. I’m also skeptical of the “new voter” phenomenon, which has also been predicted for decades.

The most prevalent error in presidential tracking polls in the past 28 years hasn’t been failure to include new voters (be they young or black) or failure to include cell-phone-only households or failure to include families who are not at home in the evenings. The most prevalent error in presidential tracking polls in the past 28 years has been an underestimation of Republican performance.

Like I said, your scenario isn’t impossible or even unlikely. It’s just one that I’m skeptical of. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I was going to correct your misunderstanding of what the Bradley effect means, DKL, until I saw your declaration of love for Dick Cheney. Now I know that you are beyond any hope of rationality.

Ardis, just keep spreading hate with your comments. That’s sure to convince me that I’m wrong about the Bradley effect.

Spoken like a true expert in black America!

You think? First, what’s “black America”? Second how can you tell that is what an expert in it would speak like? (I don’t mind the idea of sounding like “expert in black America” I am just not sure what it means…)

“in private, vote for who [you] think will be the best for the job.”

I’m not from America, but for some reason I find this political race unbelievably compelling. With my limited perspective I really hope Obama wins, he appears to be campaigning with a far more tolerant, positive and palatable message than the McCain camp, which seems to think divisiveness and negativity, playing the us and them game, will win in the end. (To borrow from the Daily Show) The strange thing is that the Republicans are stressing the theoretical damage that Obama may possibly cause if elected, while ignoring the damage they’ve actually caused over the last 8 years. Referencing Tammy (see quote above), it’s hard to understand why people would think that McCain is best equipped to lead the free world given his erratic decision making of late and the hatchet job of a campaign he’s run (I know his aides need to shoulder some of the responsibility), but like I said I’m on the outside looking in and apparently Obama’s a terrorist/socialist. It’s all very interesting.

It means that you have your fingers on the pulse of black opinion in America.

Spoken like a true expert on true experts in black America!

DKL,

“I hope that the Bradley effect kicks in huge”

Unfortunately, I’d also call this a racist remark. I don’t think you to be a racist most of the time, just maybe against Latinos, but this time you’re mistaken. The fact that, as you correctly say people wont “admit that they’ll vote against a black Democratic candidate, because they fear being perceived as a racist” is prima facie evidence that the Bradley affect is a racist phenomenon. People don’t want to admit their racist views until they are alone voting, then ‘the racism’ comes out. Its everything to do with racism and the fact you want it to happen is disconcerting and troubling at best.

For want its worth my money is on Florida, Ohio and Virginia going to Obama, contrary to you which gives him 310+ unless a Bradley effect kicks in -if it does and McCain wins we’ll have new nationwide Rodney-King-type riots, which makes for great TV!

Charlie,

“The fact that, as you correctly say people wont “admit that they’ll vote against a black Democratic candidate, because they fear being perceived as a racist” is prima facie evidence that the Bradley affect is a racist phenomenon. People don’t want to admit their racist views until they are alone voting, then ‘the racism’ comes out.”

Are you saying that the fact that people are afraid of being calling a racist is proof that they are racists?

Are you afraid of being called an idiot?

Aluwid,

Look at why people didn’t want to vote for the black person, it wasn’t about the issue or taxes but only race, and then afterwards they choose not to tell the truth to the interviewer.

Aluwid, there are always many new voters registered every election cycle. I don’t think that the ACORN voter fraud changes this. I’m also a skeptic about the new voter models. Also, the pollsters do have a monetary incentive to be accurate. Even though nobody makes money directly by publishing presidential tracking polls, they give prestige, and the pollster who can get the best results has a substantial bragging point for at least 4 years.

I’ve said before that the two polls that I watch are Rasmussen and Battleground/GWU (at Obama +5% and +4% respectively today). IBD got the 2004 election correct (Obama +2% today). CBS and ABC have Obama into double-digit leads, and I believe that these polls are outliers. Everyone else who had Obama up double digits (e.g., Pew & Newsweek) has either backed off of it or stopped releasing polls (Newsweek polls have historically been very inaccurate anyway). Zogby published numbers showing McCain ahead by 1% on Friday, but that appears to have been an attempt to grab a headline, since everything has returned to normal.

