where Republicans say they are voting for McCain but balk when they get to the booth. " I just can't vote for McCain knowing that Mugwump from Alaska is one heartbeat away from being president"

Obama IS starting to show an 8 point lead and I expect it will only grow larger.

So to hell with Bradley and his effect.

I'm less worried about the Bradley Effect than the Diebold (/Blackwell/Harris) Effect.

Could a Bradley effect be off-set by the polls not including large numbers of young folks because they only have cell phones?

Obama needs to be up by 8+ points to make it harder to steal the election.

http://tinyurl.com/3wuwau

The two avowed racists in my family won't admit they are racists any more. I got one to call Obama a "black windbag," but that's as far as they'll go. They're less likely to use the "n" word than I am at this point. This election must be killing their hemorrhoids, however, but I'm not going to say anything either until it's all over.

one of the most liberal states in the country. Granted there seem to be more young people involved in this election and then tend to be less racist. But if you don't think that effect is only going to multiply in more conservative states, your kidding yourselves.

Guess I missed that memo that said racism no longer affected people's votes.

... with the opinions expressed by this post, I also think enough discussion and action aren't being done to take on the 800 lb gorilla in our midst - ie that Obama is black and that fact is going to have an effect on the election.

Personally it is why I believe that Obama isn't 20 - 30 points ahead of McCain. Everyone hates Bush and what is happening to this country and their handling of Katrina, Iraq, the economy, etc - so they say during polling.

With that being the case, why isn't Obama coasting to an easy win?

We have to keep in mind, as Tom points out, that the Bradley effect doesn't mean people not voting for Obama out of racism (which clearly exists) but rather people who tell pollsters they are voting for Obama and then don't vote for him out of racism. I'm not sure this really happens, and in any event Tom's estimate of 2% of the electorate doing this seems really high. Think about it, there is no reason a Republican or Independent would not just tell the pollster they are voting for McCain. Only self-identified Democrats would feel "social pressure" to tell someone they support Obama when they don't. So to estimate two percent of the electorate does this, it would effectively mean what, 6% of so of Democratic voters? And that is without considering that 10% or so of Democrats already say they don't support Obama. The number just seems really high to me without any evidence to support it.

The Bradley effect occurred in California, one of the most liberal states in the country

Be careful in your analysis. In 1982 California was happily voting for Republican presidents, including Ford and Reagan. Reagan had been governor there for two terms. It was considered a swing state back then.

Even now California has a large Republican population and areas that are starkly red. However, in the past 25 years the flood of immigrants (ironically, at the encouragement of Republican governors, who wanted low wage illegals at the behest of the influential agriculture lobby) the state has shifted to the left. Today the only Republican who can win a state wide office has to have strong cross-party Hispanic appeal.

* raises hand *

Hopefully, most of these people are concentrated in states where they won't affect the outcome of the election.

I work under a bunch of repubs who think that Obama will win, but are hanging their hopes on a Bradley Effect in November. I had to excuse myself to run to the restroom and puke.

If we were in some sort of post-racism world, Obama would be equally considered a(n):

educated man

white man with an African father

black man with a white mother

So far, he is described only as a black man. I guess that one drop of black blood thing is still part of our collective makeup.

Of course, with the Republican penchant for electronic and other election shenanigans, it will be difficult to tell how much of the election results are due to the Bradley effect and how much are due to not allowing people to vote or not counting their votes.

What I'm worried about is that all those voters who have only just managed to barely get themselves comfortable with the idea of voting for a guy named "Barack Obama" are going to get into the voting booth, receive an unexpected jolt upon being presented with his full name in print ("BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA"), and choke.

The reason I have continuously said that Obama needs to be 10 points up in the polls to win has nothing to do with the Bradley effect.

He must be 10 points up in order to prevent the GOP from stealing the election with electronic voting machines and voter caging. It is my understanding that stealing the election is much easier when the vote is close to 50/50.

The trouble with talking about mixed race marriages as an indicator that racism is on the decline is that the mixed race statistic includes races that are not an issue in this election. When I think of the mixed-race marriages I know, only 40% have a black partner as "the other race".

The issue in this race more closely follows perceptions of black people in America. Sadly my parents are a great example of this. They always raised me to see beyond skin to be open to people of other cultures, but they seem really hard-pressed to see a Harvard-educated constitutional law professor with a substantial history of getting people to work together to find answers to their own problems as "experienced"... when it's a black person. On the other hand a white person who's been on the executive payroll of a string of failed businesses, who owned a baseball team, and who lead the state of Texas into near bankruptcy and ecological ruin -- well, that's experienced.