page_title: Bradley effect
section_title: 2006 Senate races
hierarchical_section_title: Bradley effect / Possible diminished effects / 2006 Senate races
caption_attribution_description: Harold Ford photo portrait.
context_page_description: The Bradley effect is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. The theory proposes that some white voters who intend to vote for the white candidate would nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate. It was named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.
  The Bradley effect posits that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias. Specifically, some voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. Members of the public may feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed to be more publicly acceptable, or 'politically correct'. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well.
context_section_description: In 2006, there was speculation that the Bradley effect might appear in the Tennessee race for United States Senator between Harold Ford, Jr. and white candidate Bob Corker. Ford lost by a slim margin, but an examination of exit polling data indicated that the percentage of white voters who voted for him remained close to the percentage that indicated they would do so in polls conducted prior to the election. Several other 2006 biracial contests saw pre-election polls predict their respective elections' final results with similar accuracy.
  In the race for United States Senator from Maryland, black Republican candidate Michael Steele lost by a wider margin than predicted by late polls. However, those polls correctly predicted Steele's numbers, with the discrepancy in his margin of defeat resulting from their underestimating the numbers for his white Democratic opponent, then longtime Representative Ben Cardin. Those same polls also underestimated the Democratic candidate in the state's race for governor—a race in which both candidates were white.
  The overall accuracy of the polling data from the 2006 elections was cited, both by those who argue that the Bradley effect has diminished in American politics, and those who doubt its existence in the first place. When asked about the issue in 2007, Douglas Wilder indicated that while he believed there was still a need for black candidates to be wary of polls, he felt that voters were displaying "more openness" in their polling responses and becoming "less resistant" to giving an accurate answer than was the case at the time of his gubernatorial election. When asked about the possibility of seeing a Bradley effect in 2008, Joe Trippi, who had been a deputy campaign manager for Tom Bradley in 1982, offered a similar assessment, saying, "The country has come a hell of a long way. I think it's a mistake to think that there'll be any kind of big surprise like there was in the Bradley campaign in 1982. But I also think it'd be a mistake to say, 'It's all gone.'"
caption: Polling numbers in Harold Ford's 2006 U.S. Senate campaign did not exhibit the Bradley effect.
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