- Aug 4, 2011
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"...a new study suggests that opposition to same-sex marriage may be understated in public opinion polls. Using pre-election polling data in states that have voted on same-sex marriage measures, political scientist Richard J. Powell found that pre-election surveys consistently underestimated opposition to these laws by 5 to 7 percentage points."
"Social desirability bias in polling comes in many flavors. Perhaps the most well known is the “Bradley Effect,” named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black man, who faced Republican George Deukmejian, who was white, in the 1982 California gubernatorial race. Bradley held a substantial lead in most pre-election polls, only to lose narrowly. His defeat fueled speculation that some white voters had given misleading answers to poll-takers, saying they supported Bradley or were undecided but really favored Deukmejian.
"But it wasn’t until 2007 that Harvard political scientist Daniel Hopkins confirmed the existence of the effect. He studied elections between 1989 and 2006 that pitted black and white Senate candidates against each other. He found that the black candidates polled better than their final share of the vote in contests with white candidates in elections through 1996. But the effect then vanished, for reasons that he said were unclear."
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...e-may-be-understated-in-public-opinion-polls/
"Social desirability bias in polling comes in many flavors. Perhaps the most well known is the “Bradley Effect,” named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black man, who faced Republican George Deukmejian, who was white, in the 1982 California gubernatorial race. Bradley held a substantial lead in most pre-election polls, only to lose narrowly. His defeat fueled speculation that some white voters had given misleading answers to poll-takers, saying they supported Bradley or were undecided but really favored Deukmejian.
"But it wasn’t until 2007 that Harvard political scientist Daniel Hopkins confirmed the existence of the effect. He studied elections between 1989 and 2006 that pitted black and white Senate candidates against each other. He found that the black candidates polled better than their final share of the vote in contests with white candidates in elections through 1996. But the effect then vanished, for reasons that he said were unclear."
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...e-may-be-understated-in-public-opinion-polls/
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