Race, Polls, Obama

I would love it if you would provide one fact to back up your opinion. It sounds wildly off-base to me. I grew up in the South, where we had, and sometimes still have, really race-based political races. I didn't see that at all in this one. So I don't by your explanation. But I'd be interested if you have any facts to support it, or are you just pulling it out of thin air?

@Dooley,

Well if the poll going in says one thing about Obama's lead and the vote in the booth says another, then you have a discrepancy. The social environment of a caucus doesn't allow for people to hide their true feelings. Those are called facts Dooley. Buy the way, do you by that? Bi, bye!

I guess I'd say a couple of things. The polls going into the 2004 election showed Kerry winning. Part of the problem is polling the people who will show up. Anyone who didn't vote for Obama based on race alone is a sorry fool and I'm sure it happened but hopefully not much. The other thing I'd say is that Barak Obama being competitive in New Hampshire is a sign of positive change already. As I'm typing this, Obama is giving one impressive speech. The concession part hasn't happened yet, but it's an exciting speech.

Race-gap polling problems is a possibility for explaining the discrepancy, but to jump to this explanation after just one state, especially after the exact opposite phenomenon happened in Iowa (Obama vastly outperforming the polling) in a state that is just as homogeneously white strikes me as superficial thinking that stems from a cynicism about human nature rather than rational analysis.

Polling is fallible, and does not predict who will show up to the polls, how undecided voters will break, how effective each candidate's get-out-the-vote organization is in each state, and so on. Look, you may be right, but I think it's way too early to jump to this conclusion. If anything, I think more people will be positively influenced by Obama's race than turned off by it.

It also happened in Virginia in 1989.

Doug Wilder was favored in the polls to win the governor's election overwhelmingly. It turned out to be -- until 2006's Allen/Webb imbroglio -- the closest election in the history of the Old Dominion.

david,

thank you for being honest and forthright and dealing with this issue.
most commentators will try to finesse the issue and ignore it and speak around it. you deserve a good deal of credit for dealing with it in an up-front way.
thanks.

I just don't see it as valid anymore. Maryland's Senate race indicates that it isn't there, as Michael Steele won a few of the states most conservative and white areas by larger margins than the incumbent white Governor that was his running mate.

Further, the shift in New Hampshire was among women. They were clearly effected by the teary moment. I suspect that was campaign stage craft--and masterful campaign stage craft at that. The over reaction to it caused women to break decidedly towards Clinton. What was a 35-30 win among women for Obama in Iowa was a 47-32 win for Clinton in New Hampshire. That is certainly not the Bradley effect.

Nevada will get less attention than IA/NH. South Carolina will get a lot of attention. And that is the real test. If Obama wins solidly there, he once again has the momentum going into Super Tuesday and New Hampshire will be a distant memory and blip on the radar screen. If he doesn't, then Clinton is the likely nominee. Clinton can't skip SC because it would infuriate the black community.

Further, there will be heavy pressure on Edwards to drop out after Nevada. If he does, that unifies the anti-Clinton vote (a solid 65% of the party through two contests) around Obama and makes it extremely difficult for her to win.

Clinton won the battle, but she also lost an excuse to skip South Carolina (money). And in so doing, she may have lost the war...

David,

I just googled the Bradley effect and you are just about the only one out there willing to talk about this.

The Bradley effect may not be a matter of lying to pollsters as much as having a racially motivated second thought in the polling booth. This says something about America I dont really want to think about, but must.

I will not be voting Democrat so it doesnt effect me directly this time. I value the unborn of every race too much. Still, it should give us pause that so many of even the most liberal are still harboring racism in their heart. The women of NH were given the choice of radical feminism and something new and fresh, something that would change the face of America forever and they pulled the racist lever.

If Condi were running, I would vote for her early and often--if she were prolife, which I am not sure about. I would vote for Clarence
Thomas, too, if he had Presidential skills. At least he is pro-life now that he is back in the Catholic Church and out of ECUSA.

