Racists for Obama
There’s been a raft of stories about how white racists are still planning on voting for Barack Obama. From Sean Quinn: So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. ...
There's been a raft of stories about how white racists are still planning on voting for Barack Obama. From Sean Quinn: So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!" Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er." From Ben Smith: New polling and a trickle of stories from the battleground states suggest that Sen. Barack Obama's coalition includes one unlikely group: white voters with negative views of African-Americans.... Anecdotes from across the battlegrounds suggest that there’s a significant minority of prejudiced white voters who will swallow hard and vote for the black man. “I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama,” the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently. One Obama volunteer told Politico after canvassing the working-class white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are … undecided. They would call him a [racial epithet] and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy.” Just to be subversive here, these are the kinds of interactions that could lead to a greater Bradley effect than has been anticipated for this election cycle. While people with these kind of attitudes might be telling canvassers, pollsters, and reporters that they're thinking of voting for Obama, I do wonder if that inclination will dissipate when they have to punch the ticket. Developing.... UPDATE: Folks in the comments section make an excellent counterargument -- the Bradley effect only exists if people are self-conscious enough about their racism to shield it from pollsters, and the people in these anecdotes do not appear to be doing that. So who knows. ANOTHER UPDATE: One counterpoint to the counterargument. To put it gently, the people quoted in the above excerpts don't sound like the most media-savvy individuals in the world. So maybe they're trying to please reporters et al but are doing it in a very ham-handed way.
There’s been a raft of stories about how white racists are still planning on voting for Barack Obama. From Sean Quinn:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!” Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
From Ben Smith:
New polling and a trickle of stories from the battleground states suggest that Sen. Barack Obama’s coalition includes one unlikely group: white voters with negative views of African-Americans…. Anecdotes from across the battlegrounds suggest that there’s a significant minority of prejudiced white voters who will swallow hard and vote for the black man. “I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama,” the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently. One Obama volunteer told Politico after canvassing the working-class white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, “I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are … undecided. They would call him a [racial epithet] and mention how they don’t know what to do because of the economy.”
Just to be subversive here, these are the kinds of interactions that could lead to a greater Bradley effect than has been anticipated for this election cycle. While people with these kind of attitudes might be telling canvassers, pollsters, and reporters that they’re thinking of voting for Obama, I do wonder if that inclination will dissipate when they have to punch the ticket. Developing…. UPDATE: Folks in the comments section make an excellent counterargument — the Bradley effect only exists if people are self-conscious enough about their racism to shield it from pollsters, and the people in these anecdotes do not appear to be doing that. So who knows. ANOTHER UPDATE: One counterpoint to the counterargument. To put it gently, the people quoted in the above excerpts don’t sound like the most media-savvy individuals in the world. So maybe they’re trying to please reporters et al but are doing it in a very ham-handed way.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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