"Obama Effect" replaces "Bradley Effect"

So says Bob Moser, writing in the Nation.

With Obama being the first viable black presidential candidate, this is a fascinating element of the 2008 race.

When Barack Obama came a-cropper in New Hampshire after looking sweet in the polls, suspicions were immediately stirred that the dreaded "Bradley effect" had kicked in. Named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost a big edge for California governor in 1982 on the final day, the "effect" is said to kick in for white voters who tell pollsters they plan to vote for black candidates--and then suffer a kind of racial panic when they're actually hoisting their ballot-punchers on Election Day. ...

Exit polls eventually quelled the "Bradley effect" rumors in New Hampshire; Obama ended up with more of the white working-class vote on primary day than he'd gotten in the polls. And in the Southern primaries on Tsunami Tuesday, the "effect" was even more emphatically absent. Adding to his landslide in South Carolina, Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in Georgia and Alabama, and appears to have very narrowly won the border state of Missouri, the ultimate "purple state," where Clinton led in recent weeks by healthy margins.

The Alabama victory was unexpected, particularly because the state's most powerful black political organization had endorsed Clinton months ago. But Artur Davis, the state's own rising "post-racial" member of Congress, bucked them and got behind Obama early, spurring a surge of enthusiasm among black voters similar to Obama's overtaking of Clinton in South Carolina.   Clinton split the South on Tuesday, winning her semi-home state of Arkansas, along with Tennessee and Oklahoma. But in every case except Tennessee, where he lost by the expected 13 points, Obama's Southern vote was higher than his standing in the polls--inverting the Bradley effect. He scored 15 percent better than predicted in Alabama; seven percent higher than Missouri polls were showing; eleven points better than he'd polled in Georgia. In Georgia, Obama won 43 percent of white votes--almost double the share he captured in South Carolina.   That certainly doesn't mean that white Southerners--or the rest of white Americans--have somehow gone colorblind overnight. (If only.) The ultimate test of white voters' ability to look past race might come next November, when Obama--if he's the nominee--is likely to make a run at states like Georgia, where Clinton would almost certainly not even attempt to campaign. But Obama's Southern support--coupled with his impressive white vote in red states in the Midwest and Interior West--does indicate that one longtime manifestation of racialized voting just might be disappearing. And it's one more reason to believe that, unlikely as it once would have seemed, Barack Obama is the Democrat with the best chance to break through in Middle America and win the White House with a genuine mandate. Maybe we'll someday call that the Obama Effect.