Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (The Atlantic)

Political pundits are hyperventilating over the possibility that Sen. Barack Obama’s lead in presidential polls is overstated and that the so-called “Bradley effect” — named for the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley — could kick in and upend predictions.

In 1982, Bradley, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in California, had led in pre-election surveys, and was declared the winner in pollster Mervin Field’s exit polls. Bradley was poised to become the nation’s first elected African-American governor. But when the votes were counted, the Republican nominee, California Atty. Gen. George Deukmejian, had eked out a narrow victory.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Political analysts declared that race was the reason for Bradley’s loss — and that the discrepancy between polls and the actual vote was due to white voters’ fudging their responses to the “horse race” question, because it was deemed socially unacceptable to admit opposition to a minority candidate.

But the talking heads pretty much got it wrong. A lot more than race cost Bradley the governorship.

Lance Tarrance, who polled for Deukmejian in 1982, got it closest to right. Recently, he wrote: “[A]nalysis of the 1982 election revealed the weakness in the Bradley Effect theory as Bradley actually won on Election Day turnout, but lost the absentee vote so badly that Deukmejian pulled ahead to win. That Bradley won the vote on Election Day would hardly seem to suggest a hidden or last minute anti-black backlash.”

In fact, this reveals that Bradley’s liberal supporters had bungled an important strategic decision. In hopes of increasing Democratic turnout, they qualified Proposition 15, a hand-gun control initiative, for the November 1982 ballot. Every gun owner in California was furious.

The National Rifle Assn. endorsed Deukmejian; and the first large-scale, aggressive absentee ballot campaign was launched by the GOP.

Prop. 15 lost by a nearly 2 to 1 margin. It was defeated in every county except San Francisco and Marin. According to the California Journal, “it was obliterated in rural California,” where turnout ran about 10 percent higher than in urban areas. And the absentee ballot count was lopsided in favor of the Republican.

Tens of thousands of gun lovers registered their vote against gun control and stuck around to mark their ballots for Deukmejian.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Nonetheless, Mervin Field’s exit polling was, to some extent, accurate. Field did not account for absentee ballot voters. His survey—like the actual results—showed a Bradley win at the ballot box.

There were other factors that contributed to imperfect polling — and Bradley’s loss. A lackluster campaign led to a low-turnout election. The Democratic Party, overall, did a mediocre job of getting out the vote. Bradley was also criticized for not energizing his African-American base.

In the end, black turnout was lower than expected — the higher-turnout model used by some pollsters could have skewed the poll results toward Bradley. In addition, some exit polls, according to the California Journal, revealed that the unpopularity of Jerry Brown, the departing Democratic governor who was running against Pete Wilson for the Senate, “rubbed off on Bradley.”

A far stronger case can be made for the impact of a “Bradley effect” in the 1969 race for Los Angeles mayor — when then-City Councilman Tom Bradley first challenged the conservative Democratic incumbent, Sam Yorty. Bradley finished first in a crowded primary, with 42 percent of the vote; Yorty came in second with 26 percent.

Before the head-to-head runoff. pre-election polls showed Bradley handily defeating Yorty. Then, in what was considered a major upset, Yorty won re-election, with 53 percent of the vote to Bradley’s 47 percent. Yorty succeeded, according to his biographer, John Bollens, by “riding to advantage a wave of fear, prejudice and reaction.”

Yorty portrayed Bradley as a Black Panther supporter and depicted the former cop as anti-police. The Political scientist Raphael Sonenshein wrote, “Yorty directly exploited white fears. His campaign ads ran in the real estate section of [San Fernando] Valley newspapers showing Bradley’s picture with the caption ‘Will Your City Be Safe with This Man?’”

Bradley took “a high road approach,” barely responding. In an election with record high turnout overall, Sonenshein observed, a hefty anti-Bradley vote coming from the San Fernando Valley, and dramatic shifts in support to Yorty “among whites, Jews and Latinos, were devastating” to Bradley’s chances.

In the wake of the surprising election results, Bud Lewis, the late director of The Los Angeles Times poll, did some numbers-crunching, and concluded there was a hidden 5 to 10 percent “racism” vote. Recently, the pollster Peter Hart estimated today’s equivalent of Lewis’ “racism” vote to be 2-4 percent.

Racism has always been, and will no doubt always be, a factor in U.S. politics. Racial anxieties permeated the 1969 election; Bradley ducked that campaign’s dominant issues, “crime and civil unrest” — themes that don’t help Democrats, while Yorty hammered on them. But in the 2008 presidential race, fears about the economic future are trumping racial anxieties.

Times have changed; race is not the political driver it was 40 years ago. The “Bradley effect” may have reached its zenith — or nadir? — in 1969. Bradley went on to defeat Yorty in a 1973 rematch. He ultimately served five terms as L.A. mayor.

It’s time for political analysts and talking heads to stop hiding behind the euphemism of “the Bradley effect” and directly address these issues: Why does racism still exist in the mosaic that is the United States? How can racism not exist when partisan polarization and charged political rhetoric define the debate over leadership at every level of government? How much have times really changed?

