I’ve been thinking for quite a while that this might be the case:
the Bradley Effect has resurfaced dramatically in a different manner in the Wisconsin recall vote. The polls — and, yes, the exit polls as well – were showing Scott Walker in a narrow victory. But he won beyond anyone’s prediction.
Apparently, the silent majority of Wisconsin voters didn’t want to admit to nosy pollsters and anyone else that might be listening that they were opposed to runaway unions, runaway spending, or the Democratic administration. They just wanted to cast their votes. And they did.
This Bradley Effect, then, is not like the Bradley Effect of yore. It’s about race to some degree, but I suspect there are much larger components of being fed up with elites of all sorts, interest groups, media groups, union groups, all sorts of groups telling the average citizen what he should and shouldn’t think, openly or covertly threatening to ostracize him or her for not going along with the pervasive liberal status quo. This was a cry of “Ya, basta!”
So if I were a member of the Democratic Party this morning, if I were David Axelrod and his team of so-called wise men, I would be wondering – what if all the polls are wrong? What if this is true across the entire country?
If Axelrod and his team of so-called wise men aren’t making a mess in their underoos this morning, they’re completely out of touch with reality. I think that this also explains the disparity between the president’s approval rating and his “likeability.” People are now willing to say, after over three years of non-stop policy disaster, that they don’t approve of his policies, but they still fear being thought racist if they say they find the egomaniacal condescending incompetent insufferable.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Francis Porretto makes a good point in comments over there — it may not be the Bradley Effect so much as a “thug effect,” in which people are afraid to tell exit pollsters what they really think, given what’s been happening in Wisconsin for a year and a half.
My vote is the “thug effect”, in this particular case.
My thinking for the past few weeks now is that Obama is in for the biggest landslide defeat ever. But I contain myself with Glen Reynold’s admonition of “Don’t get cocky, kid”
My hopes for an effect of the Wisconsin election is that it puts some spine into the GOP – showing them that if you stand for sensible conservative values you will not only win but win big.
I recall the classic example of the thug effect: the 1990 Nicaragua elections. The Sandinistas consistently led the polls, but they lost – and people were shocked – shocked! How could the polls be so far off? Maybe because the pollsters were the Sandinista military…
The Usual Suspects might call in sick today, so I’ll just link their script.
So it’s the evil corps, eh? They don’t apparently have the imagination to see what life would be like if those evil corporations weren’t around.
Except Walker didn’t win “beyond anyone’s prediction.” The last public poll showed Walker up by six, and he won by eight points, within the margin of error.
But that doesn’t factor in the people bussed in from other states – the polls only polled Wisconsin residents…
And how many people were predicting this?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/05/report-voter-turnout-119-percent-in-madison
Wisconsin allows same-day registration, so it’s not at all unexpected.
You actually have like, a picture of people being bussed in to vote? I mean, only 95% of all Americans have a cell phone with a camera attached. It would be completely unrealistic to expect one of them to actually use it.
Chris, although some Democrat voters do register on film [insert random crowd scene from “The Walking Dead”], not all of them do. Though both are technically dead, vampire DNC voters don’t cast a reflection and don’t show up on film or CCD sensors, while zombie Democrat voters do both.
However, photos of zombie DNC voters don’t establish much because most zombies never got a death certificate, still carry an ID, and are thus actually eligible to vote. But zombie voters are problematic because they’re hard to transport (they can’t operate a vehicle and will always eat the bus driver), are unreliable in the polling booth (they mostly mill around and gnaw on the levers), so the DNC prefers using vampires for long distance voter fraud.
They typically haul them in buses with blacked out windows and then try to slip them in after sunset, which is why Democrats keep suing to keep polling places open after dark.
Final exit polls had it at four points.
Polls usually have a margin of error of 3 or 4 points, so, again, Walker’s win is consistent with public polling and predicted by all but professional optimists.
Yeah except that the turnout was 119% of registered voters….
How can that be? I hear you plaintively ask….
Democrat voter fraud. 1/5 of the votes were fraudulent
And on top of that, normally you never get 80% turnout in an election. You get more like 50-60%. So it’s not really 19% fraud it’s really 59% (the 19 plus the fact you usually get only 60).
