Today in the Huffington Post, Rebecca Curtis's "Summer Love, Fall Freak-Out" is the latest commentary to threaten Barack Obama, and his supporters, with the Bradley effect if he does not pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Despite the long list of cases of such an effect, her argument is anything but compelling. Instead, it becomes another example of Clinton supporters reverting to the politics of fear.

Tom Bradley, Mayor of Los Angeles, ran for Governor of California in 1982 against GOP opponent George Deukmejian.   The polls showed Bradley ahead of Deukmejian from 4-8 points.  Exit polls showed Bradley winning.   And in the end, Deukmejian, won.    That the actual results of the election were so different from what all the polls had showed has been deemed the "Bradley effect."

Well we knew it was going to happen. What? The inevitable backlash from the corporate media, on Obama's successful "Presidential" overseas trip.

Despite the denials of numerous respectable pollsters (democratic & republican alike), this morning on Morning Joe, Both Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough, stated that Barack Obama is "suffering from the Bradley effect." I couldn't believe what I was watching. I was aghast.

Why? They said it was because of 4 recent battle-ground state Quinnipiac Polls (that originated up to 13 days ago), current Gallup polling (where they claim Obama is not surpassing 45%), the lack of a bounce from his international trip and the alleged fact that he "underperforms in exit polls; it's the Bradley Effect" they surmised. I will deal with all four points after the break.

These charges are totally inane, and reckless (and border on Broadcast Racial Profiling), for such highly paid media/political pundits.

Aren't we tired of words like "exotic", "different", "not like us" and "can he sit down in a diner, somewhere in Ohio and talk/relate to a customer", with out relevance/facts?  But this latest ethnic gaffe,  is totally irresponsible; even for these two.

Many columnists aware of the relentless movement of the calendar and the current pre-convention status of the two Presidential contenders are starting to ask the only significant question of concern in the upcoming American election. There are many major issues facing America, most created by sheer visionary neglect by the current Presidential administration, but as far as the election is concerned RACE triumphs them all. The burning question is not whether America is ready for an African American President; the actual gut question is America ready for THIS African American man, Senator Barack Obama, to be its leader! America is standing on the threshold of the greatest decision it will ever make in the course of its 370 year history. The question of race engenders another question, namely, how do you effectively campaign for the highest political office with a serious ever-present racial handicap in the minds of voters? We will look at this below the fold.

There have already been a few articles and discussions over the past few months about the "Bradley effect", which attempts to "explain" discrepancies between what white voters tell pollsters and how they actually vote when it comes to "non-white" candidates.

And even though a lot of these discussions end up with evidence that dismisses the theory, as the election season heats up, there will no doubt be more of a racial undertone (whether it is blatant or not), and as long as poll samples are intentionally skewed to help McCain, or likely Obama voters are being excluded from the polling samples - there will be more focus on the so-called "closeness" of this race.

Just a quick note:

The polls heading into South Carolina were predicting a 12% OBama win, nothing like the 28% victory we saw.  What does this mean for the bradley effect?

Ted Rall cites this poll to illustrate why race is indeed a factor to consider in choosing a candidate.

Polls show that two-thirds of Americans think the country is ready for a female or black president. But I’m a glass-third-full guy. When a third of the electorate tells you “we’re” not ready for a woman or an African-American commander-in-chief, they really mean that they won’t vote for one. John Edwards is more likely to beat Romney or McCain than either of his history-making rivals, just by showing up with pale skin and a Y chromosome.

Hillary Clinton's poll-defying victory in last week's New Hampshire Democratic primary had pollsters, pundits and conspiracy theorists scrambling to explain the difference between Barack Obama's 8-point average lead in the preceding surveys, versus Clinton's 2-point victory on election night.  Polls are often wrong, but rarely this wrong, and so not surprisingly, the post election narrative was as much dominated by the unexpected nature of the results as the results themselves.  Whereas Obama left Iowa with a surge of positive press, Clinton came away from New Hampshire with a gigantic question mark.

DemFromCT has an exhaustive roundup of the latest thinking on what went wrong (or what went right, depending on your perspective,) and while I tend to agree with the conclusion that multiple factors led to the pollsters' pratfall, I think there is one theory that deserves closer examination, not in spite of its lack of supporting evidence, but because of it.  Of course, I'm talking about the supposed "Bradley Effect."

