The 2008 Election Day LIVE Thread

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Ironically, this addresses an issue that UGA brought up earlier that I didn't want to address for lack of data . . . however, Silver has already discussed it, so I'll go ahead an appeal to oracle.

The reason why the Bradley Effect should have been completely discounted this election? There are TONS of people (white, black and in between) who are excited to "be a part of history" - this would, nearly by definition, offset any real or perceived Bradley Effect. Again - mobilizing the electorate was Obama's coup . . . keeping that momentum is the key.

I'm happy that there seems to be a good match-up between what people said publicly about who they were going to vote for and who they did vote for. I think it represents some progress.

But there was a chance that people were going to publicly bask in the glow of being on the side of history while privately voting otherwise. It's the ability to claim whatever you want about your vote that introduces the possible play in the results, not so much, to me anyway, actual racism or whatever.

I'm pleasantly surprised that there were fewer hypocrites of this sort than I had thought and I'm amazed by the accuracy of 538 data.

Maybe I should have realized that anyone actually likely to vote Republican gave up any pride about what other people thought about them or their politics sometime in the last four years and therefore had no reason to fib to pollsters.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I'm happy that there seems to be a good match-up between what people said publicly about who they were going to vote for and who they did vote for. I think it represents some progress.

But there was a chance that people were going to publicly bask in the glow of being on the side of history while privately voting otherwise. It's the ability to claim whatever you want about your vote that introduces the possible play in the results, not so much, to me anyway, actual racism or whatever.

It was certainly something that we didn't really know how to account for before, but it looks like it either did not exist at all, or that it was offset by other factors. All in all, very interesting.