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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (425066)	10/12/2008 10:21:56 AM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 1578368

THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE: The Bradley effect Published on: 10/12/08. BY WAYNE BROWN BY THE POLLS it should already be over: Obama is leading McCain nationally by a "washout" six points, and Electoral College vote tallies (EVs) suggest he's unassailable. With 270 EVs required for victory, the two leading aggregate pollsters, RealClearPolitics and Pollster.com, both show him already over that threshold. Several recent major polls have Obama topping 50 per cent: something no Democratic candidate has done since Jimmy Carter, and none as late as this. Equally telling, Obama is currently attacking McCain in red states like Indiana and North Carolina, where Democrats have long feared to tread. Meanwhile McCain – with Palin now almost always at his side – has been campaigning exclusively in the reddest districts of states he's visited: a desperation akin to the Titanic's crew trying to bail its flooding bilges with buckets. A candidate still trying to excite (or incite) his base with just three weeks to go is a candidate staring at ruin. McCain's recent rallies have been degenerate; as one blogger put it, "Less political in nature than tribal, primitive anger fests. These are festivals of hate against Obama, Democrats, liberals and the media." The despair is palpable. So why has no commentator yet "called" the election? Why has virtually every Obama supporter – West Indian or American, white or black – responded with a painful mix of hope and dread, a misty-eyed or husky "God, I hope so" as if affirming belief in an Obama victory were something that lay at the very limit of his/her courage? The answer, of course, is "the Bradley effect": the suspicion that whatever white Americans tell the pollsters, in the privacy of the voting booth enough will vengefully cast their vote against the black man to throw the election to McCain after all. Reports Politico: "There's the assumption that racial antagonisms are an unexploded bomb in this contest.' Bradley effect will occur The Bradley effect will occur, of course – no society sheds its cunning knuckle-draggers in one fell swoop. The question is: on what scale? In the Democratic primaries, it appeared most virulently in New Hampshire ("the most racist state north of Mason-Dixie", according to a white American colleague who'd lived there), confounding a 17-point Obama lead in the polls. And in states like Massachusetts and California, no doubt "Bradley" gave Clinton her bigger-than-predicted wins. Yet the Bradley effect was not apparent at all in the northwest, the "white" Midwestern states, or the Chesapeake states – as well as, surprisingly, in Indiana. The Bradley effect seems likeliest to function in the Rust Belt, in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's worth noting that in the primaries it didn't operate in either, but something closely related to it did. What happened was that in both states, Obama actually overtook Clinton in the polls – until, in the very last days, the undecideds broke heavily for Clinton, giving her each by a healthy ten points. "Undecided" was clearly the self-ascription by which "Reagan democrats" in these states fended off the pollsters, until the last minute. Since they did, however, announce for Clinton before entering the voting booth, theirs wasn't an example of "Bradley". Still, the polls in Ohio (where Obama leads by 4 points) and Pennsylvania (by 12) must remain suspect. Skeptical Obama supporters will be watching these states closely in the first three days of November. A sudden tightening of the polls in either at that point would not bode well for Obama. But Obama is currently attacking – and leading – in so many red states that even without blue Pennsylvania, he has all manner of routes to 270 EVs. By contrast, McCain would need to hold all the red states as well as grab Pennsylvania: the Bradley effect, in other words, would have to operate powerfully in ALL of them. But Bradley was 26 years ago; for the first time, young voters seem likely to come out in their numbers on election day. Most are genuinely "post-racial", and most support Obama. Being largely cellphone users, they have been consistently under-represented in the polls: a fact that at least partially counters the potential of "Bradley". And finally – and we in the Caribbean intuitively know this – African-American turnout in this election is a tsunami about to happen.