Posted on 01/11/2008 3:56:33 AM PST by Kaslin
There's still a lot of debate about what went wrong with the polling in New Hampshire. Personally? With the benefit of hindsight, I think that it's clearly, unequivocally the Bradley Effect at work.
Let's cover the bases on why I think that's so.
First of all, the polling on the Republican side was solid and did a good job of reflecting the actual results. So, there was obviously a factor on the Democratic side that was not in play with the Republicans.
Additionally, the polling definitely pointed towards a Barack Obama victory. There were 22 polls done in the last 3 days before the election, 20 of which had Obama winning, along with 1 tie, and 1 small Clinton victory. Moreover, there were 4 polls that actually included data from the last day before the election and Obama won them by 5, 7, 9, and 13 points respectively. If you compare those polls to the polls that included data from the two previous days only, Barack's margin of victory actually appeared to be getting LARGER. (Average victory of 8.5% on the 4 polls that included Monday data, and a 7% average victory on the 5 polls that included only Saturday and Sunday data).
So, did some event like Hillary crying or those radio stunt people holding up signs that said "Iron my shirt" cause a huge shift towards Hillary at the last minute? No, because it would have been reflected in the polling if that were the case.
Could it be that there were nefarious people at Diebold rigging the election as many left wing bloggers have already speculated? One, there's no evidence of that. Two, weren't these same conspiracy theorists claiming that Diebold worked for the GOP in the 2000 and 2004 elections? So now, Diebold takes orders from Hillary Clinton? Conservatives should file that information away and make sure to bring it up if and when the same people claim that the 2008 elections are rigged.
Could it be that Hillary just did a better job of getting out the vote? She may have, but a fantastic GOTV effort is still probably only worth a point or three at most. So, if a race is genuinely tied and one side has a much better GOTV operation, it may enable them to pull it out, but it won't overcome a 7-8 point advantage.
Well, what about a large block of undecided voters suddenly choosing to vote Hillary at the very last minute? Voters might break one way or the other as a race draws to a close, but they won't break hard or fast enough to cause that big of a shift. Moreover, it's difficult to believe that we didn't see more movement in the final polls if voters really were strongly ralling towards Hillary.
So, what's left? The best explanation is the Bradley Effect.
What's the Bradley Effect? The general idea is that whites lie to pollsters and falsely claim that they're undecided or voting for a black candidate because they're afraid that they'll be thought of as racists if they tell the truth. The effect is named for Tom Bradley, but it has also appeared in high profile races featuring Harvey Gantt and Doug Wilder, both of whom produced results at the ballot box that were too far apart from the polling data to explain with conventional wisdom.
One thing that people seem to misunderstand about the Bradley Effect is that it's not about racism per se. People aren't lying to pollsters because they're racists; they're lying to pollsters because they fear that they will be labeled as racists. That's not the same thing, although you wouldn't know it from some of the liberal commentary on the Bradley Effect.
Does the Bradley Effect happen in every election that features a minority candidate? No, it doesn't. For example, there was no Bradley Effect in the Tennessee Senate race in 2006, which featured Harold Ford running on the Democratic ticket.
However, what you have to consider is that New Hampshire was set up perfectly to create a Bradley Effect.
Why?
Well, consider the circumstances: Republicans probably wouldn't falsely claim that they're voting for Barack Obama because they're expected to vote for the Republican anyway. But, this was a primary; so there were no Republicans voting in the Democratic race. Minorities also aren't going to worry about being perceived as racist, but New Hampshire is almost 96% white, so there were very few minorities participating.
Next, which group of people do you think would be most likely to lie to a pollster and say they're supporting a black candidate out of fear of being perceived as racist? You'd have to think that would be white liberals, which probably describes the majority of voters in the New Hampshire primary.
Additionally, consider that in this case, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have almost identical views on the issues. So, you have Barack Obama, who's young, dynamic, loved by the media, and the first black man with a legitimate chance to be President, running against a corrupt, unexciting, inauthentic, establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton. You'd have to think that would add a little extra pressure on these white, New Hampshire liberals to say that they were voting for Obama, even if they really supported Hillary.
Now, you may say: "Gee, well why didn't the Bradley Effect kick in during the Iowa caucus?" Remember, in Iowa, it was a caucus so everyone could see how other people were voting. If anything, because it was public, it may have actually helped Obama's numbers there.
Along similar lines, you may wonder how much of an impact the Bradley Effect will have in Nevada and South Carolina? The answer: it probably won't be as big a factor in either of those two states.
Why? First off, neither of those states is as liberal as New Hampshire. Democrats in both of those states tend to be more moderate, hence less politically correct, and less concerned about appearing "racist." Moreover, those states just aren't as white at New Hampshire. South Carolina is 68.5% white and Nevada is 81.7% white. More minority voters mean more people who don't have to be concerned about being called racist for voting against Barack Obama. Does that mean the Bradley Effect will disappear in those states? Probably not entirely, but it will likely be considerably smaller.
Long story short, in hindsight, the Bradley Effect is probably the best explanation of why the polls were off so badly in New Hampshire.