On Nov. 4, we should have an answer to that last question. The answers to the first two will take a little longer — and a lot more political will on the part of Americans and their leaders.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe is a senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning and Development.

The Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 spurred the environmental movement. (usgs.gov)

**Editor’s Note: This piece has been updated to include the results of a new poll released July 30.

On a January afternoon in 1969, Paradise was violated and the modern environmental movement was born.

Six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., a “blowout” erupted below a Union Oil Co. platform, spewing crude oil from drilling-induced cracks in the Santa Barbara Channel floor.

It took almost two weeks to cap the leak and, before it was plugged, the oil spill had grown to more than 3 million gallons. It spread across 800 square miles of ocean, spoiling more than 35 miles of Southern California’s coast.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Dead and injured sea animals and birds washed up along the beaches, covered in the black goo. Images of the devastation, transmitted around the world, helped galvanize environmentalists and triggered the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act.

In the wake of Santa Barbara’s calamity, the U.S. president, a Republican and a California native, observed, “What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident,” Richard M. Nixon concluded, “has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

Offshore oil drilling became a “third rail issue” in California politics—touch it and you die. It’s remained so for nearly 40 years— particularly for state Democrats, who rely on environmentalists as a key constituency. And, by-and-large, the nation went along.

Then, with skyrocketing oil and gas prices, and increasing economic distress, President George W. Bush announced he was lifting the presidential moratorium on offshore drilling. He called on Congress to lift its ban as well. Offshore oil drilling has resurfaced as a hot-button issue on the national level. It is an issue that divides voters and the two presidential candidates.

When the 2008 campaign began, both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama opposed offshore drilling. Mc Cain had also opposed it in his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. Both McCain and Obama were—somewhat successfully — wooing environmentalists. McCain’s green energy stand was one way he could distance himself from an extraordinarily unpopular president.

Why then did McCain reverse himself and call for lifting offshore drilling restrictions —even before Bush lifted the presidential ban? His switch angered environmental groups he’d been wooing for years. In California, his switch irked many moderate Republicans, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had endorsed McCain, but who roundly criticized the Arizona senator’s new take on offshore drilling.

Taking a calculated risk that voter anger about high fuel prices would trump environmentalism in today’s economy, McCain positioned himself alongside to Bush on an issue that independents and Democrats — as well as many suburban Republicans — care about; McCain gambled on giving Obama an opening to link him to “the same misguided approach backed by President Bush,” as well as to “big oil companies.”

But McCain’s risk could pay off. Essentially, McCain has traded any likelihood of taking California in November — a pie-in-the-sky assumption about this blue state, anyway — for the possibility of gaining votes in crucial Heartland states, like Michigan and Ohio

In pivotal Florida, for example, Democrats and Republicans have long been united in their opposition to offshore drilling. But there now appears to be a shift in opinion favorable to McCain’s new stance. The state’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist, a V.P. prospect, changed sides to support McCain. In addition, a just-released Rasmussen survey shows that 57 percent of Florida voters now favor of offshore drilling, while only 32 percent do not. A slim majority of voters (51 percent) in this battleground state think reducing gas prices is more important than protecting the environment.

National polls reveal that voters might be ready to endorse lifting the ban. A Gallup poll in mid-May showed that 57 percent of respondents favored “[a]llowing oil drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off-limits to oil exploration.” Tellingly, there were significant partisan differences in support. Only 38 percent of Democrats agreed with this, compared to 80 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of those coveted independent voters.

A Rasmussen survey from June–before McCain announced his support–showed 67 percent of voters now support oil drilling off the coasts of California, Florida and other states. Only 18 percent disagree.

This survey, too, revealed a significant partisan divide — 85 percent of Republicans favor offshore drilling, compared to 57 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independent voters.

In California, on the other hand, a statewide Field Poll as recently as early July shows voters “remain opposed to the idea of allowing oil companies to drill more oil and gas wells along the California coastline.“ Fifty-one percent of Californians are opposed, and 43 percent approve. However, statewide opposition is down from a high of 62 percent in 1990 and 56 percent in 2001 and 2005.

There are partisan differences here, too. Republicans approve offshore drilling by 63 percent — but that’s 17 points lower than their approval nationally. Democrats disapprove 61 percent to 31 percent (nationally their approval registers slightly higher, at 39 percent). Significantly, in the Golden State, 58 percent of independents disapprove of offshore drilling — nationally that figure is 43 percent.

**However, a just-released survey by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shows that Californians’ support for offshore oil drilling has suddenly increased to 51 percent (up from 41 percent in 2007). According to the PPIC analysis, it’s “the first time since 2003, when PPIC first posed the question, that more Californians favor offshore drilling than oppose it (45 percent), a shift caused in large part by a surge in support among Republicans (77 percent, up from 60 percent).” Six of 10 Democrats and half of independents still oppose offshore oil drilling to meet our energy needs. This shift in voter opinion, according to PPIC, is “one of many reactions to soaring gas prices.”

Yet none of these numbers tell the entire story. They cannot gauge the intensity of public opinion. In the end, offshore oil drilling is an issue not unlike gun control. The passion is still on the side of its opponents. That could mobilize the environmental movement against McCain come the fall. For other voters the issue may have less importance, and be less motivating.