No matter how you cut it, there’s just no denying that McCain is behind in the polls by a decent margin, and this race is too well worn for a violent swing. It would take a heck of a Bradley effect to swing things for McCain, which is darned unlikely, but still worth praying for.

DKL (#37): That’s the most racist thing said yet.

Good call. Come on Charlie — give Americans more credit than that!

LOL. Good point! There’s a reason we call him “Charlie”

DKL,

“your argument is this: because people are racist but won’t admit it” Yes!

Collin Powell made it clear in his bio by writing that when whites go into the booth they just won’t vote for a black man. Now it can’t also be about issues with both Powell and Bradley, can it?

Another example was Duke, the ex KKK leader and still then Nazi, people followed him due to his racism but wouldn’t admit it off course.

Bradley effect sound nice to academic ears when ’social desirability bias’ is mentioned but don’t kid yourself, its only basic racism, the type you don’t face a law suit for.

Hey DKL, you now ready to admit your false and mistaken economic views after reading up on that TPC report? My guess is no!

DKL said:

mike d, I don’t see that as a tremendously unlikely scenario, it’s just not what I think will happen based on history. The Democrats in Virginia and North Carolina have targeted blacks for decades telling them that the Republicans are racists who will return them to Jim Crow days. Personally, I don’t see some sudden upswell now. I’m also skeptical of the “new voter” phenomenon, which has also been predicted for decades.

Based on history we’d have two white male candidates. From a lot of the black people I know there is a ton of enthusiasm for Obama in the community and they want to participate in something they see as historic. We don’t really have any history to judge how black voters will turn out for a viable black candidate in a presidential election.

mike d, first of all, I do believe that black turnout will be higher, because that’s in keeping with higher turnout rates among blacks for the past several elections. I just don’t see it going through the roof.

More to the point, black candidates aren’t new to Virginia and North Carolina. Doug Wilder, for example, was a very popular black lieutenant governor (1986-1990) and governor of Virginia (1990-1994). As lt. governor, he was the 1st black to win statewide election in South since Reconstruction (lt. governors run on their own in Virginia and are independent of the Governor on the ballot). As governor of Virginia, he was the 1st black governor in the USA. In recognition of the fact that he achieved so much in spite being black, the NAACP gave him the Spingarn Medal in 1990, just like Mayor Bradley in 1984. (The black power structure is pretty filthy and outrageously diluted with double and triple standards; just imagine the outrage if the Mormon church gave a medal to Mitt Romney being a Mormon who almost achieved the presidency!)

Also, in Virginia, Democrat Charles Robb defeated Republican Maurice Dawkins for the US Senate in 1988. Robb was white, and Dawkins was black, but Dawkins got only 29% of the vote — and he didn’t get any significant fraction of black votes. Blacks don’t vote for blacks; blacks vote for Democrats. I was a delegate at the Virginia state convention that nominated Dawkins, and I voted for him on the 2nd ballot at the convention and in the voting booth later in November of that year. This means that I was voting for black candidates before most of the contributors here could vote. It also makes it likely that I’ve cast more votes for black candidates than most commenters.

The funny thing is that my black friends are all worried about the black vote, because they say that blacks are such historically unreliable voters. All my white friends think that the blacks will hand it to Obama in an unprecedented display of black power (all my non-Mormon friends are Democrats, btw — I live in Massachusetts).

There aren’t nearly as many unknowns here as the press would have us believe. Even so, perhaps this is different.

One of the things that keeps me coming back to this site is seeing what sort of new d-bag thing DKL will say and how people respond to him. I’m never disappointed.

Someone being afraid of called racist does not make that person racist. Only a bigot would think otherwise.

That’s where you’re wrong. Nazis, commies and bullies who kick puppies also think otherwise.

Devyn: …if someone will not vote for someone solely based on skin color above all else, then that, to me, is racist.

Agreed. I don’t see the connection between this and the Bradley Effect, unless you’re repeating Charlie’s circular argument that racism causes people to lie to pollsters, therefore the Bradley effect proves that there’s racism.

As Dave shrewdly pointed out in comment #12, the Bradley effect is a problem with polling, not a problem with voting.

I voted early because I’m going to be out of town tomorrow. I went into the city offices not knowing how I was going to vote for president. I knew I was voting for Jim Matheson, a Democrat. That influenced my vote for president. I honestly think Obama has a chance in Utah this election.

