George,

It is time to put to rest the notion that many white respondents to polls give “politically correct” or socially acceptable responses when an African-American candidate is one of the choices. This phenomenon has been very much in the news lately because the New Hampshire polls were so far off. The Doug Wilder and Tom Bradley examples are often cited.

The argument goes something like this: A white respondent receives a call from some distant stranger from a polling organization. The respondent really doesn’t like the idea of having an African-American as governor or president, but wants to be “politically correct ” in the eyes of the interviewer. So the respondent says he is going to vote for the African-American candidate. This is nonsense. People just do not go through this kind of physiological contortion when answering surveys.

Last night I decided to do some analysis on this subject. I looked at all gubernatorial contests in 2006 and compared the actual election returns with poll predictions. There were three races in 2006 where an African-American was one of the candidates – Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, Ken Blackwell in Ohio and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania. In Ohio, the polls were right on – Blackwell received exactly the same vote as predicted by the polls. In Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, the African-American candidates received MORE votes than predicted. Patrick had over 2 percent more and Swann had 4 percent more. Furthermore, in five contests where both candidates were white, the polls were off by 6 percentage points. Polls are very crude instruments and are often wrong.

When making conclusions about any phenomena, it is necessary to have a full set of data and analyze it systematically and objectively. When commentators pick just two examples – Bradley and Wilder – out of all the gubernatorial election data, this is highly unscientific and biased.
If there is bias in all this, it is the commentators who ply this crap, not the respondents to polls.

I should add that respondents to polls are very socially conscious when they respond. They do not want to appear dumb or like poor citizens.
This attitude is motivated by their personal sense of worth, not their attitude toward some external group. They will say “agree” or “disagree” in answer to issue questions even though they have never thought about the issue or even heard of it. Saying “don’t know” is not an option for most. Also, they will say they are going to vote for someone (probably someone most frequently mentioned in the news) even though they have no intention of voting. Good citizens vote. Again, poll results are often an illusion. They contain a lot of “vapor”.

David RePass (Electronic mail, January 9, 2008)