A few days ago I speculated that the surprise in New Hampshire might have been, in whole or in part, a result of the Bradley effect. Named after former LA Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost a race for California governor despite polls predicting victory, the term refers to the tendency of white voters to lie to pollsters about their willingness to vote for a black person, and of undecideds in such a race to break predominantly for the white candidate. It means that in a race with a predominantly white electorate, a black candidate has to assume that polls overstate the level of support the candidate will get on election day.<\/p>\n
This is one thing I’m rather optimistic about. The effect may still be with us, but I believe it’s fading. <\/p>\n
In 1988 I voted for Jesse Jackson in the Connecticut primary, and then watched the returns, hoping that Dukakis would win. I voted for the guy with whom I agreed, but I knew he couldn’t win the general election and, at least at the time, it looked like Dukakis could. If I vote for Obama this year, I won’t feel the same way, because I do<\/em> think he can win. A lot of folks have died since 1988, and they’ve been replaced with a younger generation, most of whom have trouble understanding the prejudices that permeated society years ago. I’m not saying that racism is gone, but it’s less pervasive, particularly among the young. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few days ago I speculated that the surprise in New Hampshire might have been, in whole or in part, a result of the Bradley effect. Named after former LA Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost a race for California governor despite polls predicting victory, the term refers to the tendency of white voters to lie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presidential-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}