I've never wanted this to become a one-topic blog, and I promise that it won't. But even though I've already posted a few entries on race and the election in recent weeks (like here and here, among others), it seems difficult to let the events of the past 24 hours go by without comment. So here goes, one last set of psychological questions generated by the presidential campaign. And please bear in mind that along with millions of my fellow Americans, I'm operating on major sleep deprivation this morning, so I apologize for opting for the lazy man's format, the numbered list.
1) Whither the Bradley Effect? As I (and several others) predicted, there was no evidence of a so-called Bradley Effect in the general election. I haven't had the time to run the numbers through any quantitative analysis, and I find it hard to summon the effort to do so when I'm sure someone somewhere has already beaten me to the punch. But I just picked a semi-random handful of states (diverse across geographic region and voting outcome) and look at the convergence between the final pre-election polls and actual vote totals:
• In CA the average pre-election poll numbers (courtesy of
realclearpolitics.com) had Obama at 59% with a +24% margin over McCain. The final numbers were Obama at 61% with a +24% margin. • In FL the pre-poll average was Obama at 49% with a 3-point win. He won by 2 points with 51%. • In NE a predicted 16-point win at 54% was actually an 18-point win at 58%. • In MO a predicted 1-point loss for Obama at 48% appears to be a 1-point loss at 49%. • In PA a predicted Obama win of 7 points at 51% was an 11-point win at 55%.• In SD a predicted Obama loss by 8 at 42% was actually an 8-point loss at 45%.• Even in NH, which many have touted as Exhibit A of the
Bradley Effect in action during the Democratic primaries, a projected 11-point win at 53% for Obama was actually an 11-point win at 55%.
In short, there seems to be no evidence at all of a Bradley Effect in the general election. These data indicate no signs that voters were telling pollsters they'd vote for Obama while actually voting for McCain. For that matter, some of the numbers imply that the undecided vote didn't move en masse to McCain on election day either, as many had forecasted. While I'm not about to suggest that race played no role in Americans' perceptions of this campaign, the Bradley Effect did remain urban political legend, at least in this election cycle.
2) Was this election all about race? The local morning sports-talk radio hosts in Boston also double as conservative commentators from 6-10 a.m. So I heard a lot on my drive into work today about how this election was "all about race." Black voters just voted for Obama because of his race, they alleged. Many "liberal Whites" did the same thing because it made them feel progressive, the argument went. Empirically speaking, are they right? Can we hang our hat on race as the primary explanation for this result?
Both assertions are on shaky ground, but particularly the first one. Was the celebration particularly pronounced among African-American voters last night? Of course–who'd expect otherwise? And according to the exit poll data on CNN today, Obama carried 95% of the Black vote compared to just 4% for McCain. That's a huge swing of over 14 million votes, without which Obama doesn't win.
But keep in mind that the Black vote split for John Kerry in 2004 wasn't too shabby either: 88%-11% according to CNN exit polls. Even if Obama had simply won the Black vote at that same clip of 88%-11%, he still beats McCain by more than 5 million popular votes. Yes, Black voters voted for Obama by huge margins. And, yes, Black voter turnout was likely higher because of his presence on the ticket (up from 11% of the total vote in 2004 to 13% in 2008, but not as high as some would have predicted in states like North Carolina and Virginia). But Obama wins this election even with the same Black turn-out and vote split that Kerry had in 2004.
The second proposition above is harder to assess quickly and with the data now available. But the idea that millions of Whites voted for Obama just because of his race is hard to square with other facts. First, exit polling shows that most voters (80%) said candidate race didn't influence them. No surprise there, and this group split for Obama 51% to 46%. What about the 19% who said that candidate race did affect them? They only went for Obama 53% to 45%. Now, self-report questions about the influence of race are highly suspect, of course. So what else do we know about race and White voters?
Well, my trusty morning talk show hosts were bemoaning a specific type of White voter, the "New England liberal" who voted for Obama because they "just wanted to be able to say they had done so." Now truth be told, New England would have gone the way of any Democratic candidate. As a case in point, after last night, there are no remaining Republican Congressmen in the entire region. Moreover, Obama also ran well enough in locales that we'd be hard-pressed to associate with such "liberal" sentiment. Like Jack Murtha's Pennsylvania. And Up North in Michigan (see left). From a psychological perspective, if anything, our tough economic climate might've been expected to exaggerate racial prejudice in these regions. Chalking up Obama's win to a simple matter of race is a conclusion for which I see little if any supporting evidence.
3. What's next? This is, to me, the most fascinating question. What happens now in our society when it comes to race? What is the impact on race relations and racial attitudes of seeing a person of color standing behind the presidential seal? Of watching a multiracial individual of African descent giving the State of the Union address? My guess is one similar to that of the 68% of my fellow voters who told exit pollsters that they foresaw no change or slight improvement in "race relations" in the U.S. in the next few years. In the short run, I'm not sure I expect much to change.
One thing I do anticipate in the years to come is hearing a lot of statements like "how much of a problem could racial bias be anymore if we elected a Black president?" Right, and Oprah Winfrey's empire has marked the end of race-based income disparities in this country. And O.J. Simpson's original acquittal meant racial bias is no longer a problem in the legal system. Again, there are dangers of reading too much into individual cases and too little into systematic empirical data.
But in the long run, I think psychologists would have to predict potentially positive effects for attitudes and beliefs regarding race. From an identity perspective, as so many have now noted, elementary school students of all colors and ethnicities will be presented with a daily reminder in their civics classes of what is possible for any American. By the same token, for young girls in this country like my own daughters, hopefully we're not many election cycles away from the election of a female president to finally break that glass ceiling at which Hillary Clinton chipped away this spring.
