Race, Polling, Fibbing

In an article in the Wall Street Journal of 8/2/08, Ellen Gamerman writes of efforts researchers make to determine the extent of bias in response to survey questions. To determine whether people commonly lie, various techniques have been employed: use of a computer; use of a computer avatar named Victoria (two varieties: one with various gestures, one who stares blankly); placement of responses at various points on a computer screen (testing their "Good Is Up" theory); asking a control question; asking the respondent, at the end of the interview, what race he/she believes the interviewer belongs to.

Such studies are particularly relevant in the context of this presidential election, given that one of the two major candidates is black. Gamerman reports

Peter Hart, a Democrat on a bipartisan team conducting the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, estimates that 10% of current Democrats and independents who say they support presumed Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama may not be giving a fully honest answer, at least based on their responses to broader questions about race.

I suppose Republicans are not even pretending they're going to vote for the Democratic nominee. Anyway, this suggests the "Bradley Effect," a (untested) theory developed to explain the loss of Thomas Bradley in the 1982 California gubernatorial race after pre-election, and exit, polls showed him ahead.

I'm sure the Obama and McCain teams have pondered this factor and its possible effect (which I don't believe is primarily due to racism). But.... there are two other critieria which may work in the opposite direction, possibly giving Obama a greater percentage of the vote than polls prior to the election would indicate. They are:

- the likely unprecedented turnout of blacks;
- the turnout of the increasing number of individuals, primarily the young, who use only cell phones, eschewing land-line phones, and thus not reachable in polling done by phone.

Blacks, obviously, will be voting overwhelmingly for Obama; youth generally, less so, but still solidly. And I suspect the number of young people who rely on cell phones who vote for McCain, who only recently was introduced to the Internet and gives something of the appearance of a technological troglodyte, will be tiny.

So ask yourself these questions: 1) How often have reports of surveys explained to what extent the researchers are accounting for the greater percentage of blacks in this electorate than ever before in a presidential election? (answer: not often); 2) How often have reports of surveys explained whether the researcher is accounting for individuals who have no land-line phone? (answer: less often). Which helps explain why these polls measuring support for McCain v. Obama probably explain very little, and perhaps why their results so radically differ from each other.

Race Matters

Would someone tell Gwen Ifill that most black voters are not racists?

Appearing this past Sunday, April 26, 2008, on NBC's Meet The Press, PBS' Gwen Ifill, after sympathisizing with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, stated

But what the, the numbers have shown us, the exit polls have shown us in the last week is that what we don't want to talk about is racism, which is, I think, a, a, a real issue. The people who said they--that race mattered to them, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm not calling the voters racists, but I think, at some point, we have to get back to a word that we're very scared of using in our society, which is the reason why people vote against someone because of their race is not a positive reason, it's a negative, and racism is a negative quality.

To summarize, Ifill says: A lot of people to whom race mattered voted for Clinton. I'm not calling them racists but people voting against someone because of race is a negative and racism is a negative quality.

Now, here are the results by percentage and race (black and non-Hispanic white only, so as not to complicate the issue) in a few Democratic primaries, as indicated by NBC exit polls (not all add to 100%):

New Jersey: whites: Clinton 66, Obama 31; blacks: Clinton 14, Obama 82
Mississippi: whites: Clinton 70, Obama 26; blacks: Clinton 8, Obama 92
Ohio: whites: Clinton 64, Obama 34; blacks: Clinton 13, Obama 87
Pennsylvania: whites: Clinton 63, Obama 37; blacks: Clinton 10, Obama 90

Bloc voting clearly has been more common among blacks and apparently race has played a part in the overwhelming majority of blacks voting for Obama. Therefore, if among people who said "that race mattered to them, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton," I think we can conclude that among people who said that race mattered to them, a lot of people voted for Obama. But I believe that most of these voters are not racist, yet Ifill cites strong white support for Clinton as suggestive of racism. I suppose, then, that Ifill believes that strong- no, overwhelming- black support for Obama suggests racism.... except she doesn't say that. So does this prominent journalist believe that Obama's support among blacks can be attributed to racism (I don't)- or is she a firm believer in double standards?