On the Road to the White House

Study looks at the role of race in the election

A poll conducted by Stanford University says that Barack Obama could be ahead by six points more if racial prejudice wasn't a factor.

On my post of the results of a poll on which presidential candidates Americans would prefer to have over to watch the football game, commenter StMichaelTraveler said:

This is just part of the total answer. The major part is whether many older blue-colored workers, older under-educated women, and fundamentalists Christians can accept a highly qualified part black American as their president.

Since 1950, we Americans have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go to free ourselves from the yoke of our prejudices. If Senator McCain wins this election, it would be greatly the result of our prejudice. If then, we should stop calling ourselves the leader of the free world, when we still have subjugated a major part of our society?

Well, look here. Cue the researchers at Stanford University. They wanted to find out why Barack Obama didn't have a larger lead in the polls despite President Bush's unpopularity, upset over the war in Iraq and Democrats' advantages on the economy. Barack Obama's Democrats have even registered more voters for the election in November.


The study suggested that "Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice".

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com says not so fast. He says that it's irresponsible to cite the study without subjecting the study to peer review. But he also challenges some of the received wisdom that has grown up around Barack Obama and the impact of his race. Nate's points 2 and 4 seem the most compelling to me.

2. The study appears to be one of all adults, rather than registered or likely voters. Expressions of racial prejudice have a strong inverse correlation with education levels, and so do turnout rates. Therefore, even if it is true that Barack Obama's race puts him at something like a 6-point disadvantage with the population as a whole, the margin is probably more like 4-5 points among likely voters.


As Nate pointed out in a previous post, Obama actually beat his polling numbers in every region except the Northeast, states near New York, which Hillary Clinton represents in the Senate.

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