"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
Thomas Jefferson

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Bradley Effect

The Bradley effect may be playing into pre-election polling and certainly has major news outlets concerned about exit polling.

PIV did a post on the Bradley effect in May, see it here

The Bradley effect is a so called tendency of poll respondents to overstate their support for a black candidate thereby skewing the pre-election polling. The Bradley effect is a documented effect on polling in biracial contests that have occurred in previous election contests. It received its tag after a gubernatorial election in California, which Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American, was leading in polls just days before the election and lost.

Politico has a story today on over polling with the excerpt below, read it here
Respected polling analyst Mark Blumenthal found that during the Democratic primaries this year, preliminary exit polls overestimated Obama's strength in 18 of 20 states, by an average error of 7 percentage points, based on leaked early results.

14 comments:

ConcernedCitizen said...

This is another one of your shiny things, PIV. The Bradley effect was closely looked at 25 years ago. Pollsters took it seriously and used it to improve poll performance. During studies of Clinton-Obama polls, pollsters were confident that the Bradley Effect was insignificant if there was any effect at all. There have been many changes in polling in 25 years.

Anonymous said...

Watch for the "Obama effect"in 2008.

Self proclaiming McCain/Palin supporters go into the booth and pull the leaver for Obama.

Then they tell their friends that they voted for McCain, and can't understand why McCain lost the election by such a wide margin.

Anonymous said...

Hoping for racism? Wow.

Anonymous said...

that's right, iv, mccain has obama exactly where he wants him! please please please keep on underestimating him!

SmallTownAmerica said...

I lean more towards a Reverse-Bradley Effect.

Case in point: my other half. He would never advertise and/or admit that he is pro-Obama (he HATES my lawn signs). However, I know that he will vote Obama, because for the first time ever McCain wants to tax his teacher benefits, ie his employer provided health care insurance that covers not only him, but our two children.

Anonymous said...

If you go on AOL.Com they have a weekly straw poll for president. The first week I saw and took the poll McCain held a 70% to 30% lead, with over 300,000 votes. Thinking this was a fluke I have checked it daily since then, (it resets weekly but keeps a daily total)and at 1pm today McCain is 95,316 votes to Obama at 73,788, so McCain/Palin have a 55% to 43% lead. This isn't some exit poll with a camera in your face, or some college kid asking who is more believable, etc, just a straight up question of who your voting for anonymously, just like the voting booth. I really am starting to believe the media bias, I haven't seen this reported anywhere. If more people thought McCain had more of a chance, they might turn out in bigger numbers to vote for the winner, which would help local Repubs as well.

Anonymous said...

hey wiley,
racism still exists in america you ignoramus. You are getting your wrong perspective directly from the obama campaign. I heard it on NPR too and was flabbergasted they would downplay that possibility. They need now for the polls to get closer so there is a feeling of urgency. I am extremely nervous that half the Obama supporters will be sipping wine when they should be at the polls. I am a democrat and i will be dragging people to the polls on nov. 5th. Do not think for a second when it comes time to pull the lever for a president many whites won't have second thoughts. Also, Darrel is a disaster and clearly cannot do the work, why are you supporting him?

ConcernedCitizen said...

"why are you supporting him?"

Because he is one of us.

Anonymous said...

As with Palin, don't we want and deserve someone better than us? That's why I am anti Palin, and anti Aubertine.

Anonymous said...

AOL weekly stray poll. Please.

25% to 30% of Americans are cell phone only households and they never appear in the polled statistics because polls only call land lines.

Cell phone households are typical young, educated, mobile and Obama voters.

So let McCain follow the AOL straw polls.
So thats why he's still in Penn. They have the most AOL users on dial-up of any other state.

Anonymous said...

I just knew there would be a racist barb in there. Here we go again.

Why did you give 'em this opening, PIV?

Everything, to some people, is about racism.

Anonymous said...

wileydude is probably right, they have better polling techniques. But I'm not sure how you measure people prividing inconsistantly false information to the pollsters. The problem now is all the pollsters are bought and paid for too. Today's poll have it "even", and "13 points up for O", depending on donkey or elephant poll. And the media, they are real honest about it all. Right.


Dog is doing fine. He likes the cooler weather.

ConcernedCitizen said...

You should be more concerned with the "Bimbo Effect".

That is where people say they will vote for an expensively dressed, ignorant bimbo but then get to the booth and change their minds.

Anonymous said...

Why the need for namecalling, wileydude? I think the woman has been unfairly attacked by the partisan media. It HAS happened to others. Heaven forbid we get the wrong kind of woman in there.

Sorry. I didn't mean to use the word "heaven". Very incorrect.

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