I am not sure about the Bradley effect here. I don't doubt racism still exists or that some people lie to pollsters. However, it was interesting in 2006 that both MA Gov Deval Patrick, who won, and Harold Ford, who lost in Tennessee, got very close to what they polled in the end. I don't think the Bradley effect is nearly as big a problem as it once was.

Wait a minute, I thought that New Hampshire was in one of those "progressive" East Coast states? I have yet to see hypocrisy from conservatives that even comes close to anything actually perpetrated by Liberal/Progressive/Democrats. I guess the drive for Marxism is just too strong for these East Coasters.

Racist white feminists are going to kill the Democratic party's opportunity to end the racist history of this country. Bradley, shame on them.

I think the bradley effect is relevant here although i don't necessarily equate telling a pollster one thing then voting differently with racism. some of these people may just be uncomfortable with revealing their preference for the white candidate, even if it is for valid, substantive reasons. i DO think its a big problem that many people aren't comfortable just saying how they will be voting when being polled. that, however, requires a much more thorough and profound psychological/sociological analysis than just citing racism of the voter alone.

Rather than the Bradley Effect, I believe the real problem is racial fear. Some white people begin to worry about putting a black man in a powerful position, and, by the time they vote, they give in to their unease and go with the white candidate. The press was talking about black people in the South voting monolithically for Obama, which might unaccountably scare white people who are not totally comfortable with interracial relations. I wondered if Obama's endorsement by Oprah and his statement that he would like to nominate Colin Powell to a cabinet position might hurt him, and it might well have done so. She had never endorsed anyone for President before, and Powell is a Republican, who also got very close to an endorsement. It looked very racial.

Might it be possible that people did not vote for Mr. Obama because his platitudes have worn too thin? Might it be possible that people in New Hampshire voted for Ms. Clinton because they believe she's a better candidate? Where was the suggestion of covert sexism when Ms. Clinton lost in Iowa? Or is sexism okay?

In terms of racism at the voting poll, it is hard to reconcile with the fact that Obama received record setting numbers. It just seems that Hillary was also able to receive a little bit more of these record setting numbers. Not very surprising considering the political environment and the name, money and organization of Hillary Clinton.

The glaring problem with the Bradley effect explanation is that Obama got pretty much the numbers that the polls predicted. (Check your own links above.) Voters did not switch from Obama to Clinton, but rather from the other candidates to Clinton.

This is a pretty obvious, basic, simple fact that can be discovered by comparing the poll numbers to the actual results. Why not do this before writing racist dreck?

"A lot of us are not surprised at the Bradley effect and the racial aspects of the voting.

Yes, I am sorry to say, I think middle age white women in NH were being racist...middle age women tend to be much more suspicious of black men...don't know why"

I totally agree. When they say Obama lost to gender, they leave out that he the white gender.

White men do not fear getting raped by black men. White women do. White women have a viceral fear of black men. Though a conservative myself, I was talking with one of my very liberal female friends the other day and she was talking about how afraid she was one night when she had to walk past a group of young black men at night. Then she caught herself and was a bit apologetic. I told her jokingly. "Hey it's okay to be racist if you are a woman." There you have it in a nutshell. Women who are liberal think they are immune to racism because they are so open minded. But their open mindedness runs amazingly right along with their own selfish self interest. So, in the minds of many white women, "it's okay to be racist if you are a woman."

Clinton gave the nation's highest civilian award — the Presidential Medal of Freedom — to a man who spent the vast majority of his public career and life as a proud segregationist.

