LONG BEACH— The Democratic campaign on racism continues this year. Some examples of the race card being played by democrats can be seen here, here, and here despite the fact that Mr. Obama appears to be gaining ground in the polls. An interesting survey came out over the weekend which suggested that playing the race card is fair game. An AP/Yahoo poll suggested that Mr. Obama might suffer from racial prejudice in the up-coming November election. Highlighted facts about this on-line poll suggest that Mr. Obama could lose 6% of the vote simply based on his skin color. On first glance this appeared to undercut my statements from the other day. I’m always interested in a different view and well documented sources are great to read. So I started looking into this.
The common phrase used to explain the effects of racism on an election is the “Bradley Effect“. This effect is named after the Los Angeles Mayor, an African American, who ran for Governor of California against George Deukmejian in 1982. Polls showed him ahead going into election day only to have him lose the election. Mayor Bradley was a Democrat. Deukmejian was a Republican. During the course of the campaign a Deukmejian campaign polling adviser suggested there was a 5% difference not showing in the polls. The difference he attributed to unadvertised racism. When pollsters would call, the theory goes, individuals would hide feelings of racism and say they were going to vote for Mayor Bradley only to go into the privacy of the booths to cast a vote based on racism. Deukmejian won the election in 1982 which publicly satisfied his campaign poller’s assessment. Technically the victory didn’t prove the assessment true out right. The margin of loss was close to the margin of error of polls leading into election day. However, Mr. Bradley’s loss was taken as enough justification for the perception of the effects of racism in an election.
The 1982 California gubernatorial election was the smoking gun. Its one flaw was that it couldn’t be applied universally to all African American candidates as it didn’t explain the times African American candidates won elections in other areas of the country. In 1872 P. B. S. Pinchback, a Republican, became the first African American Governor of a US State (Louisiana), holding the position for 35 days. He was not elected to the office of Governor, though he was elected to the state Senate in 1868. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, became the first African American voted into the office of Governor in 1990 (Virginia).
In total there have been four African American Governors in American history since 1872. One hundred twenty three African Americans have served in the US Congress (House and Senate) since 1868. On the state level there are currently over 600 African American legislators. And there have been more than 480 African American mayors in the nation, with the number growing faster since the civil rights movement; an obvious sign that racial prejudice in America, while still present, is waining.
Polling is inherently a flawed trade. The debate over how accurate a poll can be is on going. Simply excluding the racial issue polling has been completely off the mark on many occasions. In 1948, for instance, a terribly unpopular president (approval ratings standing at 36%) was running for re-election. Polls had his opponent up by a large margin. The lead was so large the newspapers already began printing the next days headlines. The next day Mr. Truman had the last laugh.
On the particular issue of race and polling there are many different ideas all of which seem to be refuted by the next campaign study. For instance, the Bradley Effect was cause for concern in a Tennessee political race. Harold Ford, an African American Democrat, was running against Bob Corker, a white Republican. Pete Bronditz worked for Mr. Ford’s campaign as a pollster. He found something different in the results of that election. “Mr. Brodnitz said the race of the interviewer was not a factor in their polling in 2006. Mr. Brodnitz said that problems in the final pre-election public polls had nothing to do with race, but were caused by methodology” according to an account in the New York Times.
This same New York Times report cited Gallup poll results dating back to the late 1950′s concerning racial biases on candidates in elections.
Recent polling on the matter suggests a sea change in public attitudes. Since 1958, the Gallup poll has been asking people whether or not they would be willing to vote for an African American for president, although the wording has changed some over the years. In 1958, 53 percent of the public said they would not vote for a “generally well-qualified person who happened to be a Negro.” That was considerably higher than the 28 percent who said they would not vote for a Jew or the 25 percent who said they would not vote for a Catholic.
In February of 2007, Gallup asked people if they would be “completely comfortable voting for a qualified presidential candidate who was black or would you have some reservations?” Ninety percent said they would be completely comfortable.