The single most deciding factor in my vote was the possibility of a Democratic majority in Congress. So I voted for McCain.

Then I saw Obama’s 30 minute ad on TV and I thought, “Damn, this guy is good. I wish I’d voted for him.” Then I thought, “but maybe he’s bought the election, maybe he’s too good to be true, maybe……” And I saw McCain on TV and I thought, “you know, the Republicans said the same thing about McGovern and look how that turned out.”

I think that vote for McGovern is the only vote I’ve truly cast FOR someone since I started voting and is the only one I’ve felt good about in 36 years.

Okay, this might sound racist, but I am so overjoyed that a black person finally got to run for president that I feel sort of disgusted at myself that I didn’t vote for him. I wanted to tell my grandchildren, “a black man ran and I voted for him. I voted for the first black president of the US.”

Tell the truth, I almost didn’t vote at all because I couldn’t make up my mind.

Early voting is nice. I voted about two weeks ago and it was a relief.

Hey, with stories like that annegb I’m starting to think John McCain may have a chance at winning Utah after all!

Geoff, I actually oppose early voting, except absentee ballots which require a signed statement that you’ll be unable to vote on election day at your precinct.

I went off ranting about touch screens without connecting it to early voting.

Because there isn’t enough touch screen infrastructure to actually accommodate voters on election day we have to have early voting in order to actually allow people to vote. I know that Republicans hate early voting and its siblings but you must remember that all these evils are the spoils of your illegitimate victory in the 2000 election.

Was John Major’s opponent black?

No, but he was Welsh.

Samuel the Lamanite, that’s got to be the stupidest line of reasoning I’ve seen. period. We currently have a Harvard MBA as a president. Fat lot of good his education did.

Here’s racism: Obama got into Ivy League colleges as part of affirmative action set-asides. He said so himself. If Palin had been black, she probably would have gotten into Columbia, too.

If Palin had an aunt who was an fugitive alien living in public housing and making illegal campaign contributions…

jjohnson: it’s sexism to think people aren’t ready to see Palin as Vice President because she’s a woman.

You fail to explain this statement. I don’t see how it’s sexist to say that you voted for Obama because you hate women.

jjohnson: There are plenty of reasons I voted for Obama, and Palin being a woman wasn’t one of them. Just like I had good reasons to vote against Clinton other than her being a woman.

I don’t expect anyone to actually come forward and say that they voted for Obama because they hate women — well, besides gst! Most women-haters invent plausible reasons to explain away their votes against women. Evidently, this is what you have done.

Samuel the Lamanite,

To be fair, Obama also spent some time at Occidental (I believe) prior to Columbia.

DKL,

I don’t remember any reports of Bush graduating with honors…

arj, are you suggesting that if Bush had graduated with honors, he would have been a better president?

I’m suggesting that if Bush had the intellectual drive needed to graduate with honors that he might have been a better president. If he had 20 more IQ points (hell, there’s room for him to have 50 more) and the drive to use them he’d have been a better president.

Jacob J,
Totally. It reminds me of when I was in high school and believed that the only thing keeping more girls from liking me was my acne.

From Wikipedia: (the source of all truth – or at least some of it)

The Bradley effect theorizes that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias. Specifically, some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well. The race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor in to voters’ answers. . . The causes of the polling errors are debated, but pollsters generally believe that perceived societal pressures have led some white voters to be less than forthcoming in their poll responses. These voters supposedly have harbored a concern that declaring their support for a white candidate over a non-white candidate will create a perception that the voter is racially prejudiced.

Racists probably won’t care what pollsters think of them. It seems more like non-racists would lie to pollsters because of fear of being accused of being racist (as Ardis and others would likely do). Even if they have other reasons besides race to vote for McCain, they can still lie to pollsters to avoid any possible social penalties. People could want to vote for McCain because they like his economic plan, and still lie to pollsters. The Bradley effect is not “people who refuse to vote for black people because they are black lie to pollsters” – it’s “people who aren’t going to vote for the black candidate for whatever reasons lie to pollsters” – and there are plenty of reasons besides racism.

The Bradley effect showing racism among voters is only possible if you believe the only reason people would not vote for Obama is due to racism. If you think that, then you are the bigot, and not the other voters.

