The Bradley effect, less commonly known as the Wilder effect,Kevin Drum, "East Coast Bias Watch", washingtonmonthly.com, July 23, 2008, citing a Google search: "3,820 hits for Wilder Effect compared to 44,900 hits for Bradley Effect". Retrieved 10 July 2021.Payne, Gregory(1986). Tom Bradley: The Impossible Dream : A Biography Roundtable Pub. The chapter about Bradley Effect (Chapter 16 / pp. 243 – 288) is available online at 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.Reddy, Patrick. (January 20, 2002). "Does McCall Have A Chance?", Buffalo News, p. H1Elder, Janet. (May 16, 2007). "Will There Be an 'Obama Effect?'", The New York Times"In high-profile contests where one of the major party candidates is black, pre-election telephone polls have often been wrong, overstating the strength of the black candidate. In polling circles this is known as the 'Bradley effect' or the 'Wilder effect' or the 'Dinkins effect.'""During Jesse Jackson's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, Murray Edelman of CBS News and Rutgers University took a look at the effect the race of the interviewer might have had on the way people answered questions about who they intended to vote for. 'White respondents showed more support for Jackson when talking to black interviewers than the other way around,' said Mr. Edelman. 'The support for Jackson was less when white respondents talked to white interviewers.'""Writing in The Polling Report, Mr. Brodnitz said the race of the interviewer was not a factor in their polling in 2006. Mr. Brodnitz said that problems in the final pre-election public polls had nothing to do with race, but were caused by methodology.
Brodnitz contends that the public polling in the Ford race and perhaps the earlier errors in races with black candidates can be attributed in part to polling not taking full account of the types of voters who make their decisions very late in campaigns. He said those voters tended to be older married white women who were either political moderates or conservatives." The theory posits 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. The theory is 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 being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.
The Bradley effect is therefore an example of social desirability bias.Perez, Simon. (October 9, 2008). "Could Bradley Effect Change November Election? " KPIX-TV, "Political Consultant Don Solem explains: 'It's not so much they're afraid to say it as they think it might be taken the wrong way.' Solem said the Bradley Effect is also known as social desirability bias."Rojas, Aurelio. (October 9, 2008). "California poll on Prop. 8 could show 'Bradley effect' " Sacramento Bee, "'Anyone who studies survey research will tell you one of the biggest problems we encounter is this notion of social desirability bias,' [Patrick Egan, a professor of politics at New York University] said." Specifically, some voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. See also United States v. Cartozian, 6 F.2d 919 (D. Or. 1925) (in which, three years before George Deukmejian's birth, the U.S. Attorney General's office sued to remove the naturalization certificate of an Armenian immigrant on the grounds that he was not "white" but "of Armenian blood and race" and therefore a member of the broader "Asiatic" race under existing law). "The words of familiar speech, which were used by the original framers of the [relevant] law, were intended to include only the type of man whom they knew as white ... almost exclusively from the British Isles and Northwestern Europe[,]" the opinion reads, explaining that skin color has been far from the only test of "whiteness" in American white supremacist ideology and that racists very often deem non-white and racially discriminate against people with pale skin and/or of European or Asian descent. Id. Members of the public may feel 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, calling it a convenient excuse for "major polling errors". 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. Weekly Standard; Aaron Miskin; November 11, 2008 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.Nelson, Colleen McCain (August 10, 2002), " Race makes state races hard to call", Dallas Morning News. 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.Rojas, Aurelio (October 9, 2008), "California poll on Prop. 8 could show 'Bradley effect'. ", Sacramento Bee, "DiCamillo said a postelection analysis conducted by his organization found 'nine out of 10' undecided respondents wound up voting for Deukmejian."
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.(1982, October 13), "Aide to Coast G.O.P. Candidate Resigns After Remarks On Racism", The New York Times.
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.Morrison, Patt (October 2, 2008), "The 'Bradley effect' in 2008", Los Angeles Times.Chadwick, Alex (October 6, 2008), "Should Obama Fear The "Bradley Effect"?", NPR.Geraghty, Jim (October 9, 2008), "Who's Most Worried About a Bradley Effect? ", National Review Online. 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 (without providing supporting data for the claim) 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.Ken Khachigian (November 2, 2008), "If Obama Loses: Don't Blame the Bradley Effect", The Washington Post. 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.
Exit polling
Inaccurate polling statistics attributed to the Bradley effect are not limited to pre-election polls. In the initial hours after voting concluded in the Bradley-Deukmejian race in 1982, similarly inaccurate exit polls led some news organizations to project Bradley to have won.Henry, William A. III. (November 15, 1982). "", Time"The most tangled polling errors came in California, where almost no one forecast Republican George Deukmejian's 50,000-vote victory over Tom Bradley. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times ran a frontpage story on election morning about the lineup of local politicians vying to succeed Bradley as the city's mayor. The San Francisco Chronicle's first election extra bannered: BRADLEY WIN PROJECTED. While ABC was predicting Deukmejian's victory, its affiliate stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco were using exit polls of their own to call the race for Bradley instead." Republican pollster V. Lance Tarrance, Jr. argues that this was not indicative of the Bradley effect; rather the exit polls were wrong because Bradley actually won on election day turnout, but lost the absentee vote."The Bradley Effect – Selective Memory", RealClearPolitics.
Exit polls in the Wilder-Coleman race in 1989 also proved inaccurate in their projection of a ten-point win for Wilder, despite those same exit polls accurately predicting other statewide races.Rosenthal, Andrew. (November 9, 1989). "The 1989 Elections: Predicting the outcome; Broad disparities in votes and polls raising questions", The New York Times In 2006, a ballot measure in Michigan to end affirmative action generated exit poll numbers showing the race to be too close to call. Ultimately, the measure passed by a wide margin.Cooper, Desiree. (December 12, 2006). "Let's talk to break a White House tradition", Detroit Free Press
Causes