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The Bradley effect, less commonly known as the Wilder effect,Kevin Drum, "East Coast Bias Watch", washingtonmonthly.com, July 23, 2008, citing a Google search: "3,820 hits for Wilder Effect compared to 44,900 hits for Bradley Effect". Retrieved 10 July 2021.Payne, Gregory(1986). Tom Bradley: The Impossible Dream : A Biography Roundtable Pub. The chapter about Bradley Effect (Chapter 16 / pp. 243 – 288) is available online at is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white and a non-white candidate run against each other.Reddy, Patrick. (January 20, 2002). " Does McCall Have A Chance?", Buffalo News, p. H1 The theory proposes that some white voters who intend to vote for the white candidate will nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate. It was named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to California attorney general George Deukmejian, an Armenian-American, despite Bradley's being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.
The Bradley effect posits that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias.Perez, Simon. (October 9, 2008). " Could Bradley Effect Change November Election? " KPIX-TV, "Political Consultant Don Solem explains: 'It's not so much they're afraid to say it as they think it might be taken the wrong way.' Solem said the Bradley Effect is also known as social desirability bias."Rojas, Aurelio. (October 9, 2008). " California poll on Prop. 8 could show 'Bradley effect' " Sacramento Bee, "'Anyone who studies survey research will tell you one of the biggest problems we encounter is this notion of social desirability bias,' Patrick said." Specifically, some voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation, even when neither candidate is considered "white" under the traditional rubric of American racism, as was the case in the Bradley/Deukmejian election. See also United States v. Cartozian, 6 F.2d 919 (D. Or. 1925) (in which, three years before George Deukmejian's birth, the U.S. Attorney General's office sued to remove the naturalization certificate of an Armenian immigrant on the grounds that he was not "white" but "of Armenian blood and race" and therefore a member of the broader "Asiatic" race under existing law). "The words of familiar speech, which were used by the original framers of the relevant law, were intended to include only the type of man whom they knew as white ... almost exclusively from the British Isles and Northwestern Europe," the opinion reads, explaining that skin color has been far from the only test of "whiteness" in American white supremacist ideology and that racists very often deem non-white and racially discriminate against people with pale skin and/or of European or Asian descent. Id. Members of the public may feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed to be more publicly acceptable, or politically correct. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well. The race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor into voters' answers.
Some analysts have dismissed the validity of the Bradley effect. Others have argued that it may have existed in past elections but not in more recent ones, such as when the African-American Barack Obama was elected President of the United States in 2008 and 2012, both times against white opponents. Others believe that it is a persistent phenomenon. Weekly Standard; Aaron Miskin; November 11, 2008 Similar effects have been posited in other contexts, for example the spiral of silence and the shy Tory factor. Bradley himself was unpopular at the state level for a variety of reasons, and went on to lose the 1986 California gubernatorial election to Deukmejian by more than 22 percentage points before settling a longstanding federal corruption probe into his alleged involvement with several multi-million-dollar illegal schemes. In 1991, Bradley would infamously describe the Justice Department's decision not to indict him, after he repaid a portion of illegally transferred funds at issue in the probe, as a "Christmas gift."
A month prior to the election, Bill Roberts, Deukmejian's campaign manager, predicted that white voters would break for his candidate. He told reporters that he expected Deukmejian to receive approximately 5 percent more votes than polling numbers indicated because white voters were giving inaccurate polling responses to conceal the appearance of racial prejudice. Deukmejian disavowed Roberts's comments, and Roberts resigned his post as campaign manager.(1982, October 13). " AIDE TO COAST G.O.P. CANDIDATE RESIGNS AFTER REMARKS ON RACISM", The New York Times
Some news outlets and columnists have attributed the theory's origin to Charles Henry, a professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.Patt Morrison. (October 2, 2008). " The 'Bradley effect' in 2008", Los Angeles TimesAlex Chadwick. (October 6, 2008). " Should Obama Fear The "Bradley Effect"?", NPRJim Geraghty. (October 9, 2008). " Who's Most Worried About a Bradley Effect? ", National Review Online Henry researched the election in its aftermath, and in a 1983 study reached the controversial conclusion that race was the most likely factor in Bradley's defeat. One critic of the Bradley effect theory charged that Mervin Field of The Field Poll had already offered the theory as explanation for his poll's errors, suggesting it (without providing supporting data for the claim) on the day after the election. Ken Khachigian, a senior strategist and day-to-day tactician in Deukmejian's 1982 campaign, has noted that Field's final pre-election poll was badly timed, since it was taken over the weekend, and most late polls failed to register a surge in support for Deukmejian in the campaign's final two weeks.Ken Khachigian. (November 2, 2008). " If Obama Loses: Don't Blame the Bradley Effect"," The Washington Post In addition, the exit polling failed to consider absentee balloting in an election which saw an "unprecedented wave of absentee voters" organized on Deukmejian's behalf. In short, Khachigian argues, the "Bradley effect" was simply an attempt to come up with an excuse for what was really the result of flawed opinion polling practices.Kachigian, op. cit.
