More on the MYTH of the "Bradley Effect" from a well-placed source

[featherman]

"Which Bradley ultimately did, losing by one point, with Deukmejian the victor, 49% to 48%. How could Field's exit poll have been so wrong? It must have been racism, right?
Well, only if California voters also thought that two-term Governor Jerry Brown was black, too.

The Field Poll made two big projections based on its exit polling that fateful November night. Bradley as the next governor of California. And Brown as the next U.S. senator.
But Brown lost, too. And pretty much everyone knew he was white. Brown's race actually wasn't as close as Bradley's, with then San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson defeating Brown, 51% to 45%.

Talking with Brown yesterday, he said that he had trailed Wilson pretty much throughout the campaign. And had been surprised by the election night projection of a relatively easy win for him."

Full article at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/inside-the-bradley-effect_b_135592.html

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. This came at the beginning of the republican movement to discredit

the reliability of polling.

Through the use of push polls and selective polling it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, just in time for the electoral theft beginning in 2000. If they could establish the meme that people lied to pollsters, then any discrepancy between polls and votes could be dismissed.

It worked.

[Overseas]

2. K&R to this intriguing news. I hadn't heard it before.

But I still bear the scars of mental anguish from election 2004's extreme stretching, or kitchen sink theorizing to discredit exit polls that varied so widely with the adjusted vote counts. They had been in accord for hours, then began to diverge quite widely, Kerry down three, Bush up three, statistically improbable flip after 11 p.m.. Anomalies favored Republicans. So a lot of theorizing needed to be done to obscure the fact that we were seeking excuses for anomalies that in other countries would be highlighted as possible evidence of fraud and subjected to intense scrutiny and review, rather than technical adjustments made behind the scenes. Hurriedly covered up with meaningful discussions of Guns, God & Gays-- the fake culture war pumped up by the Modern Republicans every four years.

How very interesting to see a piece of the roots of all this finagling, going all the way back to the Bradley election. Look at Gerry Brown's polling that same election, eh? So perhaps little pirate polling companies can be slipped into the mix to mess things up. That's why I never heard of that one.

I'm quite a dreamy Democrat because I like to hope that less manipulation has occurred than the evidence seems to indicate. I began noticing the campaign to discredit exit polling since 2000, get most intense immediately around election 2004, to distract us from the Bush-Kerry flip, and now be discussed too quietly. In 2004 the TV pundits were kitchen-sink theorizing overtime to cast doubt on a distinguished company trusted around the world for its integrity, I believe. But having tossed some pirates into the mix, maybe the idea of the major exit polls being off kilter will be more easily believed this time.

Will the exit poll data be hidden from us until all the polls have closed, to "keep things fair" this time? I sincerely hope not and hope we will be allowed continuous access to exit polling data as well as vote counts, to be granted the cross-testing that we expect when judging the fairness of elections in other democracies.

I hope we'll have enough of a turnout to overcome all the usual voter suppression techniques, with the assistance of REPUBLICAN DESERTION SYNDROME this time.