Poll Potheads: The Bradley effect in New Hampshire debunked

[Karmadillo]

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=17dabbce-95ad-40c1-805c-5c12d0158ba8

Poll Potheads
by John B. Judis

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This is an incendiary argument. Not only does it purport to explain why the pollsters got the results wrong, but it also implies that Clinton's success in New Hampshire can largely be attributed to the racism of low-income, less educated whites. But Kohut's evidence seems flimsy at best.

Kohut provides no data--none at all--to back up his contention that New Hampshire's lower-income, less educated whites have a more unfavorable view of blacks than their wealthier, more educated counterparts. I think he is simply inferring from national studies or studies that were conducted elsewhere, but he doesn't say. Yet New Hampshire is not Georgia or Mississippi, states with long histories of racial problems, nor is it the polarized New York City of 1989, where Kohut claims he encountered the Bradley effect. This kind of explosive claim deserves to have been backed up by some kind of evidence. I certainly don't know of any.

Still, let's assume for the sake of argument that Kohut is right about New Hampshire's downscale white Democrats. Were they really underrepresented in the polls? If they were, then one would expect that the pre-election polls would overstate Obama's support and understate Clinton's among downscale white Democrats--and that the more extensive post-election polls would show a dramatic rise in Clinton's support, and a fall in Obama's among these voters.

But nothing of the kind took place. The pre-primary polls sponsored by CNN and WMUR and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center--polls, I might add, that are considered among the most reliable in the state--published a breakdown of Democratic primary voters by educational level. One can compare that survey, taken on the Sunday before the election, with the exit polls to determine whether a dramatic change took place in the white working class vote. Here are the numbers:

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[LoZoccolo]

1. Judis makes a claim similar to the one he criticizes Kohut for making.

First he criticizes Kohut on the lack of evidence that a certain demographic is more discriminatory:

Kohut provides no data--none at all--to back up his contention that New Hampshire's lower-income, less educated whites have a more unfavorable view of blacks than their wealthier, more educated counterparts.

But then he turns around and tries to establish that another demographic is not likely to be without evidence:

Since there was very little change among voters without college degrees, one must infer that the bulk of the change came from women voters with college degrees. And it seems unlikely that racism can help to explain that, since well-educated women may be the least racist sub-group in American society.