Duh!  Racists don’t usually self-disclose their racism, except perhaps to other racists.

But in the privacy of the voting booth ‘political correctness’ will not be observed. No cultural stigma will be attached to voting against a black candidate for racial reasons or any other.

Does this happen? Here’s one example.

In 1986, reported in the Detroit Free Press, Republican challenger William Lucas, a black, ran for Michigan governor against the Democratic incumbent James Blanchard, a white. Lucas was a man of fine reputation who had served well in government. He had no “baggage” as has Obama.

Blanchard won with about two-thirds of the vote. Blind ballot exit polling found 5% of the voters saying that race influenced their vote. 

In a telephone survey 2-3 days later of voters in that election, 28% said that they thought Michigan was not ready for a black governor. An added 21% would not commit to saying that Michigan was ready for a black governor. 51% said Michigan was ready.

Two other questions were asked using projective questioning. These found:

54% said Lucas’ being black influenced votes among people they knew.

61% said Lucas’ being black influenced voters in general.

The point is that progressively more voters said they considered race to be a factor as the question wordings further distanced respondents from personal disclosure of racial motivation.

That was in Michigan a generation ago. Probably one-third of those voters have since passed away, leaving two-thirds of them to vote in 2008.

We think our society has become more racially tolerant in a generation, have we not? Notwithstanding the utterances of the Reverend Wright and Michelle Obama's Columbia thesis there is no doubt that blacks and whites have become much more accepting of each other. Whether that movement in our society represents change on an individual basis, or is taking place because people with old prejudices are dying and being replaced by new people without those prejudices is a matter for conjecture. It is probably some of both. At any rate, some people with the old prejudices will be voting in November.

An example of how poll findings differed from voting behavior is to be found in a more recent study. Micah Altman of Harvard University and Philip Klinkner of Hamilton College found discrepancies in the range of 2:1 to 3:1, between pre-election polling findings and voting results. The ballot issue was the legality of interracial marriage in South Carolina and Alabama.

Whites were found to be less likely than blacks to approve of interracial marriage, and most importantly, were less likely than blacks to divulge their true voting intentions on the issue.   The study was circa 2004, and apparently utilized data from the year 2000.

The message from these examples is that race will have an influence and that conventional polling methods will be challenged to obtain true measurements of voting intentions. The problem will not be to measure black voting intention. Blacks are almost all in the Obama camp. The problem will be to obtain accurate measurements of white voting intentions. This is not to say that valid measurements cannot be obtained.

The only other Presidential election in recent history with significant racial aspects was Nixon-Humphrey-Wallace in 1968 in which there was concern about closet support for the anti-civil rights Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Special methods had to be employed to ensure that Wallace supporters were appropriately measured.

The so-called Bradley effect took place in 1982. Bradley was leading in the polls going into the California gubernatorial election, only to lose by a slim margin. Speculation since has gone both directions – that it was because of race and that is was for other reasons. Without firm experimental controls or a quick follow-up survey, it is hard to know.

Is the 2008 election racist in nature? Indications suggest that it is. 95% of blacks plan to vote for Obama, compared to about 40%, or somewhat more, of whites. Probability analysis says this is too big a difference to be ascribed to chance. This conclusion is muddied by the nature of the election issues themselves, and the fact that blacks customarily support the Democratic candidate by a wide margin.

Will Obama be hurt in the election by closet racism? Undoubtedly, but by how much is unknown. He will be hurt most by misgivings about him some of which derive from his ethnic subculture and associations and activities.