The 1983 race in Chicago featured a black candidate, Harold Washington, running against a white candidate, Bernard Epton. More so than the California governor's race the year before,Jack Citrin and Donald Philip Green and David O. Sears. (Spring, 1990). " White Reactions to Black Candidates: When Does Race Matter?", Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 74–96 the Washington-Epton matchup evinced strong and overt racial overtones throughout the campaign.Isaacson, Walter. (April 11, 1983). "", TimeCarr, Camilla. (April 12, 1983). " Washington-Epton Race Was Often Ugly", WBBM-TV Two polls conducted approximately two weeks before the election showed Washington with a 14-point lead in the race. A third conducted just three days before the election confirmed Washington continuing to hold a lead of 14 points. But in the election's final results, Washington won by less than four points.
In the 1988 Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, pre-election polls pegged black candidate Jesse Jackson—at the time, a legitimate challenger to white candidate and frontrunner Michael Dukakis—as likely to receive approximately one-third of the white vote.Peterson, Bill. (April 4, 1988). "", The Washington Post Ultimately, however, Jackson carried only about one quarter of that vote, with the discrepancy in the heavily white state contributing to a large margin of victory for Dukakis over the second-place Jackson.Dionne, E. J. Jr. (April 6, 1988). " Dukakis Defeats Jackson Handily in Wisconsin Vote", The New York Times
In the 1989 race for Mayor of New York, a poll conducted just over a week before the election showed black candidate David Dinkins holding an 18-point lead over white candidate Rudy Giuliani. Four days before the election, a new poll showed that lead to have shrunk, but still standing at 14 points. On the day of the election, Dinkins prevailed by only two points.
Similar voter behavior was noted in the 1989 race for Governor of Virginia between Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, an African-American, and Republican Marshall Coleman, who was white. In that race, Wilder prevailed, but by less than half of one percent, when pre-election poll numbers showed him on average with a 9 percent lead.Shapiro, Walter. (November 20, 1989). "", Time
"All the published pre-election surveys had shown Wilder leading his Republican rival J. Marshall Coleman by margins of 4% to 15%. Even an initial television exit poll had anointed Wilder with a 10 percentage-point triumph. But by the time Wilder felt comfortable enough to declare victory, his razor-thin lead had stabilized about where it would end up: just 6,582 votes out of a record 1.78 million ballots cast."Keeler, Scott and Nilanthi Samaranayake. (February 7, 2007). " Can You Trust What Polls Say about Obama's Electoral Prospects?", Pew Research Center for the People & the Press The discrepancy was attributed to white voters telling pollsters that they were undecided when they actually voted for Coleman.Black, Chris. (November 9, 1989). " POLLSTERS SAY SOME VOTERS LIE", Boston Globe
After the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election, the Bradley effect was sometimes called the Wilder effect.Bacon, Perry Jr. (January 23, 2007). "", Time
"More than most politicians, Wilder knows personally how difficult it can be for a black candidate; during his gubernatorial campaign, the gap between his numbers in the final polls and in the actual election showed such a dramatic drop-off that it became known as the 'Wilder Effect.'" Both terms are still used; and less commonly, the term " Dinkins effect" is also used.
Also sometimes mentioned are:
As was the case when Jindal had an 11-point lead last week, voters shifted first from Jindal to undecided, Kennedy said."
