[lbo-talk] race costing Obama about 6 points

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Mon Sep 22 13:03:18 PDT 2008



>>> Michael Pollak

On Sun Sep 21, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


> Fuck. So the Bradley effect isn't going away.

I don't think this Stanford analysis supports that at all. IIUC, what

this analysis says is that Obama is currently leading by 2-5%, and if he were white, he'd be leading by 7-11%. Which gives a pretty direct answer to a question everyone's been asking for 6 months: how come he's not leading by more?

^^^^ CB: Hey, I told you so (Check the archives).

^^^^^

But AFAICT, this has nothing to do a prediction of a Bradley effect. During the primaries as we all know the more common event was the opposite, the anti-Bradley effect, where Obama got a bigger vote than polls predicted. And for the naitonal eleciton there's no reason to expect one rather than the other. If anything, their surprising finding

that a sizeable chunk of white people who harbor prejudice against blacks will end up voting for Obama that question more indeterminate than ever.

^^^^ CB: Yes, these are the historic tests in this election. Will enough White people vote against racism ? This is an issue at the center of US history , and is properly termed a US historic contest.

^^^^

The only way this analysis would support a prediction of a Bradley effect was if they found that undecided white voters were disproportionately more prejudiced than white voters who were already decided and counted. But

they didn't and they couldn't since they were using a data set that can't be aligned with current undecideds.

Michael ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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