Also, Peter LLC – what? Nazis, commies and bullies who kick puppies are bigots. So – you agree with me?

Jacob – fair enough – my first comment was limited and could be construed that way. I think that the sad fact for many voters is that they make a vote based on one issue – some it may be race, some looks, some what their parents told them, abortion, etc. So I don’t think we are that sophisticated of an electorate although I really don’t know how many fall into each bucket.

Are there that many judgemental pollsters out there? Do the people being polled think that someone is thinking ill of them because they are going to vote for the white guy?

From my own, experience, having been polled exactly once, I had no idea what the pollster wanted and I simply told them who I intended to vote for. Perhaps some people treat being telephone polled like a pop quiz, quickly shouting out what they hope is the right answer.

#61, every time I’ve voted in massachusetts it’s been on bubble sheet type forms. You fill it in with a marker, then drop it in the scanner on your way out and it counts your vote. I’ve never had to wait at all. Sounds like Utah needs more polling places (or more machines).

Reading this article at National Review Online makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have predicted that Obama will win the popular vote but McCain will win the electoral college. (If, as Charlie has suggested, that leads to widespread rioting, it will constitute the best retroactive argument for why the Democrats should have nominated Hillary.)

annegb–I think you’ll get another chance to vote for Obama for president. I’m glad you voted. I can’t wait!

#88

Yes they should’ve gone with Hillary because Obama has a very thin resume. But Hillary just didn’t inspire people like Obama does and , paraphrasing, whom the people choose the people qualify.

Obama stated earlier this year: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” and “If somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted”.

If that sinks in to the minds of the voters in Pennsylvania, McCain could win (even though he is hardly in the clear on this issue either).

Educational Background:

Now, which team are you going to hire ?

As one who interviews and makes hiring recommendations all the time … I’d pick the one that fit in best with our team and had the most relevant experience to what I wanted them to do.

Harvard grads don’t like to take orders from anyone. They have to be the boss. And they don’t play well with non-Harvard grads. And they whine about how they miss their little boats on the Charles and how Manny is at fault for everything.

DKL.

“Bush has been only slightly more conservative than Bill Clinton” -something we can definitely agree on!

Actually I generally agree with what you wrote here, the judges and some bad programs which in fairness all leaders have after all. I’d also say that the GOP is as dems where back in ‘84. But as for the least corrupt administration? Really? only one guy was convicted in Clinton’s admin -although Clinton isn’t much of an example as a modern CEO.
And the tax cuts may have helped growth but it also increased the deficit to unacceptable levels by any [serious] economists’ measure.

But the terrorism issue was reactionary, he didn’t actually plan to keep the US safe before 9/11, and I’d say almost any president would have done similar with Gitmo for a while and the Afghan war. Bush’s problem though, the problem with his legacy, is the Iraq war and preemptive war. Its overshadowed anything good he did, including the decent judges and his successes in the fight against terrorism. Its unfortunate in a way because as a bloke I see him as a decent, friendly and generally OK. Its similar to what happened with Clinton’s administration being overshadowed by the lewinski scandal , so too is Bush’s administration overshadowed by that one issue -the illegal war in Iraq

Good comment though. I don’t agree with you, or anyone voting for Bush, but that’s another matter.

lets make it 100 comments

Perhaps I’m reading the chart wrong, but I’d put dollars to donuts that Idaho won’t go to Obama. It has a more significant chance of going libertarian, as far as I’m concerned.

As soon as we know the results from Pennsylvania ad Virginia, we’ll know who our next President is.

I’ve made many predictions about this election, and a lot of them have been correct. A few of the predictions that were headliners were incorrect. I tried to be gracious by admitting where I was wrong and not bragging about where I was right. I’d hoped that commenters would be fair enough to actually analyze beyond the headlines, and give credit where credit was due. But being gracious on the ‘nacle just encouraged folks to pile on, and the result was that everyone claimed that I was a partisan hack.

Starting tonight, I’m going to actually keep track of where I’m right and others are wrong:

Regarding the black vote:

DKL: I do believe that black turnout will be higher, because that’s in keeping with higher turnout rates among blacks for the past several elections. I just don’t see it going through the roof.

versus

Mike d: The turnout among black voters is going to be through the roof

Geoff J: The situation with black voters this year is like nothing ever before. There is a black candidate running. Because of that the previous turnout numbers are all but meaningless in my opinion. As Mormons showed with Mitt Romney, when one of your own is on the ticket voter apathy is no longer a problem.