In 2007, Jindal ran again, this time securing an easy victory, with his final vote totalDeslatte, Melinda. (October 20, 2007). " Jindal wins La. governor's race ", Associated Press
In the race for United States Senator from Maryland, black Republican candidate Michael Steele lost by a wider margin than predicted by late polls. However, those polls correctly predicted Steele's numbers, with the discrepancy in his margin of defeat resulting from their underestimating the numbers for his white Democratic opponent, then longtime Representative Ben Cardin. Those same polls also underestimated the Democratic candidate in the state's race for governor—a race in which both candidates were white.
The overall accuracy of the polling data from the 2006 elections was cited, both by those who argue that the Bradley effect has diminished in American politics,Whitaker, Bill. (October 12, 2008). " A Matter of Race", CBS News Sunday Morning
"CBS pollster Kathleen Frankovic doesn't see the any more. In recent elections with black candidates—Deval Patrick's winning governor's race in Massachusetts, in Tennessee, Harold Ford losing his run for the Senate, both in 2006—the polls were right on.
'I really do believe that the so-called Bradley effect is an artifact of a certain place and a certain time,' she said. 'It's an artifact of the 1980s.'" and those who doubt its existence in the first place. When asked about the issue in 2007, Douglas Wilder indicated that while he believed there was still a need for black candidates to be wary of polls, he felt that voters were displaying "more openness" in their polling responses and becoming "less resistant" to giving an accurate answer than was the case at the time of his gubernatorial election.Walker, Adrian. (January 4, 2007). " Sharing the Pride", The Boston Globe
"I warned [Deval Patrick], you've got to watch those polls. But I think people are becoming less resistant to saying, 'I'm going to vote for the person whether it's a woman, or gay, or whatever.' There's more openness—but we've still got to watch it." When asked about the possibility of seeing a Bradley effect in 2008, Joe Trippi, who had been a deputy campaign manager for Tom Bradley in 1982, offered a similar assessment, saying, "The country has come a hell of a long way. I think it's a mistake to think that there'll be any kind of big surprise like there was in the Bradley campaign in 1982. But I also think it'd be a mistake to say, 'It's all gone.'"Whitaker, Bill. (October 12, 2008). " A Matter of Race", CBS News Sunday Morning
Exit polls in the Wilder-Coleman race in 1989 also proved inaccurate in their projection of a ten-point win for Wilder, despite those same exit polls accurately predicting other statewide races.Rosenthal, Andrew. (November 9, 1989). " The 1989 Elections: Predicting the outcome; Broad disparities in votes and polls raising questions", The New York Times In 2006, a ballot measure in Michigan to end affirmative action generated exit poll numbers showing the race to be too close to call. Ultimately, the measure passed by a wide margin.Cooper, Desiree. (December 12, 2006). "Let's talk to break a White House tradition", Detroit Free Press
Brodnitz contends that the public polling in the Ford race and perhaps the earlier errors in races with black candidates can be attributed in part to polling not taking full account of the types of voters who make their decisions very late in campaigns. He said those voters tended to be older married white women who were either political moderates or conservatives."
Andrew Kohut, who was the president of the Gallup Organization during the 1989 Dinkins/Giuliani race and later president of the Pew Research Center, which conducted research into the phenomenon, has suggested that the discrepancies may arise, not from white participants giving false answers, but rather from white voters who have negative opinions of blacks being less likely to participate in polling at all than white voters who do not share such negative sentiments with regard to blacks.Kohut, Andrew. (January 10, 2008). " Getting It Wrong", The New York Times
"Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here's the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews. I’ve experienced this myself. In 1989, as a Gallup pollster, I overestimated the support for David Dinkins in his first race for New York City mayor against Rudolph Giuliani; Mr. Dinkins was elected, but with a two percentage point margin of victory, not the 15 I had predicted. I concluded, eventually, that I got it wrong not so much because respondents were lying to our interviewers but because poorer, less well-educated voters were less likely to agree to answer our questions. That was a decisive factor in my miscall."Holmes, Stephen A. (October 12, 2008). Pollsters Debate 'Bradley Effect', The Washington Post, Page A06
"Kohut recently conducted a study in which interviewers spent months repeatedly calling people back until they agreed to talk. He said that helped him see who is often missed in polling. 'Poorer, less-educated whites don't like to do these polls as much as better-educated people do,' he said. 'The refusals come from the same class of people who tend to be the most racially intolerant.'"
