Bradley effect
The Bradley effect, less commonly known as the Wilder effect, is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white and a non-white candidate run against each other. The theory proposes that some white voters who intend to vote for the white candidate will nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate. It was named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to California attorney general George Deukmejian, an Armenian-American, despite Bradley's being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.
The Bradley effect posits that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias. Specifically, some voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation, even when neither candidate is considered "white" under the traditional rubric of American racism, as was the case in the Bradley/Deukmejian election. Members of the public may feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed to be more publicly acceptable, or politically correct. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well. The race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor into voters' answers.
Some analysts have dismissed the validity of the Bradley effect. Others have argued that it may have existed in past elections but not in more recent ones, such as when the African-American Barack Obama was elected President of the United States in 2008 and 2012, both times against white opponents. Others believe that it is a persistent phenomenon. Similar effects have been posited in other contexts, for example the spiral of silence and the shy Tory factor.
Origin
In 1982, Tom Bradley, the long-time mayor of Los Angeles, ran as the Democratic Party's candidate for Governor of California against Republican candidate George Deukmejian, who was of Armenian descent. Most polls in the final days before the election showed Bradley with a significant lead. Based on exit polls, a number of media outlets projected Bradley as the winner and early editions of the next day's San Francisco Chronicle featured a headline proclaiming "Bradley Win Projected." However, despite winning a majority of the votes cast on election day, Bradley narrowly lost the overall race once absentee ballots were included. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than polls had predicted, and that previously undecided voters had voted for Deukmejian in statistically anomalous numbers.A month prior to the election, Bill Roberts, Deukmejian's campaign manager, predicted that white voters would break for his candidate. He told reporters that he expected Deukmejian to receive approximately 5 percent more votes than polling numbers indicated because white voters were giving inaccurate polling responses to conceal the appearance of racial prejudice. Deukmejian disavowed Roberts's comments, and Roberts resigned his post as campaign manager.
Some news outlets and columnists have attributed the theory's origin to Charles Henry, a professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Henry researched the election in its aftermath, and in a 1983 study reached the controversial conclusion that race was the most likely factor in Bradley's defeat. One critic of the Bradley effect theory charged that Mervin Field of The Field Poll had already offered the theory as explanation for his poll's errors, suggesting it on the day after the election. Ken Khachigian, a senior strategist and day-to-day tactician in Deukmejian's 1982 campaign, has noted that Field's final pre-election poll was badly timed, since it was taken over the weekend, and most late polls failed to register a surge in support for Deukmejian in the campaign's final two weeks. In addition, the exit polling failed to consider absentee balloting in an election which saw an "unprecedented wave of absentee voters" organized on Deukmejian's behalf. In short, Khachigian argues, the "Bradley effect" was simply an attempt to come up with an excuse for what was really the result of flawed opinion polling practices.
1983 to 1992
Other elections which have been cited as possible demonstrations of the Bradley effect include the 1983 race for Mayor of Chicago, the 1988 Democratic primary race in Wisconsin for President of the United States, and the 1989 race for Mayor of New York City.The 1983 race in Chicago featured a black candidate, Harold Washington, running against a white candidate, Bernard Epton. More so than the California governor's race the year before, the Washington-Epton matchup evinced strong and overt racial overtones throughout the campaign. Two polls conducted approximately two weeks before the election showed Washington with a 14-point lead in the race. A third conducted just three days before the election confirmed Washington continuing to hold a lead of 14 points. But in the election's final results, Washington won by less than four points.
In the 1988 Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, pre-election polls pegged black candidate Jesse Jackson—at the time, a legitimate challenger to white candidate and frontrunner Michael Dukakis—as likely to receive approximately one-third of the white vote. Ultimately, however, Jackson carried only about one quarter of that vote, with the discrepancy in the heavily white state contributing to a large margin of victory for Dukakis over the second-place Jackson.
In the 1989 race for Mayor of New York, a poll conducted just over a week before the election showed black candidate David Dinkins holding an 18-point lead over white candidate Rudy Giuliani. Four days before the election, a new poll showed that lead to have shrunk, but still standing at 14 points. On the day of the election, Dinkins prevailed by only two points.
Image:Douglas Wilder 2003 NIH.jpg|thumb|200px|right|L. Douglas Wilder's margin of victory in the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election was narrower than predicted by pre-election and exit polls.
Similar voter behavior was noted in the 1989 race for Governor of Virginia between Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, an African-American, and Republican Marshall Coleman, who was white. In that race, Wilder prevailed, but by less than half of one percent, when pre-election poll numbers showed him on average with a 9 percent lead. The discrepancy was attributed to white voters telling pollsters that they were undecided when they actually voted for Coleman.
After the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election, the Bradley effect was sometimes called the Wilder effect. Both terms are still used; and less commonly, the term "Dinkins effect" is also used.
Also sometimes mentioned are:
- The 1987 mayoral race in Philadelphia between white former mayor Frank Rizzo and black incumbent Wilson Goode. Goode prevailed by a narrow margin, despite having had a significantly larger lead in pre-election polls.
- The 1990 Senate race in North Carolina between black candidate Harvey Gantt and white candidate Jesse Helms. Gantt lost his race by six points. Two late polls showed Gantt ahead by four to six points, but one other showed a four-point Helms victory.
- The 1991 race for Mayor of the City of Houston between Texas State Representative Sylvester Turner and Bob Lanier.
- The 1992 Senate race in Illinois between black candidate Carol Moseley Braun and white candidate Richard Williamson. Braun won her general election race by 10 points, but polls indicated a margin of up to 20 points. However, polls had been just as erroneous, though this time underestimating Braun's support, during the primary election. Braun won that contest—also against a white candidate—by three points after polls predicted she would lose by double digits.
- During the early 1990s electoral contests with former Ku Klux Klan leader and Nazi sympathizer David Duke, many potential voters would not tell pollsters that they favored Duke, but would go on to vote for him anyway. The commentary at that time was that Duke "flies under the radar."
Mid-1990s