How accurate are current presidential election polls? Could people be telling pollsters one thing, but voting the complete opposite? The Bradley effect, a theory about discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes, may very well impact how people cast their final ballot.
Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these questions:
• Who is the Bradley effect named after?
• Could the Bradley effect impact both parties?
• Can the Bradley effect be about more than racism?
Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:
GLENN: Give me the poll results here, Stu. Because I'm worried about something called the Bradley effect, on both sides.
For instance, those people -- because there's a backlash now. If you don't say you're voting for Clinton and you're on the left, they'll bash you and say, you know, you're just for Trump. It's worse on the right. If you say you're not going to vote for Trump, they will bash you. So I'm not sure the poll numbers are right because, do you want to go through the hell of just not -- just -- just go along with it. Just go along with it.
And how many people don't even want to admit to their own family or their own spouses, that will go in and pull the lever on the right for someone else, or they'll say they're for someone else, but when they get into it, they're like, "I don't want Trump in." So I know I said I was for Jill Stein, but I'm going to vote for Hillary.
STU: We're definitely seeing that beginning.
GLENN: Right.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: They're going to pull out of these -- I'm saying that I'm voting for, you know, Gary Johnson, but I'm going to vote for Hillary. Because Hillary is the one with the third party lean. She's got a -- she's pulling much stronger from the third parties than Donald Trump is.
STU: Most polls show that.
GLENN: Right. So they are appealing to her. Everyone should celebrate the third party because they're not hurting Donald Trump in comparison to how they're hurting Hillary Clinton. The spread becomes wider when those parties are left out.
But the same can be said about Donald Trump. How many people will say, "I'm not for Donald Trump."
STU: Right. So the -- this goes to the Bradley effect. Let's start there. Tom Bradley. He was the mayor of Los Angeles. This was back in 1982. He was running for governor. Black guy running for governor. Was ahead in all the polls. Wound up losing the election. The belief was that people in the polls did not want to admit they were voting against the black guy because it would feel like -- they didn't want to admit that they were, quote, unquote, racist. But then their racism really showed when they got behind the --
GLENN: Which was such crap. Possibly, what they didn't want was to have the argument or be called a racist. But they just didn't agree with the guy.
STU: It could be that too.
GLENN: Right.
STU: So the Bradley effect started there. There's some examples in that era, in the '80s and even the early '90s a little bit where it seemed like it was a thing. There has not been an example of this particular type of thing in a long time.
GLENN: Because -- because what the media is calling the Bradley effect is racism. That you're racist.
STU: Yes.
GLENN: I don't think so. It is a natural avoidance of conflict in your personal life, until you close the curtain. So the country is so divide that you're a racist if you don't vote for Bradley. Okay? And so if you -- if you just don't agree with him, but you're not a racist, you just don't agree with him, just go along and say, "Yeah, I'm with you." And then when the curtain closes, you're like, "I don't agree with him." It's not racism.
So if it's racism, then it doesn't apply. But fits actually political correctness, that you're tired of political correctness, but you're so tired you've just given up -- and you're just saying, for instance, "Yes, I'm for Trump." Because you don't want to get beat up by the pro-Trump people.
Or you are actually pro-Trump, but you're saying to your friends that you're Hillary. You just hate Hillary so much, you're just like, "I'm going to go for Trump." But your friends will kill you if you say you're for Hillary.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: And I think both of them have this. I think Hillary has the possibility that there are so many people -- we've talked to them.
JEFFY: Yeah.
GLENN: So many die-hard Democrats that despise her. Despise her. But they are so afraid of Donald Trump. The same thing with the Republicans. They despise Donald Trump. But they're so afraid of Hillary Clinton. That could shake apart once the curtain is closed.