And the libs were STILL destroyed.
While the results are obviously fantastic, in spite of the “quiet chaos” that same-day registration allows (“crumpled cable bills, old unemployment checks”), one thing shouldn’t be overlooked. Walker enjoyed a significant money advantage. Something Romney will not have. For all their bluster, the unions really didn’t open their pockets. And they most definitely have deep ones.
I keep hearing that about the money but I don’t think it is true. It took a considerable amount of money to maintain the protesters since.this all began. I wonder if stuff like that was considered or just tv ads.
They spent a lot of money getting the recall on the ballot. But they were significantly outspent in advertising over the last few months. I can’t find it now but I read something this morning that indicated WI law played into it; Walker needed to spend everything he got before the election, and it was so much that his team was working overtime just booking ads.
Here is a chart from the right wing Maciver Institute. I am not really sure where they got all their numbers. http://www.maciverinstitute.com/2012/06/big-labor-recall-total-to-exceed-20-million/
I haven’t really seen any good info around that looks at all the spending involved by both sides.
Romney will have a much bigger advantage than money, negative GDP.
If we actually do see negative GDP (it’s 1.9 right now) then it really will be Bill Paxton “Game over, man”.
Vote from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
After seeing the Republican primaries, I’m deeply suspicious of the “Bradley effect”. Maybe it’s a cause of voters not wanting to tell pollsters who they voted for, or maybe it’s vote fraud.
Hey, wait a minute. It is the Republican side that exceeded polls and expectations. You are suspecting vote fraud. Are you saying that the Republicans in Wisconsin engaged in fraud? Can I quote you regarding your suspicions?
There’s a big difference between suspecting and knowing. All I can say is that I suspect.
I’m pretty sore about how the Republican primary was going. Romney probably would have won anyway – his competition just wasn’t that strong. But it looks to me like there was really blatant voter fraud, perhaps at the vote tabulation level (which apparently is covered by fewer vendors than those selling voting machines).
In that thread, I discuss some observations about the Republican primaries, namely, that as more votes were tallied in a large number of primaries, the votes shifted towards Romney at the expense of the competitors, usually one competitor (Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum all took turns being that guy). I don’t see an explanation for it in terms of probability or demographics.
It’s not so much that fraud is occurring as the relative obviousness of it. It means that whoever was doing it just didn’t care that much to cover it up, probably because they had little fear that they’d be caught or their work reversed. That sort of behavior probably implies that there is widespread vote fraud involved in the political process. It’s probably old news to a lot of people here, but something of a wake-up call for me. I guess I knew politics was dirty, but this looks a lot worse than I expected.
So now, when I see an exit poll that differs from the reported outcome, I have to wonder. Did those voters lie to protect themselves from reprisals? Or did they really vote the way they say they did?
Why should anyone tell pollsters anything? We have secret ballots for a reason. When a pollster calls you, it’s trivial to associate your answers with your phone number. While this is what they do for a living, it’s none of their damned business. Thank goodness for caller ID. I refuse to participate in any poll. Add to that the millions of people who’ve dropped their land lines and could never legally get called (although I’ve had a few illegal calls to my cell phone number) and your poll demographics are likely to be skewed.
Did you see the mailers that were going around in WI? One had a resident and their neighbor’s names and listed whether they voted or not in the last election and another had the names and what party they contributed to.
Even though there is a secret ballot, too much information is available about people’s voting habits.
This is the latest in a string of attempts at voter intimidation. The first big case that I can recall happened in California in the aftermath of Prop 8. People who donated to pro-prop 8 (gay marriage ban) groups found themselves subject to harrassment and boycotts. Recently, the WSJ published how people on the Obama enemies list have also been subject to harrassment and boycotts. Then we had those two mailings in Wisconsin that you mentioned.
They should know that both sides can play at this game. Quite a few conservatives refuse to go to movies that star leftists who support Obama. Progressive auto insurance is owned by a big lefty. So are a lot of other companies. Why should I give my money to people who’re acting against my best interests? Screw them.