—Janet Elder, “Will There Be an ‘Obama Effect?’“, New York Times, May 16, 2007
Having looked into all the history of African American political candidates and polling data I learned quite a bit. But one question was still not entirely answered, what effect does racial bias have on a modern election? No study to date has quantitatively defined the impact of such bias. But the comprehensive view of the history of these studies is showing that, what ever effect racial bias might have, it is continuously shrinking in America.
However, throughout researching this topic one question did occur to me for which I haven’t found an answer. These studies attempt to support the theory of wide spread racial bias being a major issue in an election. To do so the pollsters call up a random selection of citizens and quiz them on racial bias. They report the findings but never explain why an individual being polled would freely answer questions of their own bias towards those of other races or skin colors but suddenly bottle up these feelings of racism when quizzed on a particular candidate or election cycle.
Though obvious improvement in racial relations in America can be seen over the years the unanswered question of the impact of racial bias remains; which brings us back to the AP poll and article cited above. In this article the analysis of the “racial bias poll” is broken down and discussed. In my original assessment of the 2008 Election I implied that racism will not be a major issue but that “Racism will be a minor reason” for a potential Obama loss. The conclusions of the AP analysis seem to agree despite a rather generous definition of what traits or perspectives define a racist voter:
Race is not the biggest factor driving Democrats and independents away from Obama. Doubts about his competency loom even larger, the poll indicates. More than a quarter of all Democrats expressed doubt that Obama can bring about the change they want, and they are likely to vote against him because of that.
Three in 10 of those Democrats who don’t trust Obama’s change-making credentials say they plan to vote for McCain.
—Ron Fournier and Trevor Tompson, “Poll: Racial misgivings of whites an Obama issue“, Associate Press
In my original post I listed possible reasons that could explain a potential Democratic loss, below are a few more.
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Democratic Partisanship – Mr. Obama likes to point to Mr. McCain’s voting record to show he is in league with Mr. Bush. This is a fair tactic as it highlights the fact that Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are of the same party and Mr. Bush is a pretty unpopular president (65% disapprove of his work). But by highlighting Mr. McCain’s record some light shines on Mr. Obama’s own voting record, and he does not have a record of bipartisanship.
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Democratic Congress – As bad as Mr. Bush is publicly ranked, the Democratic Congress is seeing his two thirds disapproval rating and attempting to raise it, or I guess in this case, lower it, to a three quarters mark (71% disapprove of the Democratic Congress’s work)
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Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the 100 hours – It was an ambitious plan but it didn’t work and only set up more partisanship and sank public approval of the congress. In the end, like so many of Mr. Bush’s own campaign promises, this too was a failure.
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Mr. Obama’s own racist campaign – As covered in this missive and in the previous missive on this topic Mr. Obama’s campaign appears to be dropping the race card as a cushion for a possible fall (sort of a preemptive campaign failure cushion). But what doesn’t help him in his cause to play the race card dates back to the early stages of the campaign against Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama began his own projection of racism on the Republican party saying they will try to scare the electorate because he “doesn’t look like other presidents on the dollar bill”. Yet several months after admitting that the statement was a projection of racism onto the opponent Mr. Obama’s campaign released an ad aimed squarely at Hispanics appealing to racist undertones. It is rather two faced to release an ad appealing to racism and then turn around and say that racism is a reason he could lose.
In the end, should Mr. Obama lose, he could point to many factors which could explain it. But racism will not be the major issue behind a loss. Even the AP/Yahoo poll suggested this. Racism could be a reason he loses certain voters, but it will not be the major reason he loses the election, should he lose.
In the interest of the Democratic party, and the country as a whole, it might be best to focus their energy, in the event of a loss, on other more probable (and manageable) reasons so as to build an even stronger campaign in the next election. Because going forward, according to the polling trends, racism will become even less of an issue. Though I freely admit it will never disappear completely. Racism, unfortunately, is a reflection of man’s fallen nature. Additionally it is not a uniquely American or Caucasian phenomenon as these dastardardly acts are seen throughout the world. But fortunately for America it appears to be getting better.
