For the reason Woj listed below They want to look good in the eyes of others so they state they are going to vote for Obama because they believe this somehow shows they are not racist. In the booth however they do not do what they claimed they intended to do. This skews the polls. While a stupid thing to do I can understand why some would do this. I believe it explains part of what happened in Iowa and I also think the pollsters did not weigh correctly and under represented poor voters who went for Clinton more than Obama.
John Thornton
>> Forgive me if this has already been brought up, but in NH and other
>> elections involving black candidates, the % estimate for the
>> African-American was actually pretty accurate. What was off was the
>> share projected for the opponent, so if there is racist
>> self-consciousness in responses to pollsters, it is taking the form
>> of people being reluctant to admit they are voting for the white
>> candidate, not pretending to support the black. This is more
>> dubious to me. (Otherwise you have people lying about favoring the
>> black being offset by those lying to the contrary.)
>>
>>
>>> For the sake of argument, let's assume that racism is
>>> widely spread among likely Dem voters. Racist views,
>>> however, are not socially desirable, and people who
>>> hold such views may want to hide them. One way of
>>> doing so is to tell the pollster that they are going
>>> to vote for a black candidate, even though they may
>>> not actually do so. That may explain the discrepancy
>>> in question.
>>>
>>> Wojtek