While there is widespread belief in a racial component as at least a partial explanation for the polling inaccuracies in the elections in question, it is not universally accepted that this is the primary factor. Peter Brodnitz, a pollster and contributor to the newsletter The Polling Report, worked on the 2006 campaign of black U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr., and contrary to Edelman's findings in 1988, Brodnitz indicated that he did not find the race of the interviewer to be a factor in voter responses in pre-election polls. Brodnitz suggested that late-deciding voters tend to have moderate-to-conservative political opinions and that this may account in part for last-minute decision-makers breaking largely away from black candidates, who have generally been more liberal than their white opponents in the elections in question. Another prominent skeptic of the Bradley effect is Gary Langer, the director of polling for ABC News. Langer has described the Bradley effect as "a theory in search of data." He has argued that inconsistency of its appearance, particularly in more recent elections, casts doubt upon its validity as a theory.Koppelman, Alex. (January 24, 2008). " Will whites vote for Barack Obama? ", Salon.com
"'The argument of a specific Bradley effect,' insisted Langer, 'still looks to me to like a theory in search of data ... I don't see why this effect would be limited, before now, to a handful of elections 15 to 25 years ago. And I don't know how to understand its absence in so many other black-white races—five Senate races in 2006 alone, as I note—in which pre-election polling was dead on.'
'Newton's Law of Gravity doesn't just work on Thursdays,' Langer said. 'You want an effect to be clearly established as an effect through analysis of empirical data, and maybe in more than one election. And to call it an effect you want it to be a consistent effect, or to explain its inconsistency'".
Of all of the races presented as possible examples of the Bradley effect theory, perhaps the one most fiercely rebutted by the theory's critics is the 1982 Bradley/Deukmejian contest itself. People involved with both campaigns, as well as those involved with the inaccurate polls have refuted the significance of the Bradley effect in determining that election's outcome. Former Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Mathews said that he talked to more than a dozen people who played significant roles in either the Bradley or Deukmejian campaign and that only two felt there was a significant race-based component to the polling failures.Mathews, Joe (2009) " The Bradley Effect Was about Guns, Not Racism " California Journal of Politics and Policy: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1, Article 27. DOI: 10.2202/1944-4370.1054 Mark DiCamillo, Director of The Field Poll, which was among those that had shown Bradley with a strong lead, has not ruled out the possibility of a Bradley effect as a minor factor, but also said that the organization's own internal examination after that election identified other possible factors that may have contributed to their error, including a shift in voter preference after the final pre-election polls and a high-profile ballot initiative in the same election, a Republican absentee ballot program and a low minority turnout, each of which may have caused pre-election polls to inaccurately predict which respondents were likely voters.Russo, Frank D. (January 9, 2008). The "Bradley Effect" on Obama-Clinton Polling in New Hampshire May Be Overstated
"While the 1982 California gubernatorial contest is not the only race where the race of the candidate has been thought to be a factor in polling gone awry, there are a number of other reasons why the Field Poll may not have been accurate. I spoke with Mark DiCamillo, Director of the Field Poll—whose phone has been ringing off the hook about this today. He told me that there was a memo done by the polling organization shortly after the election to try to understand what had occurred (not available online as it predated the internet) that identified four possible factors:
1. A late shift in voter preference after the poll, which could have reflected bias.
2. A well organized GOP absentee ballot program (Bradley won the day of election results).
3. The presence of a handgun initiative on the same ballot that brought out a skewed electorate different from the model used to predict likely voters.
4. Lower turnout by minorities because Bradley did not turn out the base of black voters.
Prominent Republican pollster V. Lance Tarrance, Jr. flatly denies that the Bradley effect occurred during that election, echoing the absentee ballot factor cited by DiCamillo. Tarrance also reports that his own firm's pre-election polls done for the Deukmejian campaign showed the race as having closed from a wide lead for Bradley one month prior to the election down to a statistical dead heat by the day of the election. While acknowledging that some news sources projected a Bradley victory based upon Field Poll exit polls which were also inaccurate, he counters that at the same time, other news sources were able to correctly predict Deukmejian's victory by using other exit polls that were more accurate. Tarrance claims that The Field Poll speculated, without supplying supporting data, in offering the Bradley effect theory as an explanation for why its polling had failed, and he attributes the emergence of the Bradley effect theory to media outlets focusing on this, while ignoring that there were other conflicting polls which had been correct all along.