We hear often these days of the 'Bradley Effect', the theory that polled individuals tell pollsters they'll vote for a black candidate, then choose not to when actually in the booth.  This theory is named after the former Los Angeles mayor, ahead in the polls when running for governor of California in 1982, only to ultimately lose to George Deukmejian.  Might this theory be a bit overblown?

There have been numerous diaries about the disparity between Obama’s poll victory and his loss in the actual election. People are still talking about a “Bradley Effect,” and Thomas Edsall’s recent piece on Huffpo revisits it as an explanation for the disparity between polls and votes cast for Obama in New Hampshire.

Why beat this dead piñata? Because we’re heading into new primaries with new polling, and also because I keep seeing a dominant obviously false argument being made about this and am tired of it. But I also want to ask: how can we test to see if the Bradley hypothesis is true in future races?

A lot of pundits today, in their scramble to hypothesize, have suggested that Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary may have been, at least in part, the result of the Bradley effect.

The problem with the analogy is that it misunderstands what the Bradley effect was.  When Tom Bradley was running in a GENERAL election in California, pollsters were calling Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters to ask them about their preference for governor.  There were scores of Democratic voters who didn't want to vote for a black man but were afraid of being judged for uncharacteristically supporting a Republican.  They had incentive to lie.  And they did.  Bradley, who had been expected to win by 7 points, lost by 1 point.

I am a staunch Black progressive that wishes to see a dem in the whitehouse in 2008.  But after I saw Hillary Clinton set women back 25years by crying on camera then going back into attack mode I was honestly disgusted.  So disgusted in fact that if it was a Hillary/Mccain match I'd vote for Mccain over Hillary..... and that would be hard but that's what I might do.

Hillary's Boo Hoo Bounce and Bill Clinton's all day attack on Barack Obama were an insight into their true colors.  Bill Clinton really really lost my respect yesterday by referring to Obama's campaign as a "fairytale".  He has lost his everloving mind.  

The Clintons are really pulling out all stops to win the Primary and attain the whitehouse mantle and its shameful. Hopefully Obama can rise above it and NOT use his race as a vote getting tactic.

Okay, I am prepared to eat the title and pull the post for that matter, if I missed something in the massive outpouring of primary commentary here.

I think the matter has been stated most succinctly by my friend John Lacny at his blog It's No Accident this morning:

The real explanation is simpler, even though it doesn't reflect well on the white voters of New Hampshire. There is a well-established phenomenon that there is a certain percentage of white US voters who will tell pollsters that they're voting for a black candidate, but then behave otherwise in the voting booth. This pattern couldn't work in Iowa, since it's a caucus system and everyone's vote is known to others. It has obviously worked out this way in New Hampshire.

Before the Iowa caucus I cited the potential of a reverse Wilder effect there.  For those who don't know, back in 1989 Doug Wilder, a black candidate for Virginia governor was leading by 9 points in the polls, but ended up winning by only 0.5%.  Prior to him in 1982 Tom Bradley, the popular black Los Angeles Mayor (a city that was still majority white at the time, by the way), was leading polls in the California governors race en route to a narrow defeat.  In both instances, a sizable number people were telling the pollsters one thing over the phone, and doing another in the voting booth.  

Such is the nature of some people in a country that has gone far in making blatantly racist statements unacceptable (well...sort of), but still has very far to go on dealing with prejudice sentiments.

My belief last week was that there was a real potential for a REVERSE Wilder effect in the Iowa caucus.  And tonights results provide validation.

Watching the coverage of the New Hampshire primary, we're starting to hear talk about the "Bradley effect" being responsible for Hillary Clinton's victory. The Bradley effect for those of you who don't know is where an African American candidate receives a far lower percentage of the vote than their poll numbers suggested because white voters say tell pollsters they will vote for an African American but instead back the white candidate in the privacy of the polling booth. The Bradley effect was coined after LA Mayor Tom Bradley (an African American) narrowly lost the 1982 California governor's race after polls showed he would win by double digits.

So now we are hearing this again after polls showed Barack Obama would win by double digits and instead he lost by 2 points. There's just one problem: it's not true. Barack Obama received a percentage of the vote that just about corresponded to his poll numbers. However, Hillary Clinton received a far higher percentage than her poll numbers indicated, which suggests that she won undecided voters overwhelmingly rather than voters falsely claimed to back Obama.

Follow me below the thread for more detail.

I am sure that I will be called down on suggesting this, but I can see no other reason why Obama loses the NH primary after being up on nearly every poll.  

Race likely had a reason...