52.3-46.2

So that is a data point that suggests we can finally stop talking about the Bradley effect. You have no idea how sick I am of hearing about it.

I really don't know what happened in Alaska. That election seemed to be cooked in favor of Republicans by ~10% at all levels.  

in the state of Alaska. And, as Jim Webb says, "the fish rots from the head down!"  Hello, Sarah Barracuda!  

Yes, the Alaska effect helped Don Young win as well. See Nate Silver's post about Alaska.

At least at 538, they predicted that the election would be closer than the final polls, because thats the historical precedent when one candidate has a large lead. The red line is the actual poll spread and the yellow line is adjusted to what the actual election result would be.

FWIW, 538 also had some fighting words for RCP's methdology earlier this year.

Most of the other states are really republican states in the west, in which there may have been some "bradley affect" for all Democrats, as it looks like many of our house candidates suffered from as well. It looks like Obama benefited similarly in Dem strongholds like Vermont, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

The other states, Iowa, New York, and Arkansas, may be explained by the fact that there would be a large and engaged Hillary Clinton constituency in those states?

I'm hesitant to put WV in that category as well, although the Hillary-phenomenon may have had some effect. Again, this was an area where many Democrats may have supported Hillary in the primary, and she really tied herself to the state and to the region due to neccesity in the primaries. If there was a "Bradley effect" in WV you'd think we'd see similar results in VA, PA, OH, KY, and potentially TN, but that wasn't really the case. I can imagine WV is very difficult to poll, and there are probably less phones and computers per capita than elsewhere around the country.

Why the RNC decided to mock community organizers at their National Convention is beyond me...but glad they did cause it p.o.'d a lot of community organizers. And WOW, I think it compounded the organizing efforts for the Obama campaign.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

I'm not sure it's a Bradley effect when the discrepancies are that small.  The actual Bradley effect was that Mayor Bradley was way ahead in the polls and lost the actual election, shocking everbody.  That was a major upset.

Other factors explaining this small a difference could include simple margin of error and last minute changes that no poll could capture.  Polling is not an exact science just a snapshot of the public's opinion in the time period its taken.

BTW, the most famous upset was Truman winning. There's a famous picture of him holding up a newspaper with the headline that Dewey had won.  At that had little to do with a Bradley effect.  

Back in 1948, there were very few polls, and polling concluded with about 3 weeks to go because pollsters didn't believe opinions could change much in that little amount of time. Basically, polling was primitive back then and is completely different today.

I realized that but the irony of the photo was too tempting.

Seriously, though, I do think any discrepancies this time were more a matter of margin of error or last minute factors than a Bradley effect. Of course, I could just be too optimistic.

That people will not vote for you if you put them to sleep. (and I say that as someone who idolized Dollar Bill from back in the day).

In Ohio Union leaders overcame the racist feelings by asking their members the following question:

"Would you rather have a black friend in the White House or a white enemy?"

I call it the ecomonic effect which cancels the Bradley effect.

But wait a minute, didn't Bradley get defeated when people voted on the Diebold machines? Then later California found the company (Diebold)guilty of fraud with regard to the certification of the machines. California has since thrown out Diebold (now called Premier). Maybe we should actually call it the Diebold effect instead of the Bradley effect.

Most of these polls are at least + or - 3.  So a 6 point difference from the polling result is possible.  Most of these are just float within the MoE.

Also, almost all of the states that increased for McCain were reliably red states.  Same for the Obama states that had a +4 change.  Voters just came home.  

Only Alaska had something fishy going on.  Everything else makes sense.

I disagree with the conclusion that there is room for a nationwide Bradley effect here.  I agree with aaronedge that this is expected floating within the margin of error.

The RCP average can be no more accurate than the accuracy of the polls that went into it.  I did a quick calculation and the average error for the polls RCP used is 3.0 points.  The 1.3 point difference is well within this and is explained by statistics and not Bradley.

I dunno about the state by state results and all those 9 and 10 point outliers.  Is it a BRADLEY effect or a GOODE ("think like a bad guy") effect?  Or Alaskan Democrats too busy on their "snow machines" to pick up the phone?  Interesting that Alaska should be the highest anomoly given that the current outcome shows that Alaskans chose a convicted felon to represent them in Washington, as well as, as Nate Silver points out, a systematic up-and-down-the-ticket effect where Republicans outperformed the polls by significant margins -- 12 to 14 points.  In EACH and EVERY race from President to Senate to House.  I mean, geez.