Sal Russo, a consultant for Deukmejian in the race, has said that another private pollster working for the campaign, Lawrence Research, also accurately captured the late surge in favor of Deukmejian, polling as late as the night before the election. According to Russo, that firm's prediction after its final poll was an extremely narrow victory for Deukmejian. He asserts that the failure of pre-election polls such as The Field Poll arose, largely because they stopped polling too soon, and that the failure of the exit polls was due to their inability to account for absentee ballots.Russo, Sal. (October 20, 2008). " Tom Bradley Didn't Lose Because of Race", The Wall Street Journal
The public polls stopped polling too soon, missing the Deukmejian surge. Most important, they ignored the absentee ballot. Mr. Deukmejian's polling asked if people had voted absentee; other polls, including the exit polls, did not."
"Private, daily tracking polls showed that, with a retooled campaign, Mr. Deukmejian methodically closed the gap. On the Sunday night before the day of the election—usually the last day of tracking polls the campaign will pay for—Mr. Deukmejian had closed to less than two percentage points. The campaign polled Monday night, too. It showed Mr. Deukmejian less than 1% behind. Private pollster Lawrence Research predicted to the campaign a razor-thin victory—exactly what happened.
Blair Levin, a staffer on the Bradley campaign in 1982 said that as he reviewed early returns at a Bradley hotel on election night, he saw that Deukmejian would probably win. In those early returns, he had taken particular note of the high number of absentee ballots, as well as a higher-than-expected turnout in California's Central Valley by conservative voters who had been mobilized to defeat the handgun ballot initiative mentioned by DiCamillo. According to Levin, even as he heard the "victory" celebration going on among Bradley supporters downstairs, those returns had led him to the conclusion that Bradley was likely to lose.Levin, Blair. (October 19, 2008). " What Bradley Effect?", The New York Times
But he wasn't losing because of race. He was losing because an unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated, giving Mr. Deukmejian a narrow victory. "
"On election night in 1982, with 3,000 supporters celebrating prematurely at a downtown hotel, I was upstairs reviewing early results that suggested Bradley would probably lose.
In 2008, several political analysts discussing the Bradley effect referred to a study authored by Daniel J. Hopkins, a post-doctoral fellow in Harvard University's Department of Government, which sought to determine whether the Bradley effect theory was valid, and whether an analogous phenomenon might be observed in races between a female candidate and a male candidate. Hopkins analyzed data from 133 elections between 1989 and 2006, compared the results of those elections to the corresponding pre-election poll numbers, and considered some of the alternate explanations which have been offered for any discrepancies therein. The study concluded finally that the Bradley effect was a real phenomenon, amounting to a median gap of 3.1 percentage points before 1996, but that it was likely not the sole factor in those discrepancies, and further that it had ceased to manifest itself at all by 1996. The study also suggested a connection between the Bradley effect and the level of racial rhetoric exhibited in the discussion of the political issues of the day. It asserted that the timing of the disappearance of the Bradley effect coincided with that of a decrease in such rhetoric in American politics over such potentially racially charged issues as crime and welfare. The study found no evidence of a corresponding effect based upon gender—in fact, female Senate candidates received on average 1.2 percentage points more votes than polls had predicted.
