The Bradley Effect

by Julie Oka    October 29, 2008

I was having a discussion with my dad last night and he brought up an interesting concept that a lot of people have been throwing around lately - The Bradley Effect. In case you haven't heard, the Bradley Effect is a name used to explain the difference in opinion poll standings prior to election day to the ACTUAL RESULT after election day when the two turn out to be opposites from each other. It is named after an incident involving Tom Bradley, an African-American mayor of Los Angeles who ran for California governor in 1982.  Bradley had been ahead in voter polls for the majority of the race, but after the ballots had been counted, he lost by a narrow margin. It is said that the opinion poll standings were skewed because white voters were giving inaccurate polling responses due to fear of being labeled as a racist. But of course - the gotcha gotcha is all about what happens behind the privacy of that voting booth curtain...

I love this election, but hate it at the same time. It is currently t minus 6 days until Election Day (aka Diddy's birthday!) and I'm sick of hearing about people postulating assassination attempts towards Obama or fighting about Palin's "eventual" presidency (how awful is that?). The Bradley Effect scares me - because although it is essentially just a theory, I think it's possible. People will try to fool you these days - and if the media is telling us that Obama is ahead far enough in the polls to win, that's STILL not enough for me. Whomever you vote for, just make sure you believe in your heart of hearts you're choosing someone who will do the best job for this country, regardless of their race. Because if someone really wants to go there and say that a Columbia University and Harvard Law graduate cannot run this country because he is an African-American, then please go ahead and explain what was so great about the past 8 years when a white man was in control?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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