Discuss: Was "The Bradley Effect" Responsible For Obama's Surprise Loss In New Hampshire?

Before New Hampshire's primary, polls showed Sen. Barack Obama with a 10-15 point lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Even Sen. Clinton's campaign was acknowledging that she was gonna get thumped in New Hampshire. Yet Sen. Clinton pulled out a 39% to 37% victory over Sen. Obama. What happened last night?

As the New Hampshire election returns were coming in last night, I commented here on Booker Rising: "In response to Ronnie B's question above, my prediction is that the difference between Obama's blowout poll numbers and tonight's close election results may be the 'black candidate' effect. Iowa was a caucus state, where folks (on the Democratic side, as the GOP caucus involved secret ballots) had to openly declare which candidate they supported and there was opportunity to persuade someone to come to one's side if their first-choice candidate did not meet the viability threshhold. New Hampshire is a primary state, with a secret ballot, which may play more into the 'black candidate' effect."

What is the Bradley effect? Named after black politician Tom Bradley, who was significantly ahead in 1982 polls for his Los Angeles mayoral campaign but narrowly and unexpectedly lost to the Republican candidate. Wikipedia writes: "The term Bradley effect or Wilder effect refers to a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voter opinion polls in some American political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate. Specifically, there have been instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots. White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the black candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate. This reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well."

From what I have seen, the polls were not wrong about the candidates' support on the Republican side. Nor were they wrong about John Edwards' or Sen. Obama's support on the Democratic side. However, the polls appear to have overestimated Sen. Obama's support in New Hampshire by about three percentage points and underestimated Sen. Clinton's support by nine percentage points. With the secret ballot vs. the open declaration in Iowa's Democratic caucuses last week - where voters may have faced peer pressure to vote a certain way so as not to look "racist" - perhaps some white Democratic voters voted their true preference because they have reservations about having a black president. It remains to be seen whether this will continue in future contests, which mostly comprise of secret ballots and not caucuses. Either way, perhaps I (and other observers) was too quick to argue last week that Sen. Obama bucks conventional political wisdom.