After the Super Tuesday primaries of February 5, 2008, political science researchers from the University of Washington found trends suggesting the possibility that with regard to Obama, the effect's presence or absence may be dependent on the percentage of the electorate that is black. The researchers noted that to that point in the election season, opinion polls taken just prior to an election tended to overestimate Obama in states with a black population below eight percent, to track him within the polls' margins of error in states with a black population between ten and twenty percent, and to underestimate him in states with a black population exceeding twenty-five percent. The first finding suggested the possibility of the Bradley effect, while the last finding suggested the possibility of a "reverse" Bradley effect in which black voters might have been reluctant to declare to pollsters their support for Obama or are underpolled. For example, many general election polls in North Carolina and Virginia assume that black voters will be 15% to 20% of each state's electorate; they were around a quarter of each state's electorate in 2004. That high support effect has been attributed to high black voter turnout in those states' primaries, with blacks supporting Obama by margins that often exceeded 97%. With only one exception, each state that had opinion polls incorrectly predict the outcome of the Democratic contest also had polls that accurately predicted the outcome of the state's Republican contest, which featured only white candidates.Schwarz, Joel. (February 6, 2008). " Super Tuesday results indicate race card may be a joker in primaries ", University of Washington Office of News and Information
Alternatively, Douglas Wilder has suggested that a 'reverse Bradley effect' may be possible because some Republicans may not openly say they will vote for a black candidate, but may do so on election day. Will closet racism derail Obama?, BBC News, October 20, 2008 The "Fishtown Effect" is a scenario where prejudiced or racist white voters cast their vote for a black candidate solely on economic concerns. Fishtown, a mostly white and economically depressed neighborhood in Philadelphia, voted 81% for Obama in the 2008 election. Alternatively, writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez suggested another plausible factor is something called the "Huxtable effect", where the positive image of the respectable African American character Cliff Huxtable, a respected middle-class obstetrics and father on the 1980s television series The Cosby Show, made young voters who grew up with that series' initial run comfortable with the idea of an African American man being a viable presidential candidate, which enhanced Obama's election chances with that population.Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa (November 2, 2008). " The Huxtable Effect" AlterNet Others have called it the "Palmer effect" on the theory that David Palmer, a fictional president played by Dennis Haysbert during the second and third seasons of the television drama 24, showed viewers that an African American man can be a strong commander in chief.
This election was widely scrutinized as analysts tried to definitively determine whether the Bradley effect is still a significant factor in the political sphere.Robinson, Eugene. (January 11, 2008). " Echoes Of Tom Bradley", The Washington Post
"We'll have plenty of chances in the coming weeks to measure pre-election polls against actual results—including in states with much more racial diversity than New Hampshire. The only prediction I'll make is that following Tuesday's big surprise, embarrassed pollsters and pundits will be especially vigilant for any sign that the 'Bradley effect,' unseen in recent years, might have crept back." An inspection of the discrepancy between pre-election polls and Obama's ultimate support reveals significant bivariate support for the hypothesized "reverse Bradley effect". On average, Obama received three percentage points more support in the primaries and caucuses than he did during polling; however, he also had a strong ground campaign, and many polls do not question voters with only cell phones, who are predominantly young.Blumenthal, Mark. (July 3, 2007). " Cell Phones and Political Surveys: Part 1 ", Pollster.com
Obama went on to win the election with 53% of the popular vote and a large electoral college victory.
Following the 2008 presidential election, a number of news sources reported that the result confirmed the absence of a 'Bradley Effect' in view of the close correlation between the pre-election polls and the actual share of the popular vote.
However, it has been suggested that such assumptions based on the overall share of the vote are too simplistic because they ignore the fact that underlying factors can be contradictory and hence masked in overall voting figures. For instance, it has been suggested that an extant Bradley Effect was masked by the unusually high turnout amongst African Americans and other Democratic leaning voter groups under the unique circumstances of the 2008 election (i.e. the first serious bid for President by an African-American candidate).
In a 2019 press conference, Trump estimated the effect to be between 6 and 10% in his favor. He described this effect as "I don’t know if I consider that to be a compliment, but in one way it is a compliment."
However many pollsters have disputed this claim. A 2016 poll conducted by Morning Consult showed that Trump performed better in general election polls regardless of whether the poll was conducted online or by live interviewer over the phone. This finding led Morning Consult's chief research officer to conclude that there was little evidence that poll respondents were feeling pressured to downplay their true general election preferences. Harry Enten, an analyst for FiveThirtyEight.com noted that Trump generally underperformed his polling in Democratic-leaning states like California and New York — where the stigma against voting for Trump likely would have been stronger — and overperformed his polls in places like Wisconsin and Ohio. Enten concluded that, although Trump did better than the polls predicted in many states, he "didn’t do so in a pattern consistent with a 'shy Trump' effect".
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