How many of J.J.'s election rules............

[J. J.]

I loved how J. J.'s absolute religious-like worship of the Bradley Effect basically violated his own rules. Then again he tossed those out the window in regards to Hillary in the primary (and was basically wrong every time.)

Actually, I was right, on the 1-2 point Bradley Effect, except it might have been 1-3 points.

On the first one, no, McCain actually didn't violate it.  He said repeatedly that he was behind.  The rule is that the candidate who said it would lose, so there was no violation (though I was waiting).

#2 proved correct as well.  No new group, though turnout of people was good.  The "Youth surge" never materialized.  (I was watching that one too.)

The newest rule, #3, seemed to work, nationally.  Remember the Palin crowds and the St. Louis rally for Obama?

They held.

[J. J.]

NBC Nightly News just announced that if NO voter under age 30 voted, it would have flipped two states, IN and NC.

The rules held.

[J. J.]

You must be the only human on the planet that believes there was a "Bradley Effect" in the election.

I've said that I expected a 1-2 point Bradley Effect nationally.  We have two of the tracking polls that follow (neither of which is Zogby) that well over predicted the margin outside of the MOE, Gallup and ABC/WP.  We have a third, TIPP that over counted Obama, but within the MOE.  (It could be a 1-3 point Bradley Effect.)

We have two good polls that undercounted, Rasmussen and Hotline, but within the MOE.  R2Kos did as well.

We've known a few things about Rasmussen, it uses the 'bots and it pushes.  Does Hotline do either?

And, though it did not occur in every state, it did occur in some (Iowa, ironically, was one and New York).  It didn't make a difference and in some states where I thought it would occur greatly, OH and PA, it didn't.

[J. J.]

If a candidate underpolled i don't know how you can exactly say it was because of the "Bradley effect". Maybe there were other reasons.

Wasn't Kerry polling better in North Carolina in 2004 than what it finally turned out to be the results? And i'm sure a lot of candidates in the past years have been underpolled in some places and overpolled in others. How exactly do you know why that happened?

Maybe the Bradley effect happened somewhere, maybe not, but i still can't figure out how you can be so sure J.J.

First of all, it has to occur across polls; it can not be just one bad poll.

Second, in some of the examples, it has to be consistently outside of the MOE or at least consistently at the upper end of the MOE.  CA is an example.  McCain did slightly better than expected than several late polls, but in the MOE.  There were others IA, AR, GA, WV, and even NY, where McCain's result was better than the MOE.  (It did occur in UT as well, though it wasn't great polling)

Third, it seems to be more likely to occur in races where one candidate is black and the other is white, more so than in a white/white or black/black candidates race.  It occurs across party and on the ultimate winner, but it doesn't occur in all cases.

Fourth, in 2006, the pattern was the undecided vote looking like it would break heavily to the white candidate.  In other words, the undecideds tended either to make up their minds for the white candidate, or they said to the pollster, "I'm undecided," but secretly thought, "I'm voting for the white guy."

That pattern occurred in 3 out 4 black/white candidate races in 2006 and seems to have occurred in some state polls and certainly in good national polls (and a bad one, Zogby).

My question is, did the polls that got it closer, in the MOE, do something that corrected for this?  We know that Rasmussen uses robocalling and Hotline and TIPP doesn't so that's it.

[J. J.]

You must be the only human on the planet that believes there was a "Bradley Effect" in the election.

Unprovable either way IMHO. The margins in the states may have been wide enough were any such effect would have just been seen as static.

Unprovable beyond reasonable doubt...

The results certainly imply something though.

Namely that there was a localized [/notices he isn't quite on message, as he was going to talk about race affecting vote decisions rather than the mythical Bradley Effect itself. Cuts self short]

Good Lord, Lewis.  I said I expected it to be a 1-2 point Bradley Effect nationally and it looks like a 1-3 point range.  I've also cited a half dozen states where it looks like it occurred, though most were big, one way or the other.  :rolleyes: