--- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >Put another way, how likely is it that people will
> claim they are going
> >to support a black candidate to mask their negative
> racial opinions?
>
>
>
>
> That's called the "Bradley Effect"
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
>
> http://www.newsweek.com/id/45158
>
[WS:] That crossed my mind too (see my reply to Martha Russell). On the second thought, however, a female candidate may also suffer from the Bradley effect, so Hillary is probably an unlikely beneficiary of that effect in NH.
The phenomenon in question is akin to the so called status generalization effect, which is the tendency to infer the unknown to the observer qualifications of a person from this person's "status cues" or conventional indicators of social status. For example, a physician (high status cue) may be perceived to be more competent to serve as a jury foreman than a bus driver (low status cue).
One of th emost intersting controversies in the status generalization theory is how the situation with conflicting status cue are resolved e.g. male (high) bus driver (low) vs. female (low) physician (high). One school of thought claims that these conflicting cues avergae out i.e. these two individuals in question would be seen as more or less equal. Another school of thought (to which I give more credence, because it is more consistent with the cognitive view on human perception) is that in case of such discrepancies, one of the contradictory cues is ignored altogether, and th ejudgment is based on the other cue alone. Thus, if occupational status is ignored, male bus driver is higher than female physician. If the gender status is ignored, female physician is higher than male bus driver.
If we apply that reasoning to what happened in NH, the following interpretations are possible:
1. Bradley effect took place (i.e. white voters told pollsters that they would vote for a black candidate, but they did not) and gender was not a factor in that effect.
2. Gender and race were two conflicting status cues, and each of them was ignored at different stages of the process. When talking to pollsters, voters ignored race and based their opinion on gender, which gave preference to the male (Obama). When voting, voters ignored gender and based thier decision on race alone, which gave preference to the white person (Clinton). This is consistent with the Bradley effect (i.e. voters behaving diffrently in the polls and in the voting booth for social desirablity reasons), but it requires an explanation why the opposite were not true (i.e. expressed support for a female, but voted for a male.)
4. Gender and status were two conflicting status cues, but the discrepancy was resolved diffrently for the polls than for actual voting. For example, voters ignored race and concentrated on gender when talking to the pollsters, which gave Obama a lead in the polls. Or alternatively, they may have been swayed by Obama's rhetoric alone and ignore status cues altogether for the moment. In the voting booth, however, a different status conflict resolution took place e.g. voters averaged out these conflicting cues (race vs. gender) and out both candidates on more or less equal footing, which was reflected in the polls as both candidated receiving almost the same level of support.
3. The discrepancy between poll results and voting results is attributed not to differences between views and behavior of the same set of voters, but by the fact that the set of people interviewed for polls was not the same set of people who actually voted. For example, Clinton political machine might have been able to do last minute mobilization of likely supporters who initially had not been considered to be likely voters, and thuse underrepresented in the polls. Obama, lacking that machine, could not pull the same trick.
My thinking is that probably some voters told the polsters that they intended to vote for a black candidate or a female, but they did not vote for them, but those two effects likely cancelled each other out.
The decisive factor was most likely the last ditch voter mobilization effort, which the Clinton's political machine was better equipped to pull. In the end, it is the organziation that matters, not the state of mind of the voters, which is a rather nebulos phenomenon.
Wojtek
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