Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Bradley Effect?
As we all known Barack Obama racially is half African-American and this fact has been and will continue to be a factor in his presidential election. As of today, Obama has a lead of about 8 percentage points in all national polls. If the election were held today, based on all the polls Obama would win in a landslide. The only problems with this is that the statistics are just polls, not actual votes. What concerns the Obama camp and most Democrats for the matter, is not Obama's large lead in the polls but rather something known as the Bradley Effect. Tom Bradley, an African American man, ran for governor of California in 1982. In all the polls leading up to the election Bradley was way out in front of his opponents. However, on election day Tom Bradley lost to an Armenian Republican by the name of George Deukmejian, who on a side note was close personal friends with my late Armenian grandmother and great uncle. But anyways, it was thought and later proven that people had stated in polls that they would vote for Bradley when in reality they has no intentions of doing so, these voters were mostly white. The thought was that because of his race these white voters, many of them democrats, voted against party line in order to vote with their race. The question today is that 26 years later have we moved past incidences like the Bradley one, or will people vote in alliance with the race and party? Here is an example and opinion of a possible Bradley Effect that took place in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzvVYzmWmME
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