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.
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Debunking the Bradley Effect
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There is little doubt Obama is losing some votes due to his race; a recent Associated Press survey suggested that as many as 6 percent of the electorate may be voting against Obama because he is black. But that's not what the Bradley effect is about. As long as those prejudiced voters are telling pollsters that they're going to vote for McCain, their sentiments will be reflected accurately in the polling. The Bradley effect emerges when voters tell pollsters one thing and then do another at the ballot booth.
So the question is why, if a voter does not intend to vote for Obama, would he or she feel compelled to lie about it? There are perfectly legitimate reasons not to vote for Obama; a voter who wanted to vote against him because of his race would have little trouble rationalizing his vote. If a voter felt compelled to lie to a pollster, he might tell them that he was voting against Obama because of his inexperience or his liberal politics—when, in fact, he was voting against him because of his race. But the pollster would still tally the vote correctly in the McCain column. By contrast, in cases where the Bradley effect existed, including Bradley's race itself, the black candidate was as much or more experienced than the white opponent. So voters found it harder to excuse their racism and may have misstated their voting intention to pollsters as a result.
This is not to imply that there aren't any relationships between race and polling errors. In a study I conducted of undecided voters at ++fivethirtyeight.com++,< http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/> I found that a majority (between 60-65 percent) of white undecideds broke for Clinton during the Democratic primaries. And essentially all black undecideds broke for Obama. (Clinton performed worse among blacks than could be explained through the behavior of undecided voters alone, suggesting the possible presence of a reverse Bradley effect.)
In this respect, however, the undecided voters weren't behaving any differently from decided voters, since Clinton had won a solid majority of whites during the primaries and Obama dominated among African-Americans. So we might be able to tell something by looking at the composition of undecided voters in a poll; if the undecideds are mostly older, non-college-educated whites, the smart bet is that the majority of them will break for McCain. If they're younger college graduates, most of them will probably go to Obama.
Even if McCain were to win a great majority of undecided voters—there is evidence that most of the undecideds come from strong McCain demographics—there are other polling artifacts that might serve to counteract this. For example most pollsters do not call cell-phone-only voters—a young, urban, Obama-friendly demographic. And most pollsters err on the conservative side with their turnout models, assuming that the composition of the electorate looks like 2004—when, in fact, there were massive surges in participation in the primaries among groups like young voters and Latinos, who will go mostly for Obama.
With so many "X factors" like race, cell phones and turnout, there is probably an extra margin of error this year. And polls aren't terrifically accurate to begin with. But there is no reason to conclude that the polls are systematically overestimating Obama's support; the reverse is at least as likely to be true. McCain, in all likelihood, will need to win this election fair and square—which means that he has his work cut out for him.
Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, which analyzes polling data.
© 2008
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