Both sides now think they can capitalize on the issue of oil drilling. Democrats are looking to gain ground with a flurry of ads attacking Republicans up and down the ballot for bedding down politically with Big Oil. At the same time, McCain is planning to assail the Democrats’ inaction on oil independence, staging photo ops in front of oil wells.

It remains to be seen which strategy — if either — will pay political dividends. But it’s hard to imagine McCain striking an electoral gusher with his new embrace of offshore drilling for oil independence.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe is a senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning and Development.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) (Barbara Kinney)

On Tuesday, June 3, California will hold its state primary. Not many Americans—or even Californians — realize this. The Big One — not the major earthquake the state expects, but its presidential primary — was on Feb. 5, part of that electoral front-loading called Super-Duper Tuesday.

The state Democratic leaders championed splitting the presidential contests off from the congressional and state races in June. They argued that California, the most populous and diverse state, has, for the last few decades, weighed in on the presidential nominating process too late to matter. (It didn’t hurt the legislators’ motivation that a February election would allow them to qualify early for the ballot an initiative dear to their hearts— easing term limits. It lost.)

But whether the Golden State’s votes are cast early, late or in the middle of the primary season, because of its size and political wealth, California has huge clout. The timing of the state’s primary this year has indeed made a difference in how the presidential campaign scenario played out.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took California’s GOP presidential primary with 42.3 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 34.6 percent and Mike Huckabee’s 11.7 percent. McCain’s victory in California, where he won 155 delegates — roughly 90 percent of the total up for grabs in the Golden State — basically sealed the GOP nomination for him.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victory over Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in California did much to keep her campaign alive. The final election eve Field poll showed Obama, who had been trailing Clinton by high single-digits, surging within two percentage points of the New York senator. Clinton’s 9-point win over Obama (51.5 percent to 43.2 percent) in the Golden State bolstered her claim that only she could deliver “must-win” big states. Her 420,000 plus vote margin helped her “I’m winning the popular vote” strategy.

In fact, a strong argument can be made that, without the numbers cushion that Clinton got from her California victory — including 204 pledged delegates, 38 more than Obama won — she might not even have made it all the way to June 3.

But what if California’s presidential primary election had remained on the June ballot, and not moved to Super Tuesday? With the Democratic race not yet wrapped up, it’s now clear that a late-deciding California, with its trove of 440 delegates, coulda been a contender.

Here’s why: When California voted on Feb. 5, Clinton was far better known in the state than the new guy, Obama — despite his recent dramatic win in Iowa. IOWA? Californians don’t pay much attention to Iowans. Meanwhile, the Golden State’s media seemed more entranced by the early Huckabee surge in the GOP race.

In addition, there has been a long cozy relationship between President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and much of creative Hollywood, which translated into good, old-fashioned fund-raising capability — and, in the end, a lot of inconvenient maxing-out, as well. Post-Iowa, Obama’s Internet-savvy financing drill was just beginning to power through, ready to leave Clinton’s old-school, “big donor” strategy in the dust.

According to a Field poll released Friday, however, Californians now prefer Obama over Clinton, by 51 percent to 38 percent — almost a mirror image of the state’s primary results. The poll’s director, Mark DiCamillio, told the Sacramento Bee, “a lot has happened in other states and there appears to be a consensus view that Obama has the delegates he needs to be the likely nominee.” He added, “Californians are jumping onto the bandwagon and saying they’re likely to support Obama.”

There’s little reason to believe that dynamic would be any different if Californians were just now marching to the polls. Familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt.

As Obama became better known in the weeks after Super Tuesday, the polls began to shift. A PPIC poll taken in early March showed six of 10 California likely voters had a favorable opinion of Obama (61 percent), and only 45 percent viewed Clinton favorably. Among Democrats, 78 percent had a positive opinion of Obama, and 74 percent viewed Clinton favorably.

The latest PPIC survey, taken this month, again shows Obama with the highest favorability rating among the presidential candidates (59 percent among likely voters). Clinton still has a high unfavorable rating (51 percent vs. 46 percent favorable). In the state Clinton won four months ago, likely Democratic voters now give Obama a 78 percent favorable rating, while Clinton’s is down 5 points, to 69 percent.

California general election voters, according to the PPIC survey, favor Obama over McCain by 17 points (54 percent to 37 percent), an increase of 8 points from March. They favor Clinton over McCain by a smaller margin of 12 points (51 percent to 39 percent), an increase of 9 points. (The new Field poll shows both Obama and Clinton with 17-point leads over McCain.)

The bottom line is that California did matter on Feb. 5, when its presidential primaries closed the deal for McCain and blocked Obama from KO’ing Clinton. And if California were in its old post position, bringing up the rear of the primary season, today the Golden State — not Michigan and Florida — would be the center of the Democratic universe.

So California approaches June 3 and the wind-down of the primary calendar with a whimper, not a roar. But, this state is not like Iowa and New Hampshire. For most Californians—other than politicians with their own agendas—it’s no big deal where the state falls in the primary season.

Californians’ self-esteem is not at stake. The state is too big not to matter.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe is a senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning and Development.