Should Mr. Obama win on November 4th my assessment will ring all the more true.
TennesseePaul
Stephen VanNuys
Brooklyn Daniel
The Freedom Thinker
Tennessee Paul, I just visited your blog. Very impressive. Kudos for a compelling and well designed website. Also like the ‘American Missive’ title, premise and positioning. After reading through your bio, I couldn’t help but appreciate your minority status as a happily married, Christian, Conservative leaning Physicist living in Long Beach, California. Well, you’re not totally alone… there are probably a few other physicists out there. Couldn’t resist.
Actually I love the Long Beach to Laguna area. My wife and I were with family and friends that live in Newport Beach for a week last summer. Hey, if it was good enough for John Wayne, the OC is good in my book. By the way, since you’re working on a solar project, did you by chance attend the SolFest this year? I understand it was a successful gathering.
I thoroughly enjoyed your ‘Dem Double-Down’ article. It was a well researched, thought provoking and nicely written piece. I was particularly interested in the polling data you’ve linked and discussed. As with other highly personal, socially sensitive or controversial topics, I imagine election-polling data tends to be pretty skewed toward capturing the comments and opinions that voters think they should offer as opposed to a discovery of what they really believe yet would only admit in an environment of complete comfort, secrecy, trust and perhaps plausible deniability.
Our upbringing, religious beliefs, social and environmental influences, education and a primal, nearly irresistible urge to join lock-step with groups all affect our beliefs and tend to instruct us in our political views and social behavior. We are fallible, inherently biased and imperfect human beings… and we vote. Most voters are biased towards the party they believe share their own beliefs. Most humans are biased toward their own ‘kind’.
Race is one of those touchy subjects most folks have first-hand experience with, along with personal bias and prejudice, therefore we shy away from discussions around it. That is unfortunate. Without the open dialogue around race, we are prolonging bias, separation and misunderstanding. More to the subject… I’m afraid that most political polls having to do with a ‘black minority’ candidate against a ‘white majority’ candidate skirt the issue and miss the real attitude.
Your timely article addressed parts of the race issue nicely in an appropriately academic, unbiased and neutral manner. The differences between races have caused mistrust and conflict since the beginning of time. To a lesser degree and due to our own societal evolution, those differences are less today than ever before… yet racism remains fully intact.
In America we have our Constitution, where all men are created equal. We have our freedom of religion. We are a nation of laws and our social programs level the playing field for all citizens. Our laws protect us and guard against discrimination regardless of race, creed, color, sex, national origin, religious and political beliefs. Perhaps we’ve made great strides in most of those areas but we may have taken a few steps back on our respectful dialogue with those who have opposing political viewpoints.
On top of all of those laws, policies and practices, our culture has followed suit in more personal ways. Point is, it seems that never before in American history has there been more of an effort, regardless of core beliefs, to at least publicly show respect and behave in a civil manner toward those that are different.
That is it should be, not as it always is.
Now, in that context and with that basic premise, my stream of thought (rambling) takes me to the part of your story that relates to the polling of voters on race issues. Depending on how survey questions were constructed and the quality of the target list, quantitative can be useful to varying degrees yet not yield near the accuracy or understanding of qualitative polling in a research environment where anonymity is assured.
Stating the obvious again, although the qual beats the quant in truthful, meaningful, in-depth responses… it is more time consuming and costly. Even more detailed yet costly in time and money would be the use of psychographic studies on a properly screened demographic. These types of studies surely have been done. I haven’t seen them but it would be interesting to take a look. Please point me there if you know of any.
