Bye, Bye, Wilder

Via John Sides, along comes political scientist Dan Hopkins with some empirical research into the "Wilder effect" question (PDF, the phenomena whereby black candidates get a smaller share of the vote than public polling would have predicted.

Titled "No More Wilder Effect, Never a Whitman Effect: When and Why Polls Mislead about Black and Female Candidates," the paper concludes that there really was a Wilder effect in the early 1990s but there isn't one any more. Here's the abstract:

Using new data from 133 gubernatorial and Senate elections from 1989 to 2006, this paper presents the first large-sample test of the Wilder effect. It demonstrates a significant Wilder effect only through the early 1990s, when Wilder himself was Governor of Virginia. Although the same mechanisms could impact female candidates, this paper finds no such effect at any point in time. It also shows how polls’ over-estimation of front-runners’ support can exaggerate estimates of the Wilder effect. Together, these results accord with theories emphasizing how short-term changes in the political context influence the role of race in statewide elections. The Wilder effect is the product of racial attitudes in specific political contexts, not a more general response to under-represented groups.

Good to know.

Comments

What the ffuck is up with your ffonts?

Posted by phil | July 23, 2008 5:21 PM

There's a difference between a black person running for Governor, Congress, or the Senate and running for president. We will see in November.

Posted by SLC | July 23, 2008 5:27 PM

LOOOOOOOOL LOVE THE FANCY fs.

Posted by june | July 23, 2008 5:40 PM

So that's what they call the Bradley Effect on the east coast?

Posted by Tom | July 23, 2008 5:52 PM

Re Tom

The difference is that Bradley lost and Wilder won, although he ran considerably behind the Democratic candidates for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General.

Posted by SLC | July 23, 2008 5:58 PM

Senator Obama, the pander bear.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331063647&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Posted by SLC | July 23, 2008 6:25 PM

I ffeel very ffancy reading this post.

Posted by Ohmmade | July 23, 2008 6:31 PM

On the ffont side of things, apparently the copy and pasting was from a document which used f-f ligatures. Since we aren't displaying in a font with those ligatures, your browser does a one-character switch to a font which has them, (I'm guessing Lucida Sans Unicode).

Posted by Don | July 23, 2008 6:43 PM

Matt put a lot of effort into this post.

Posted by blah | July 23, 2008 6:51 PM

Phenomena - plural
Phenomenon - sngular.

ergo, the Wilder Effect is the pehnomenON whereby black candidates etc.

Clear?

Posted by billy | July 23, 2008 9:49 PM

"The Wilder effect is the product of racial attitudes in specific political contexts, not a more general response to under-represented groups."

Chris Matthews said many times that he thought that it was some kind of step forward in race relations that there was no Bradley effect in Harold Ford's 2006 senate race loss. But that conclusion is totally unfounded. If indeed the Bradley effect is mainly caused by covert racism, it would probably only exist in situations where a significant segment of white voters have racist motiviations in voting AND these same voters feel that they need to hide these motivations even from pollsters. There were people in the 2008 Democratic primary who didn't feel like they needed to hide these motivations from anyone.

People commenting on typos and formatting screw-ups is the Atlamtic.com's cool new version of "First!" Next year 90% of the comments will be devoted to critical commentary on sidebar ad aesthetics.

Posted by Colatina | July 23, 2008 10:01 PM

VOTR DIGBY FOR PRESIDENT---VOTE THE INTERNET
The two horse and buggy parties do not have YOUR interests in mind. (FISA)

Posted by Mike Meyer | July 23, 2008 11:54 PM

I feel so pretty using this font! Lucida Sans Unicode rules!

I dub this the Dan effect, after he who identified it!

Posted by fred fielder | July 24, 2008 11:35 AM

Ahhhh! It didn't work! Is it because I use Macintosh, which compensates?

Bye, bye, Dan Effect. [sob~]

Posted by fred fielder | July 24, 2008 11:40 AM

From later:

"And some of the stuff we write is published on the internet. Is that really so weird and discreditable? "

Yes.

Posted by fred fielder | July 24, 2008 11:47 AM