Paper Finds that Bradley/Wilder Effect Has Disappeared With Crime/Poverty issues

[Lunar]

Underpolled?  You mean overpolled?  Underpolled would indicate that the polls undestimated your support.

Anyway, would you be surprised if the reverse happened and Obama did 1% better than the polls predicted?  Because that's the sort of fluidity that happens in every election (the polls are never 100% right unless by freakish accident).

[Lunar]

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[Lunar]

Ok, not being a nazi, just wanted to make sure we were using the same terminology.

Anyway, I think racism in the undecideds is just one piece of the overall gigantic fabric that masks the "true" results from the poll (including statistical noise, methodological problems, oversampling, undersampling, ground game, cell-phone only voters, lying to pollster on both sides from Bradley-effecters to bitter Hillary voters that will still pull the lever for Obama).  If racism is going to be as indecisive as you predict, we'll never know.  I mean, there are so many hundreds of reasons undecideds can break for one candidate or the other, and I think personality and policies are significantly higher determinants than race, but we just won't know if it's only 1%.

[Lunar]

No need to lecture me on cell-phone users, it's obviously a laundry list of things that can go wrong with a poll.

That's actually only one theory behind the Bradley Effect.  If you count all the people who are really decided for McCain and instead tell the pollster that they are undecided or voting Obama, that might equal 1% states in Pennsylvania or possibly even more.  I think it's pretty ridiculous, biased, and arbitrary to give a flat 0.5-1% automatically for McCain off of the official poll results though.

Because, even if you are right and this many people lie, combined with racist undecideds, resulting let's say 1-2% breaking for McCain, you are still assuming:
a) The poll is 100% accurate statistically
b) The poll has 0% problems methodologically, including oversampling and undersampling
c) No one else is lying about not supporting Obama when they really do
d) Both candidates have completely equal ground game

I don't think any of those things are true.  I know in Pennsylvania, ground games tend to neutralize one another, but an extra 1% this way or the other wouldn't be unheard of.  Not to mention polling accuracy in many other respects. 

To isolate out just the Bradley effect in order to give a boost to your candidate is misleading.

Why do you assume Obama is more like Steele and Patrick and less like Ford?  It seems Obama has higher amounts of information-saturation, meaning less people feel the need to lie, combined with the fact that Steele and Patrick were both Republicans, further differentiating themselves...

[Lunar]

Ok, because your last two PA predictions have both been +0.5% whatever poll favors McCain the most of the past week: favoring McCain slightly when a single tied poll appeared (a Rasmussen back a week or so ago, even though others showed it not as tight) and now giving Obama 1.5% (when M-D gave Obama a 2% lead - even though the Rasmussen showed it 3%).  It seemed kind of formulaic and based off one poll + 0.5% Bradley effect.  I understand you're going off trends and so on, but if there's three-four quality polls, most likely the one showing it the tightest is a tick or two off.  The Bradley effect, as you depict it, I think it's reasonable to say, is dwarfed by the statistical errors, methodological errors, and ground game all throwing themselves into the tapestry.  Call it however you want, but I think it'd be silly/arbitrary for me to say Obama gets an extra +1% because he's invested way more money into organizing North Carolina, although that is absolutely a real possibility.  We'll have to see

McCain is certainly making Pennsylvania his #1 target in spending and he thinks he has a lot of room to grow there, so your predictions aren't loony, just they didn't seem holistic.  But it's not as if I know every thought in your head haha.

[Lunar]

bump for people who like a good read [OP's link is best]