Yet as Sherry Bebitch Jeffe points out in a detailed historical analysis, the 1982 electoral loss of black candidate Tom Bradley gives little evidence for the effect that took his name. Instead, Bradley’s loss can be explained by a combination of guns and absentee ballots.

But Jeffe lays it out more articulately than I could, so be sure to take a look at her piece.

The best analysis I’ve seen of the potential Bradley Effect in the 2008 presidential election comes from Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com. Looking at the Democratic primary, he argues that there was no such effect, although unlike Jeffe he believes that the phenomenon played a large role in elections in the 1980s and 1990s.

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.

After Gov. Sarah Palin spent a couple of days making an issue of Obama’s connection to former Weatherman William Ayers, Sen. John McCain yesterday asked a rally in New Mexico, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” One audience member ignored the rhetorical nature of the question and cried out, “A terrorist!”

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the exchange was that many in the crowd laughed. Not nervously, as if shocked that somebody would say something so outrageous,  but as if they genuinely thought the remark was funny.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reported that during a rally in Florida when Palin said that Ayers was an early supporter of Obama, somebody yelled, “Kill him!”

Milbank wrote today that Palin’s frequent attacks on the media also have provoked an ugly crowd reaction:

In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric‘s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network, and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

All this happened yesterday. One day does not make a trend — but it does provide an indicator for what may be happening.

I remember when McCain made an appearance at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota in July — I was traveling with the campaign at the time — and a incident similar to the one in Florida took place but wasn’t reported.

McCain was giving his current spiel and he mentioned that Obama opposed offshore drilling. Then he said, “My opponent wants you to inflate your tires!”

A man in the crowd somewhere behind the press area yelled out “Kill him!”

The incident was a topic of conversation on the press bus heading back to the hotel in Rapid City. One reporter said he’d seen the man who had shouted out and said he had been drinking. The reaction of the crowd around the man was not favorable, and the man looked embarrassed afterward.

While it is impossible to definitively chalk the man’s comment up to racism, one way the public might have perceived it was foreseeable. The consensus among the reporters who attended the rally was that reporting the incident might inject the issue of racism into the debate when neither campaign had caused it. So there was an unspoken agreement not to report it.

Fast-forward two and a half months. The campaign is in the home stretch, and the issue of racism that was mostly a topic of academics and pundits may be surfacing on the campaign trail? Did the reporters in Sturgis succumb to “pack journalism” by refusing to write about its possible appearance?

Perhaps.

But while the academics and pundits have been discussing the possible influence of the so-called “Bradley Effect” on voters this November, there have been isolated reports of campaign volunteers encountering bigots when going door to door or making phone calls.

If that foreshadows a more overt prejudice in the campaign, the question becomes: Will the McCain campaign publicly and actively reject the “Southern Strategy” of using white racism to win elections — which allowed the Republican Party to carry the South for decades — or will it tacitly embrace it?

McCain has a unique opportunity to demonstrate what kind of candidate he really is.