As sources of political insight go, a blog that primarily covers physics, nanotechnology, technology and science news might seem like the last place to look. It was, in fact, the last place I chose to stop during my weekend browsing safari. Although I've always loved science and consider myself something of an armchair futurist, in the past several months that aspect of my life has been more or less absent, as I focused on more immediate struggles for the future: the election and the economy.
I have been especially concerned that racism, fundamentalism, and fear might undo all of our efforts.
So, when I went to PhysOrg.com tonight, I was surprised to see something that made me feel more confident: a study of the Bradley effect by the University of Washington that suggests it could work in Obama's favor.
Although the defeat of Tom Bradley in California in 1982 has been extensively discussed, in which the assumption is that polls were wrong because Californians would tell pollsters they were voting for the black man to avoid seeming racist, the truth is that none of us have any sort of reference as to how it would play out in other parts of the country, or nationally. However, one can assume that California is one of those places where admitting to racial bias would be a taboo. But in other parts of the country, it's part of the culture.
What psychologist Anthony Greenwald and political scientist Bethany Albertson did was to study 32 primary contests between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, lacking a general election reference, and what they found is that in the southeast and traditionally red states, Obama outperformed almost all polling predictions.
"The Clinton-Obama raced dragged on so long, but it generated a lot of data. It is the only existing basis on which to predict how a black candidate will do in a national general election," said Greenwald, who pioneered studies how people's unconscious bias affects their behavior. "The level of inaccuracy of the polls in the primaries was unprecedented."
From their data, the researchers believe they have a solid basis to assume that Obama might perform 3-4% better nationally, and as much as 18% better in some states than indicated in the polls.
The Bradley effect is named for former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, a black, who lost a close 1982 gubernatorial election in California after holding a solid lead in the polls. As the 2008 primaries played out, Greenwald and Albertson found that the Bradley effect only showed up in three states -- California, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
However, they found a reverse Bradley effect in 12 primary states. In these states they found actual support for Obama exceeded pre-election polls by totals of 7 percent or more, well beyond the polls' margins of error. These errors ranged up to 18 percent in Georgia.
It seems that in more liberal parts of the country, in the northeast and the west coast, the Bradley effect might play out as expected. However, in the south and the heartland, it works in reverse.
The reason for this, the researchers believe, is because of social pressures. The analogy they provide is that if you call someone up in Detroit, saying that you are doing a poll regarding preferences in automobiles, then a person might feel inclined to answer that they own an American car, even if they don't, because local social pressures tell you that saying you own an American car (to someone that can't prove otherwise) is the more socially acceptable thing to say.
"If you call people on the phone today and ask who they will vote for, some will give responses influenced by what may be understood, locally, as the more desirable response. It is easy to suppose that these people are lying to pollsters. I don't believe that. What I think is they may be undecided and experiencing social pressure which could increase their likelihood of naming the white candidate if their region or state has a history of white dominance. They also might give the name of the Republican if the state is strongly Republican."
In addition to southeastern states, the researchers notices this mutation of the Bradley effect to some degree in states such as Montana, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Missouri and Indiana.
This adds some weight to some conservative worries about McCain, including statements such as, "McCain will be lucky to win seven states."
This is not cause to rest easy and assured, all it does is lend weight to something that I've been saying about the polls since the primaries: they just aren't right this election. That could work against us, although at this juncture, it looks fairly certain that they won't.
However, I would be deeply amused and overjoyed to see a field of blue in November. A surprise, reverse Bradley effect is something I don't think we've really seriously considered before.
Update: Krwingwthyou points out that Nate Silver reached complementary, if not similar, conclusions about the Bradley effect on his blog FiveThirtyEight.com