The problem with Obama is a simple one. One association does not a radical make. But in Obama's case, the list of left-wing radical mentors and associates is seemingly endless, (Davis, Ayers, Wright, Khalidi , etc., etc.) with a new revelation practically every day. With that trend, a picture begins to emerge, and that picture is that Obama is as steeped, not in just left-wing political thought, but in radical left-wing economic and race ideology, to the same extent that Pat Robertson was steeped in the ideology of the radical Religious Right. I would not have voted for Pat Robertson for dog catcher, and for similar reasons, I will not vote for Obama.
George Rose
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Former L.A. mayor Tom Bradley
CAMPAIGN 2008
Debunking the Bradley Effect
A polling analyst explains why he doesn't think Barack Obama's race is skewing the public-opinion surveys one way or the other.
Published Oct 21, 2008
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With Barack Obama having moved into a statistically significant lead in most public polling, and the Democrats' strongest issue—the economy—likely to remain tops on the electorate's mind between now and Nov. 4, commentators are asking how John McCain can win the election. The best answer that many of them have come up with? The "Bradley effect."
The Bradley effect is named after Tom Bradley, the former Los Angeles mayor who, in 1982, narrowly lost a bid to become California's governor after having led substantially in the polls. The same pattern reflected itself in other instances involving African-American candidates: Douglas Wilder underperformed his polling in 1989 (but still narrowly won the Virginia governor's race), as did David Dinkins in the New York mayoral race that same year. The theory goes that, in these races, white voters wanted to appear politically correct by telling pollsters they were going to vote for a black candidate when, in fact, they were not prepared to do so.
Will Obama be the next victim? I say no. Examples like Bradley and Wilder are nearly a quarter of a century old, and there's no proof that the Bradley effect still exists.
Take the recent study by Harvard fellow Daniel Hopkins, who examined the performances of African-American candidates in major electoral races from the 1980s through the present day. Hopkins found that the Bradley effect did exist during the '80s and early '90s. But it dissipated sometime thereafter; recent black candidates like Deval Patrick and Harold Ford Jr. have performed almost exactly as their polls predicted ahead of time. Hopkins theorized that this was because many hot-button racial issues, like crime and welfare, had been taken off the table by the centrist reforms of the Clinton administration.
Then there are this year's primaries. Everyone remembers New Hampshire, when nearly all polls predicted a big win for Obama, but Hillary Clinton emerged victorious. That was a bad day for the pollsters—and for Obama, who underperformed the Pollster.com composite average by 9 points. (Still, it is not clear that there was evidence of the Bradley effect at work here. Contributing factors to Obama's loss may have included his "nice enough" comment, Senator Clinton's teary moment in the diner—and a simultaneous GOP primary, which allowed McCain to pick off some Obama voters who thought their guy was safely ahead.) What fewer remember is what happened two weeks later in South Carolina. In that case, the Pollster projection had Obama winning by 15 points—but he won by 29. That 14-point error was actually of greater magnitude than the mistake in New Hampshire, if less noticeable because the polls hadn't picked the wrong horse.
South Carolina was not the only state in which Obama overperformed his polls. They significantly underestimated Obama's margin in essentially every Southern state, including Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as a couple of states outside the South, like Wisconsin, Indiana and Oregon. On balance, the polling during the primaries underestimated Obama's support by 3.3 points when compared to the Pollster averages in those states. And yet, a belief in the Bradley effect persists. Why? People are confusing voters exhibiting racist behavior with voters lying about their intentions to pollsters.
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