Why? For the simple reason that I don't think it's anyone else's business as to whom I voted for - plain and simple. I certainly would not volunteer that information readily.
The Clintons would resort to whatever it takes to win. If Hillary cannot have it, she will steal it.
The only reason the Beast was crying is that they would have preferred to have her anointed.
Remember folks, they will do whatever it takes. They will justify it in their belief that we are doing it for the good of the people.
All the angst on Clinton operatives that day was about the fact they had to put in place the plan to “steal” the vote.
I am sure they used several techniques of thievery working together in New Hampshire.
It also has to be factored in that NH shares a border with the highly liberal Ben and Jerry state and it is very easy for Vermonters to cross over and vote in NH. The same is obviously true for Massachusetts. I’d like to see a comparison of results from polling locations close to the border vs. farther from the border.
Let me clarify myself.
Did you look at those people? The looked awful. McAuliffe never looked worse or acted more distracted.
The angst was not because they really didn’t want to have to do it. The angst would be the stress involved with carrying it off.
No matter what, they are people, awful ones at that. They do not want to leave anything out there to expose them. That would be the end of the line.
It’s the Mass/NY import effect, IMO.
Although the Bradley Effect may have also played a part.
People don’t run around screaming racial epithets at minorities but they also don’t go out of their way to encourage racial diversity either. I can’t judge what lies in people’s hearts but their actions speak volumes. A few members of my homeowners association were concerned that I would sell my house to “those people that would lower property value”..
There was something in the Boston Globe, look on their website.
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I have my doubts about the Bradley effect. The Kerry/Bush exit polls in 2004 were way off also, and no black man was in that race.
I see it like this - not everyone agrees to talk to pollsters. I would think that young liberals would be more likely to, and older, busy conservatives would be less likely to. The pollsters try to mathematically compensate for this discrepancy, but doing so is a statistical crap shoot.
Obama, as we have heard, draws votes from a younger crowd than Hillary, so he is going to poll better than he does in the voting booth.
Yep, liberals are huge racists. That was brought home to me at a family gathering recently. I have a very, very liberal uncle, I’m talking way left (worked for the Jerry Brown for President campaign in the ‘70s) who has his nose out of joint because my cousin, his niece, is marrying a black man. And he didn’t mind telling me that, straight out. He just assumed I was a racist, too.
No question whom he’ll vote for in the election.
ahh so it was alllllll just racism.
This means the MSM does not have to report the REAL story of the bus convoys.
Does anyone have pictures?
I believe the bradley effect. You can see it in the Maryland 2006 Senate race.
However, I don’t think that’s the only explanation for New Hampshire.
If you look at the demographic, Hillary cleaned up on older people. So the question is, did the polls before the election properly reflect the percentage of old people vs young people who showed up to vote?
Maybe the pollsters all had some model for how many young poeple and old people would actually vote, and that model turned out to be wrong.
Remember, most polls have a 3-4 point MOE, and that’s assuming the model is correct. MOE isn’t a measure of “how often the poll is ‘wrong’”, it’s an indication of a reasonable probability that the numbers provided are off by up to the MOE. a MOE of 4% generally means that 95% of the time, data like that in the poll yields numbers withint 4% up or down from where the actual results will end up.
Which also means that 5% of the time, the poll yields numbers which are FARTHER than 4% from the real numbers.
The question that needs to be answered in order to determine if the polling model is right is to see if the subsamples of the poll match the results, given the actual turnout.
You can’t use exit polls for this, because they too have errors, although they are a good first cut — you could break down your exit polls by age for example, and compare it to a the last day polling by age, and if it matches, your model was wrong.
But AGE is publicly known, so if you simply look at the names of everybody who showed up to vote, and calculate their age and gender, you can use that to re-do the last polls with actual turnout information, and see if they get the correct answer.
If not, then there could have been a bradley effect. If the polls give the RIGHT answer with the right model, the problem was the model, not the people answering the questions.
Who is Bradley?
Come on.
I don;’t think she could have brought in enough out-of-staters, AND convinced them to essentially lie, to make an 11-percent shift. I would say that even if you were serious about cheating, doing it with more than a couple hundred people would risk being caught.
If she brought even 2000 voters in, she would have to have done enough advertising that SOMEBODY who supported Obama would have gotten the “word” and leaked it, and somebody who actually VOTED would have bragged about it.
So while it’s an interesting theory, it doesn’t seem practical in actuality.
Good point. Here would be a very interesting study — how well did Obama do in Iowa at the individual caucuses, when comparing caucuses where at least one black person was attending vs ones where NO blacks attended.
If the bradley effect was in effect, I’d expect that Obama would do better in caucuses where a black person was in attendance, because some of the white people would feel compelled to prove they were not racist by standing publicly in the Obama group.
I wonder if anybody has the data to DO that study?
Yes, as one of the talk show host pointed out — Somehow, Clinton managed to take a double-digit lead in New Hampshire, and in the course of a single month turn a sqeacker of a victory into a “comeback”.
Interesting that Portsmouth and Keene are close to the MA border, and these were locations where they had such huge numbers that they ran out of ballots.
That’s a pretty good analysis, but I still say that Clinton vote fraud was a significant factor.
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