Community Checkup

It’s been a busy week so I’m a little late with this one…

Obama’s second place finish in New Hampshire came as a bit of a surprise to those who placed any faith in polling. Some of the polls had Obama ahead of Hillary as much as 13%. Yet he lost by a few points. So why were the polls so off? There are many possible reasons, but here’s three:

1. Flawed Polling Procedures
The most basic explanation is that the polling procedures were just flawed. All polls rely on sampling of a population. If the sampling is not representative, then their predictions are goings to be off. But for all of them to be off to such a degree? It’s very possible and polls are never exact, but this explanation probably is probably a contributor rather than a full explanation.

2. The Bradley Effect
This is one of the more interesting explanations. Tom Bradley was a black, popular, Democrat running for Governor of California in 1982. The polls had him winning by a sizable margin. Yet, when the fat lady sang, he lost by more than 50,000 votes. The head-scratchers came up with the theory that whites who didn’t want to appear prejudiced, fronted for the pollsters by saying they were going to vote for Bradley but when they got behind the curtain they kept it real and voted otherwise. Since then, the theory has been termed the Bradley effect and has been used to describe the results in other political races.

The field of psychology has a similar concept referred to as aversive racism. Aversive racists are those who regard themselves as egalitarian, liberal, and non-racist but also hold negative beliefs about certain groups such as blacks. Research experiments have found that when they are in public they are more likely to uphold and express their strongly held egalitarian beliefs but it’s in private where their more prejudiced views become apparent.

3. Last minute shifts in opinion:
Maybe the polls missed last minute shifts in opinion towards Hillary. For example, some have speculated that it had to do with Hillary’s show of emotion during her cafe interview. Some of the criticism towards her to date has been that she lacked a personal touch in her message. Maybe for those who were on the fence, Hillary chocking up was the display they needed for them to know she really cared and had passion for what she believed.

The bottom line is that all of these reasons are speculative. The real reason could be none of these reasons or a combination of them all. Either way, the message for Obama is to not take anything for granted and for Hillary, it’s to not give up too early in the game. This is really shaping up to a very entertaining race.