The ‘Palin Defect’

 

There has been much speculation about the possibility of Barack Obama’s candidacy being derailed by the ‘Bradley Effect’, so-named because Tom Bradley, an African-American candidate for governor in California in 1982, lost despite being ahead in most polls leading up to the election. The speculation was that people may have told pollsters that they would vote for an African-American candidate in order to appear politically correct, but when they got into the privacy of the voting booth, they voted against him based on some measure of latent racism.

 

This got me wondering if there might be a similar result in this presidential election. 

 

Is it possible that a significant number of self-proclaimed conservatives and Republicans who are publicly voicing their support for Sarah Palin will, in the privacy of the voting booth, and based on some measure of latent conscience, cast their votes against the “spectacularly unqualified” vice-presidential candidate and the man who misguidedly chose her as his running mate?

 

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