The Obama Effect

Arnon A. Mishkin, writing for The Weekly Standard October 27, says undecided voters will go in larger numbers for McCain than they will for Obama. Here are some excerpts from his article, in which he lays out his argument. The full text can be found at the link embedded above.

After briefly touching on the so-called Bradley Effect and its impact on undecided voters, Mishkin says, "McCain should win a larger share of undecided voters than Obama, but it has little to do with race."

His argument starts like this: "With Obama outspending McCain by upwards of 4 to 1, getting enormous traction with newspaper editorial boards, generating the enthusiasm to bring out crowds measured in the tens of thousands, and with Palin treated as more of a punch line than a candidate by the press - it seems likely that if voters are not ready to tell a pollster that they are with Obama, they are unlikely to get there."

I've asked this question before: given all of Obama's advantages, the economy, two terms of George W. Bush, an unpopular war in Iraq, a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, a fresh, new face, and a media that's in the tank for him, why can't Obama seal the deal? He should be 15 to 20 points ahead of McCain, but national level polls run anywhere from 1 point to 14 points. Why can't he put this guy away?

Mishkin continues: "But the phenomenon of undecided voters' breaking for McCain need not be called the 'Bradley effect.' Call it the 'Bloomberg effect' - where after $100 million of spending, his mayoral challenger was able to capture essentially all of the 10 point undecided vote. Or call it the 'Clinton effect' - where almost all the undecided vote swung away from the popular incumbent and went to Bob Dole. Or call it the 'Reagan effect' - where even during the Republican 1980 primaries, voters were apparently reluctant to say they were going to vote for the 'elderly washed up actor' and he got the preponderance of the undecided vote."

Mishkin calls it "the Social Effect." He describes it like this: "Where there is a perception that there is a 'socially acceptable' choice, respondents who do not articulate it, are likely not to agree with it....I am not going to psychoanalyze what is going on in their heads, but in the end, the pattern tends to be that those undecided voters vote against that 'socially acceptable' choice."

This happened during the Democratic primaries, Mishkin writes, when Hillary Clinton outperformed, by substantial margins, Barack Obama among voters who decided in the last few days before the primary. Simultaneously, though, Mishkin says another effect was in play - instances where Obama did better than his final poll numbers. "What seems to have happened," Mishkin writes, "were two effects that had opposite impacts on polling accuracy. It seems they amount to 'The Obama Effect...'"

The Obama Effect has two components. First, there is the "Social Effect" where undecideds do not vote for Obama. Second, there is the "Enthusiasm Effect," where pollsters underestimate turnout among Obama supporters (primarily African-Americans and young voters).

Mishkin tested his theory by correlating "...the difference between pre-primary poll estimates of Obama and his actual vote against the relative size of African-American share of Democratic primary vote."

"What is surprising," Mishkin says, "is how accurately the percent of African Americans correlates with the error on the polls (the actual vote minus the RCP average of polls). In a regression, I found that fully 89 percent of the difference between Obama's actual vote and his final poll average could be explained by percent of African Americans among the state primary voters."

In the end, Mishkin concludes, "When one controls for the size of the Obama-enthusiast population, Obama basically gets what the pre-primary polls said he would get ('The Social Effect'), but when one looks at the actual result, it is clear that it is highly dependent on the size of the Obama-enthusiast population."

So while pollsters need to do better in gauging projected turnout, Mishkin also says "...as the election winds down, one should look less at the difference between Obama and McCain, and more at the actual number that Obama is getting in the polls."