Nate Silver's work was awesome throughout the campaign, but I have to wonder whether there were some roiling internal dynamics beneath the data.

It would be interesting to dissect the state-by-state data (only someone like Nate Silver could do this) to try to judge the interaction of:

(1) Age, race, and income demographics

(2) "Cell phone effect" on polling

(3) Purely race-based leans

(4) Effectiveness of GOTV efforts (based on comparisons with past elections)

In the end, perhaps the "Bradley Effect" was a non-factor not because it does not exist, but because the Obama GOTV effort in swing states and the slightly underpolled cellphone users served to cancel out the "Bradley Effect," thereby creating a wash.

I'd guess that there really was about a 5 or 6 point "Bradley Effect" in many swing states, but the Obama GOTV effort was worth 2 or 3 extra points and the underpolled youth/cell phone effect (at least in some polls) was worth 2 or 3 extra points--thereby cancelling out the white racists. Increased black turnout and preference for the black candidate (raising the black Democratic vote from 88 to the 95 or 96 range) likely was worth a point or two in some states.

Note that the pollsters, such as Gallup, which tried to take into account the cellphone effect and to use expanded turnout models to take into account an increased youth vote and Democratic Party preference, overestimated Obama's final numbers by about 5 or 6 percent. That difference may very well be an accurate, though unintended, indicator of the real "Bradley Effect."

The good news: older white racists will continue to die off. Younger, more tolerant voters will continue to come of voting age. A competent Obama Administration will compel even some remaining white racists to concede that competence trumps race. The Bradley Effect will fade away. I noticed a piece yesterday on the web about George Wallace's daughter, who is an Obama supporter in Alabama and who put an Obama sticker on her car bumper during the campaign.

With four years of good governance in a time of crisis and with another good ground game, Obama should be able to muster 55 or 56 percent of the vote in 2012. With a little luck, with no more foreign military adventures, and with an economy on the upswing, Democrats could even surge to a 59 or 60 percent blowout in 2012.

It now seems likely that the GOP will conclude that it lost this election just because of the economic crisis--not because of the kind of campaign McCain/Palin (i.e., Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis) ran or because Rovian politics has outlived its era. Let's hope that the GOP keeps doing the same thing: pandering to a motley coalition of racists, bigots, xenophobes, jingoists, and science-denying know-nothings--all manipulated to serve the plutocratic agenda of an unapologetic looting class.

If the GOP concludes that it should continue to follow the the same old game plan of Karl Rove, we can look forward to many more election cycles of Democratic Party success.

Didn't Obama consistently perform about 2% below the polls?

( check out : http://www.pollster.com/ for the numbers )

Pollster reports Obama/McCain trend (average of all polls) as 52/44.  set Obama+McCain to 100, translates to 54/46.

Actual results was 52/46.

Obama underperformed polls by 2%.

Just about what the Wilder effect predicts.

Obama took the same numbers as Moran.

The  pro Obama effect negated the anti Obama effect.  {Racism works both ways.}

Great day for   us, the US, The world, everybody

Did the strenuous efforts of the radical right Revelationists to frighten Jewish voters into believing that Obama was bad for Israel finally come home to the Democrats? There was a vicious smear campaign going on, including inserting scurrilous CDs into newspapers (cost was several million dollars, I imagine) attempting to prove Obama was a secret Muslim and hated Israel. A counter-movement, called the Great Schlep, was started by the younger generation of Jewish voters to counter the smears, hoping to convince their Jewish grandmothers Obama weas really Okay. Do we have any in depth analysis of what happened in, say, South Florida or New Jersey that would tell us how (un)successful the smear campaign was?

...the Jewish vote went overwhelmingly for Obama, as expected. See here for example:

Despite the tense rift between Republican and Democratic Jews over the course of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, exit polls on Tuesday showed that Barack Obama received about 77 percent of the Jewish vote.

These numbers were higher even than the 2004 election, when Democratic candidate John Kerry received 74 percent of the Jewish vote. Al Gore received the highest percentage of Jewish votes in 2000, with 79 percent.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the J Street lobby group on Tuesday called Obama's victory a sign that the campaign waged against him by Republican Jews comprised "baseless smears."

"American Jews resoundingly rejected the two-year, multimillion dollar campaign of baseless smears and fear waged against him by the right wing of our community," he said.