1. Bill Clinton interned for J. William Fulbright in 1966-67, when Fulbright was still a segregationist. Fulbright became Clinton's "mentor."
2. In April 1985, Governor Bill Clinton signed Act 985 into law, making the birthdates of Martin Luther King Jr. (the preeminent leader of the civil-rights movement) and Robert E. Lee (the general who led the Confederate army) state holidays on the same day. Of course, the word "segregation" never passed Clinton's considerable lips, but the (uncoded) message he was sending to certain of his white constituents could not have be clearer.
3. Clinton took no steps during his twelve years as governor to repeal a Confederate flag law: Arkansas Code Annotated, Section 1-5-107, provides as follows:
(a) The Saturday immediately preceding Easter Sunday of each year is designated as 'Confederate Flag Day' in this state.
(b) No person, firm, or corporation shall display an Confederate flag or replica thereof in connection with any advertisement of any commercial enterprise, or in any manner for any purpose except to honor the Confederate States of America. [Emphasis added.]
(c) Any person, firm, or corporation violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000).

In 1989, then-Gov. Bill Clinton was sued as one of three top Arkansas officials responsible for the intimidation of black voters in his state as part of a legal action brought under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, NewsMax.com has learned.
And a year earlier the U.S. Supreme court ruled that Clinton had wrongfully tried to overturn the election of a black state representative in favor of a white Democrat.
In a related 1988 case, Clinton had tried to replace a duly elected African-American state representative with a white candidate, only to be stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruling came as the then-governor was fighting another court battle to preserve racial profiling in his state, a tool that Clinton later criticized while president as a "morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice."
But a decade earlier he approved the profiling of Hispanics by Arkansas State Police as part of a drug interdiction program in 1988, the Washington Times revealed in 1999.
"The Arkansas plan gave state troopers the authority to stop and search vehicles based on a drug-courier profile of Hispanics, particularly those driving cars with Texas license plates," the Times said.
"A federal judge later ruled the program unconstitutional," the paper reported. "A lawsuit and a federal consent decree ended the practice - known as the 'criminal apprehension program' the next year."
Then-Gov. Clinton, however, not only criticized the profiling ban; "at one point, [he] threatened to reinstate the program despite the court's ruling," the Times said.
Hearing Clinton's condemnation of racial profiling in 1999, Roberto Garcia de Posada, executive director of the Hispanic Business Roundtable, complained that the then-president "had been a strong supporter of racial profiling against Hispanics in the past."
After he was sued in the late 1980s by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund for failing to enforce the Voting Rights Act in Arkansas, then-Gov. Bill Clinton suggested to a group of pro-segregation whites that they were being unfairly targeted by civil rights laws as a result of the South's loss in the Civil War.
"The meeting turned sour when one of the local whites demanded to know why, in his view, the whites were always made to pay for others' problems. Other whites in the group began to echo his charge. ..." "Bill Clinton, the lead defendant in the case, took to the podium to respond. In a tone of resignation, Clinton said, 'We have to pay because we lost.'" Clinton was referring to the South's Civil War loss.
Bill Clinton spent Wednesday afternoon playing golf at a country club accused of discriminating against blacks and Jews. Jake Siewert, Clinton's rep, confirmed it was the second time Clinton has played at the Indian Creek Country Club about 20 miles north of Miami. He first played there a year and a half ago. Siewert said, "All venues are fully vetted," and dismissed allegations of racism and anti-Semitism as "not true."
"There's no question about it, the club has anti-Semitic policies in place to keep out Jews," said Earl Barber, who was on the club's board for 14 years, and a member for 22. Barber, along with Alvah Chapman, a former chairman of Knight Ridder, and M. Anthony Burns, a trucking magnate, resigned their club memberships because of its "membership policies."
To add insult to injury, 14 of the island's 34 homes are owned by Jews, and although they are denied access to the club, a portion of the residents' property tax is used for the club's upkeep. Miller notes that he refused to meet Clinton during his 1999 visit to Indian Creek because the president was playing at the anti-Semitic club. The snub even made the local news.

When Jeb Bush was slated to pay a visit to the club, Miller informed the Florida governor of the restrictive policies, and Bush cancelled.

I was appauled at this obvious white woman's views on black men. I'm sorry but our black men do not go around raping white women. Last time I checked, white men, black men, hispanics, asians, etc have all committed crimes against women. There's one in every race maam. You obviously have a serious issue and clearly a racist!

Hello to members of this site please to have joined your forum.