by Frank James
Mark Blumenthal, who runs the Pollster.com website, has an interesting analysis this afternoon on how the polls did compared with the actual results. The bottom line? The most recent polls were very accurate.
Also, the dreaded Bradley Effect, the phenomenon of African-American candidates performing worse on Election Day than they do in polls because of crypto racism, didn't show up. There's a question of whether it really ever existed at all but if it does, it wasn't discernible in the numbers.
An excerpt from Blumenthal's post.
Again, votes are still being counted in some states, so the numbers in the table may still change, but one thing seems unambiguous: There was no "Bradley effect" yesterday -- no hidden McCain vote lurking among the undecided. In the states that were polled most heavily, the trend estimates came remarkably close to the actual result. The undecided vote did not appear to "break" decisively toward either candidate. If anything, the undecided may have gone in Obama's direction in Pennsylvania, a state that the McCain campaign suggested was "functionally tied" on the supposition that Obama would get "what he gets" in the polls with the rest going to McCain. Our final Pennsylvania trend estimate showed Obama leading by 7.1 point (with 50.8% of the vote). Obama won Pennsylvania by a 10.3% margin, getting 54.6% of the vote.
The bottom line is that cumulatively, despite all the challenges from cell-phone only households, declining response rates and worries about likely voter models, the polls of late October provided a remarkably accurate picture of voter preferences and the outcome of the election. So our continuing obsession with public opinion polling was not misplaced.
Comments
Thanks, people of Pennsylvania, for listening to the man and his message and NOT the mudslinging!!!!!
Posted by: MDawson | November 5, 2008 8:55 PM
The Bradley Effect was born in the 80s when LA Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American who was ahead in the polls, ended up losing the election for CA Governor. The theory was that polls were not wrong but that some white voters told pollsters they would vote for Bradley due to social desirability but on election day voted against him.
In later years, when some African American candidates actually did better on election day than polls had shown, the Bradleyites came up with the Reverse Bradley Effect. (Since when can a theory have it both ways?)
Most polls after then and certainly this year showed neither effect but Bradleyites have still not become discouraged. What to do? What to do?
How about the Bradley Effect Defect? That covers all possibilities.
Bradley lives!
Posted by: NickP | November 6, 2008 9:09 AM