From the Bradley campaign:
I heard Newt say this on ABC, and thought it sounded completely reasonable, but then he ruined it by making some sarcastic point about blacks possibly being racist in voting for Obama. That's the thing about Republicans. Often they make a perfectly rational point--and then ruin it with a stupid jab at Negroes or Latinos. I don't think they realize how much goodwill they lose with these antics. Anyway, the author worked on the Bradley campaign, and effectively kills the argument at its source.On election night in 1982, with 3,000 supporters celebrating prematurely at a downtown hotel, I was upstairs reviewing early results that suggested Bradley would probably lose.
But he wasn't losing because of race. He was losing because an unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated, giving Mr. Deukmejian a narrow victory.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
This is something I've noticed particularly about Newt. I once saw him on CSPAN saying some rather interesting things about current events (I forget the details), but then-- the subject of labor unions came up-- his face turned bright red, his hair (I swear) uncurled and stood on end, and he said a number of remarkably silly things.
I heard James Clyburn speak a few weeks ago and he basically said the same thing about Bradley losing the early votes. Of course, he used it as an opportunity to push people in OH to vote early for Barack.
I don't understand it either MattF. I've had the same experience. Hearing him say something fairly sharp--not even something liberal, but just something I would not have thought of--and then it's like rage gets the best of him. He really seemed pissed, yesterday, that the GOP looked headed to defeat. That's understandable, but it kept getting in the way of his points. I thought what he said about taxes, for instances, was smart and would have been a solid tactic for McCain. I don't think it would have worked, but I'm a liberal. I'm not supposed to think it will work. But it sounded plausible.
Nate Silver over at the polling site fivethirtyeight.com has a good discussion of why a lot of what is said about a "Bradley effect" doesn't apply to this election.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/if-bradley-effect-is-gone-what-happened.html
In the UK during the mid nineties the Conservative party continuously performed better than polls.
The pollsters realised that people didn't want to say they were voting conservative because they were considered a 'nasty' party but in the voting booth voted conservative anyway.
Could something similar happen this time in the US? After all the Republican brand is pretty toxic now after 8 years of George W but when push comes to shove there must be a sizable community that considers the Republicans more suited to them than the Democrats?
From this side of the pond this seems more likely than the Bradley effect which is almost too specific.
The psychological workings of Newt Gingrich's brain are too much for me to comprehend.
Sometimes, watching these guys, you get glimpses of what they really think, and then it's like they go, "oops gotta play to my base" and then something inane and banal and not at all thoughtful comes out.
Gingrich though seems genuinely to be of two minds. The thoughtful intellectual (even if I disagree with his conclusions) and the screaming knee-jerker who blames all his problems on the powerless.
-- But talk of a Bradley Effect is sure convenient, isn't it, when you've got an election to steal and you're down more than five points in the polls.
While I doubt the Bradley effect exists, especially today, it's besides the point in the way. It's the media's ace in the hole for keeping the election interesting. "Obama's 5 points ahead in the polls...but what about the Bradley effect?"
It will be mentioned by pundits who've run out of stuff to talk about every day until Nov. 4th. That's fine though. That type of talk doesn't help or hurt Obama any more than it does McCain.
What polls are you all looking at? All of the polls I see have Barack up by more than 5 points. I do think McCain will win OH though. I don't know what's wrong with them up there. Maybe they are masochists.
"Republicans" have been conditioned to apply a discounting principle to every subject, where "liberals," in some person or form, are the cause of every problem.
Newt will always be who we thought he was (a calculating Right Wing asshole).
Everyone talks about the Bradley campaign because that's where the name of the effect came from. For me, the Gantt-Helms contest is more telling. Oh, and thanks again Michael Jordan for your "Republicans buy shoes too." I'm sure Mr. Helms thanked you profusely for giving him cover.
We've still got the Wilder Effect.
The gun initiative was key, but it's also important to remember that no Mayor of Los Angeles has ever become Governor.
Snooty Northern Californians (I've lived in both places) have a highly neurotic hatred of all things Southern Californian.
We snooty Northern Californians have always regarded Ronald Reagan as a hated Southern Californian.
Nate Silver at 538 did a series of posts a while back that pretty decisively debunked the Bradley effect, at least in regard to the Democratic primary. Of course, Republicans are more likely to be racist - but if the effect were real, we should have seen at least SOME election-day underperformance by Obama.
Honest to goodness, I see the name Bradley, and I think of ex-NJ Senator Bill Bradley who ran for President. I live in NJ, so I forget that the media is talking about the former LA Mayor.
Wilson Goode, Harold Washington, and David Dinkins were mayors of big cities with plenty of ethnic rivalries / tensions. Were the polls and the votes a surprise in those races?
People change their minds during the last 2-5 days. It happens. So no one can take anything for granted in these matters.
I do this for a living and I'd never even heard of "the Bradley effect" until now. When we study racial attitudes about elections, we refer to Dinkins and to Harold Washington. Not really to Bradley. A significant number of whites in both cases told pollsters they planned to vote for both candidates only to do something else in the voting booth.
I'm not sure this is going to be a big deal this time around. The economy is in too bad of a shape, and I don't think people are uncomfortable stating they don't plan to vote for Obama because he's black.
they can't help it.
it's this one gene all of those wingnuts have...
but seriously, i think the problem is pretty simple.
because of the insular nature of their communications apparatus - talk radio, fox news - they do nothing but listen and speak to each other.
to them, there is nothing outrageous at all about those statements. they just do not perceive them to contain any racist sentiments at all because everyone they hang around with reinforces those same views.
and the sorry-a@# black folks they do encounter do the damnedest stepin fetchit routine one can ever imagine. those modern-day stepin fetchits do nothing but echo and reinforce the most overtly and subtly racist tripe we see out there.
things have gotten worse in that sense over the last 20 years or so.
25 years ago, most non-southern politicians would not make those kinds of statements, at least publically. look back on how nixon and ford and that generation of republicans, right after the civil rights movement, spoke about racial issues. they did so with a great deal of sensitivity, and circumspection, carefully avoiding making blatantly racist statements.
remember nixon's benign neglect? the premise behind it was that he couldn't afford to be seen as being assertively opposing black aspirations. therefore, neglecting black folks, with a smile, was the best way to go.
law and order? that phrase seems quaint, nowadays, even if everyone knew what it really meant.
racism certainly informed many of their decisions and policies, but they were very careful not to make public statements that would reveal and betray that racism.
that all changed with reagan, who made it politically palatable for white folks to say outright racist things, with no negative feedback.
and so now we are at the point where, in the most ridiculously illogical twist of all, blacks are accused, routinely of racism because they speak up about it and complain.
witness the uproar over congressman lewis' statements, the accusation that he is playing the race card.
now, white folks, especially in the right-wing echo chamber, feel pretty much free to say whatever the hell they want to say, and if anyone complains, they just sic hannity and rush and mark levin and michelle malkin on them.
that reality is the big reason i do not think the bradley effect exists anymore.
again, back then, white folks felt constrained about revealing their racism.
now, with the help of fox news and its ilk, they revel in it.
why would any voter care if a pollster or anyone else knew he wasn't voting for the n@gger, just because he is a n@gger?
they basically say the same types of thing on fox news and right-wing radio all day.