My Latest Townhall Column: How The Bradley Effect Blew Up The New Hampshire Polling

11 Jan, 2008 by John Hawkins

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My latest column at Townhall is called How The Bradley Effect Blew Up The New Hampshire Polling. Here’s an excerpt from the column,

What’s the Bradley Effect? The general idea is that whites lie to pollsters and falsely claim that they’re undecided or voting for a black candidate because they’re afraid that they’ll be thought of as racists if they tell the truth. The effect is named for Tom Bradley, but it has also appeared in high profile races featuring Harvey Gantt and Doug Wilder, both of whom produced results at the ballot box that were too far apart from the polling data to explain with conventional wisdom.

One thing that people seem to misunderstand about the Bradley Effect is that it’s not about racism per se. People aren’t lying to pollsters because they’re racists; they’re lying to pollsters because they fear that they will be labeled as racists. That’s not the same thing, although you wouldn’t know it from some of the liberal commentary on the Bradley Effect.

You can read it all here.