Hotmail
Race questions cast doubt on presidential polls
 | Slide show |
 | Race for the presidency The trips, the speeches, and the moments of Decision ’08. A look at the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain. more photos |
Daniel J. Hopkins will. The Harvard University postdoctoral fellow examined data from 133 gubernatorial and Senate elections from 1986 to 2006 and concluded that the effect vanished in the early 1990s as racially divisive issues such as crime and welfare reform receded from the national stage.
Hopkins said that race could play a larger role if it is injected into the campaign — as it often is in the waning days of close contests involving black candidates.
Days before the 2006 Senate election in Tennessee, with polls showing the race almost deadlocked, Republicans released an ad featuring a ditzy blond actress saying she met Harold Ford Jr. at the Playboy Club and asking the black Democrat to "call me." Ford lost.
In 1990's tight North Carolina Senate contest, Republican Jesse Helms was running about even with Democrat Harvey Gantt when he released an ad showing white hands crumpling a job rejection letter as a narrator mentioned racial quotas. Helms won.
Blacks, too, have sought to use race to their political advantage: In a congressional primary this month in Memphis, a black challenger tried to link the incumbent, Steve Cohen, to the Ku Klux Klan. Cohen won easily.
While Obama may face some of these historical hurdles, there are other, unprecedented factors at work: a presidential instead of statewide election, a spike in black voters and the increase in young voters who are more racially tolerant, watch more YouTube than television and eschew the land telephone lines used by most polls.
|
Like Kohut, Greenwald doesn't think people are deliberately lying in polls. But he does see potential for polling errors due to undecided white voters overstating their support for Obama or choosing McCain at the last minute, and the influence of "racial attitudes and stereotypes that people in many cases are not aware they have."
Many pollsters are trying to adjust their methods to account for these unprecedented variables. It's not easy, however, to solve these new problems in the heat of a tight presidential race.
"I don't think anyone is correct or incorrect, including me," Greenwald said of the current poll numbers. "To get to the heart of that, you'd have to do the kinds of research that haven't been done."
The Obama campaign declined to comment on how it conducts its polling. The McCain campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Matthew Dowd, an ABC News commentator and former chief strategist for President Bush's 2004 campaign, expects the Wilder Effect to be a "small factor" in November. "I wouldn't want to be Barack Obama and up two points going into Election Day," he said.
"My guess is that (the Obama campaign) understands that and they know it's not enough to be ahead," Dowd said. "They have to be ahead by a lot."
|
|
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
-
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM BARACK OBAMA NEWS |
 Barack Obama News Section Front |
| Add Barack Obama News headlines to your news reader: |
Sponsored links
Resource guide