Verdict: This ABC News article states that “Proportion of Black Vote Is Only Slightly Higher Than in 2004.”

Score: DKL 1; Mike d 0; Geoff J 0

Sure enough, it’s over.

On the bright side, maybe the media will start to spin the economic news more positively, which will build consumer confidence and help us out of the current financial morass.

#109

He ‘invaded’ that campus and stole its oil..sorry, diploma.

DKL,

No Bradley effect visible. Seems the US has matured somewhat and your prayers were ignored, or you are praying to the wrong God!. Utah though still looks like breaking 60%/GOP, seems that Mormons still don’t like black folk like Obama(and since there aren’t any blacks in that general authority chart it really shouldn’t surprise anyone)

But Ohio and Virginia went democratic and Florida seems sure to be going that way so your predictions are as bad today as they were during the primaries! I’d stick to just studying logic if I were you

I do believe the Republicans will be a million more gracious in defeat than the Democrats were, I’m okay with President Obama, He has my support…

What annegb said. I will pray for President-elect Obama’s success and he has my support without reservation. Now it will be interesting to see what the GOP (my party) learned from this election. If the party decides they simply had the wrong candidate(s), I think they miss the point. The Republican party has to look deeply into the fundamental problems with neo-conservatism, and recognize that if they continue to cede all power to the evangelical right and choose to wage a culture war, they will be increasingly irrelevant in this country.

Actually, I predicted the outcome of 50 states plus DC. Moreover, I hit the popular vote on the nose. The score is more like DKL: 40 something.

Given that much of this thread was given over to people who were preemptively trying to stake out the case that an Obama loss would demonstrate racism by arguing that the Bradley Effect is a sign of bigotry, I think I did pretty darned well.

Furthermore, that historic youth vote really was supposed to materialize this year. It didn’t. As usual. Like the heterosexual AIDS-epidemic that is always just around the corner. Like the climate crisis to be caused by global warming. Like everything other political-policy-impacting opinion offered by scientists and social scientists for the past 2 decades, the youth vote failed to materialize. In 2004, 18-29 year-olds constituted 17% of the vote. This year, it appears to have been around 18%.

Lastly, it looks like Obama got about the same number of votes as Bush did in 2004. So much for the paradigm-shattering, historic increase in voter-turnout.

DKL: yeah, all I heard all night was how long the polls were, etc. Most of the votes are in now and voter turnout totals looks a lot like 2004.

As for the youth vote, I think you might be overlooking something. True, about the same number of youth voted this year as in 2004, but they way they voted was heavily in favor of Obama (66% of 18-29 year-olds; McCain 32%)—versus Kerry (54% in 2004). Also, of first time voters, Kerry got 53% in 2004, Obama 68% in 2008.

Charlie, you’re like cable channel doing a marathon of repeats of some 2nd rate sitcom: You just continue to just say off-the-wall stupid things. What on earth makes you think that there’s something “I refuse to see” about this loss, except that saying so gives you the opportunity to talk down to someone who is much smarter than you?

DKL,

Smarter than me?

You’re blind and big headed too.

What you refuse to see is the extent of the GOP’s losses. Obama’s electoral college vote is of landslide proportions even if the popular vote is technically not there. And as I’ve already mentioned, this comes on top of the ‘06 battering. Yet you go off nitpicking to try and prove that its not a big deal at all, by mentioning the youth vote percentage but not their lopsided choice for Obama, and point out that he got almost the same number of votes but say nothing of his current 364 e.c vote to Bush’s 286.

Plus you can’t see, or refuse to see, that this all means that Reagonomics is dead. Do you think that with the size of their majority and a dem in the WH that we’ll see more of that voodooistic supply-side-banana-republic theory? That’s the biggest issue you chose to blindfold yourself of.

But talking down to DKL?? I thought no one on the mormon blogganacle could do that. I’m proud of myself now!

And no I’m not Dan -he was much more intelligent, kind, honest, benevolent and had more integrity than I’ll ever have. I have though written as Carlos, caca, Samuel, the utahnite, vietcong charlie, and others. It all depends on which personality comes to the surface on a particular day!