Research isn’t perfect and the analysis of and opinions derived are not only effected by the questions posed and the environment the voter was in during questioning, but the results are always skewed to some degree by the interpretation of the answers… not to mention the inherent bias of those doing the poll and writing up the results. Research methodology is improving every day but unless the process is flawless, the results are skewed.It’s actually more complex than complicated than that, but at the end of the day, our insight is increased a little or a lot by the removal of barriers between voter and pollster.
Most pollsters aren’t capable, due to time and budget constraints, to dig that deep and spend that much time. Such is life in an era of topical research at the speed of sound, superficial knowledge, sound-bite communications in politics and other matters of state.
Add to that, our understandable over-sensitivity in questioning those groups that have been the victims of racism. The subtle little things we do and say continue to divide us from the clear truth. As a case in point, in your article you stated:
“For instance, the Bradley Effect was cause for concern in a Tennessee political race. Harold Ford, an African American Democrat, was running against Bob Corker, a white Republican.”
Not meaning to nitpick, but I noticed a grammatical inconsistency or cultural discrepancy there. Should we not refer to all races as either hyphenated or not? It’s not a stretch to imagine that Bob Corker would be an English-American, just as Harold Ford is an African-American. Whether an actual hyphen is used, the current practice of categorizing Americans by ethnic or national origin seems in itself unnecessary at best, unintentionally divisive and segregationist possibly and racist at worst.
My point is not to criticize your comment at all nor am I pointing out grammatical inconsistencies (yours is the norm). The good Lord and everyone that reads my posts know I’m a habitual violator of English, but merely using that hyphenated name for one and not the other illustrates my point about the inherent hypersensitivity and innocent habits (and hyphens) we practice, although we do (again, innocently and with the best intentions) perpetuate the barriers between ourselves and other people.
We’ve all been ‘trained’ to refer to blacks as African-American (even in some situations where there is no African heritage), yet we refer to ourselves in the generic ‘white’.
Again, not criticizing your excellent article or your superb writing. I sometimes hyphenate American blacks and refer to them as African-Americans myself, but here I’m just making a point that could demonstrate a microcosm of why polls are imperfect and perhaps how the ‘Bradley Effect’ reaches so far into our culture and deep into our collective psyche.
I’ll now step off of my soapbox and leave you with a few timely quotes:
“Prejudice is the child of ignorance.” – William Hazlitt (an English writer)
“Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent and warn the opposed.” – Whitney M. Young, civil rights leader
Thank you for commenting SG. I appreciate it.
TP, thanks. Almost always glad to comment.
No feedback? No SolFest?
On that, sorry to dive in head first with such a long and winding, uh, missive. Good luck with the American Missive blog. Hope it’s a success in however you perceive it or measure it.
No SolFest. My project is in organics and semiconductors. The material I use does have photovoltaic properties but I’m not headed in that direction. Although some of my work could cross over into that field as I am also mapping out the fabrication and morphology of these organics.
The difficulties in accurate polling are indeed rampant. And the bredth of the studies I looked into simply highlighted this fact. My intention of this missive was that while racism may cause a minor alteration in the out come of the election it would not be beneficial for the Democratic party to view the loss as only a result of racism. There are other, larger, issues at play here. It would be wise for the party to address those issues instead of trying to iron out the few remaining bastions of racial bigotry. Assigning any loss directly to racism will only work in causing sever pain in the country. It would be counterproductive, in the event of a loss, to focus all attention on the 5-6% (assuming that is the actual amount) of the vote that resulted from bias and not address the 30-40% of the vote that questioned the credentials and qualifications of the candidate.
Massasoit: If you do ever want to come back to the site, here is a link to a NYTimes article written by a thinking adult. It refutes the assumption of racism playing a major role.
Is it possible, that Obama’s lead could evaporate on election day because of Bradley-Wilder effect? Or nowadays Americans are significantly less reluctant to vote for an African-American? Vote here – http://www.votetheday.com/america/secret-racism-will-subvert-obamas-advantage-333
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