Saturday, October 18, 2008
Is "the Bradley effect" a "Democrat" effect?
Ann Coulter looks at the pre-election polls in every presidential election since 1980. In each case, including all those campaigns in which neither candidate was an African-American -- the Republicans performed better on election day than the polls predicted they would.
Ann's findings line up well with a conversation I had the other day with a thoughtful Princeton conservative ("thoughtful" being somewhat redundant insofar as there are no knee-jerk Princeton conservatives). His point was that the received wisdom among the elites is that only a racist or a moron would vote for the Republican ticket this year. In educated circles, people are supposed to be ashamed to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Would it be surprising, therefore, that a small percentage of people who will indeed vote for John McCain are unwilling to admit it to a stranger over the telephone? If there was a "Democrat" effect in prior years, might it be more pronounced this year?
And for those of you who stll believe that only racism will explain a McCain victory, take a look at this study from Harvard.
MUCH MORE here (CWCID: "Chris" the commenter).
6 Comments:
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Sat Oct 18, 05:39:00 PM:
I lie to pollsters every chance I get. I also ensured two callers from the Obama campaign that I was voting for Obama.
By Chris, at
Sat Oct 18, 06:15:00 PM:
Blogger Zombie covers this issue much better than Coulter going into much more detail on underpinning ideas behind the "Bradley Effect"
http://www.zombietime.com/lefts_big_blunder/
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Oct 18, 06:19:00 PM:
By 
, at
Sat Oct 18, 06:26:00 PM:
Given the current buzz surrounding ACORN, Ann's comment about Democrats fraudulently voting may be more salient than she thinks.
By Final Historian, at
Sat Oct 18, 07:27:00 PM:
Indeed. I have to wonder: What is the separation between inaccuracy in the polls compared to Democratic election fraud? I suspect the the former is much greater on national polls, but given the Electoral college, even a small amount of the later could have a major effect in the key states.
By Georg Felis, at
Sun Oct 19, 12:30:00 AM:
I wonder if part of the bias in the polls could be due to the pollsters too, in the questions, in the voice-stress levels as they speak, and in the methodology when they put the numbers together. Sounds like a research paper or twenty could be milked from this.
