Obama and Bradley Effect

From Vicky Fan:

The entire world is watching this US 2008 Presidential Election in 2 days. While I was looking at the news, I was aware of the “Bradley Effect” keep showing on the news. As a foreigner, I never heard of “Bradley Effect.” Bradley effect is “a proposed explanation for observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some US government elections where a while candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other.” (Wikipedia) The origin was back in 1982, Tom Bradley ran for Governor of California against George Deukmejian, who is white. The existed polls showed a major wining for Bradley, but at the end, Bradley narrowly lost. This phenomenon happens because people don’t want to be mark as racism, result of inaccurate polls responses. People started saying that the undecided voters would favor McCain. The article “Obama Set to Make History” by Rowan Philp also mentioned that still “a 20% chance that McCain could pull off a stunning victory because “”this has been a weird election.””

Recently, all the articles show that Obama is afraid of Bradley effect would happened again, but several articles I found strongly believe that “No Threat of Bradley Effect.” Overall, I do support the arguments in the article of “No Threat of Bradley Effect.” Bradley effect happened more than 20 years ago, and during this period of time, racism has been reduced significant. Also people do not wish a black president, they might use the way to show their opposition like “He is a Muslim” as article said.

I do think Bradley effect would be affecting this election as significant. I have seen some terrible racism comments and advertisements on the news against Obama being a black person. If I have voting right, I will vote for Obama, and I do think the United States needs a younger leader with a modern mind that lead a new direction for American people.