In 1982, Tom Bradley, the long-time mayor of Los Angeles, California, ran as the Democratic Party’s candidate for Governor of California against Republican candidate George Deukmejian, who is white. Most polls in the final days before the election showed Bradley with a significant lead.Based on exit polls, a number of media outlets projected Bradley as the winner; early editions of the next day’s San Francisco Chronicle featured a headline proclaiming “Bradley Win Projected.” However, Bradley narrowly lost the race. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than polls had predicted, and that previously “undecided” voters had voted for Deukmejian in statistically anomalous numbers.Other races which have been cited as possible demonstrations of the Bradley effect include the 1983 race for Mayor of Chicago, the 1988 Democratic primary race in Wisconsin for President of the United States, and the 1989 race for Mayor of New York City.[16][17][18]
The 1983 race in Chicago featured black candidate Harold Washington running against white candidate Bernard Epton. More so than the California governor’s race the year before,[19] the Washington-Epton matchup evinced strong and overt racial overtones throughout the campaign.[20][21] Two polls conducted approximately two weeks before the election showed Washington with a 14-point lead in the race. A third conducted just three days before the election confirmed Washington continuing to hold a lead of 14 points. But in the election’s final results, Washington won by less than four points.[16]
In the 1988 Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, pre-election polls pegged black candidate Jesse Jackson — at the time, a legitimate challenger to white candidate and frontrunner Michael Dukakis — as likely to receive approximately one-third of the white vote.[22] Ultimately, however, Jackson carried only about one quarter of that vote, with the discrepancy in the heavily white state contributing to a large margin of victory for Dukakis over the second-place Jackson.[23]
In the 1989 race for Mayor of New York, a poll conducted just over a week before the election showed black candidate David Dinkins holding an 18-point lead over white candidate Rudy Giuliani. Four days before the election, a new poll showed that lead to have shrunk, but still standing at 14 points. On the day of the election, Dinkins prevailed by only two points.[16]
Similar voter behavior was noted in the 1989 race for Governor of Virginia between Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, an African-American, and Republican Marshall Coleman, a white candidate. In that race, Wilder prevailed, but by less than half of one percent, when pre-election poll numbers showed him on average with 9 percent lead.[24][16] The discrepancy was attributed to white voters telling pollsters that they were undecided when they actually voted for Marshall Coleman.[25]
After the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election, the “Bradley effect” was sometimes called the “Wilder effect”.[26][17] Both terms are still used; and less commonly, the term “Dinkins effect” is also used
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