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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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1990-09-19
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NATION, Page 56White Lies, Bad Polls
Before last week's unexpectedly close Virginia contest,
Pollster Harrison Hickman got revealing results by making an
offbeat correlation. When white voters were questioned by white
pollsters, Hickman found, they favored Republican Marshall Coleman
by 16 points. But when whites were telephoned by interviewers with
recognizably black intonation, they leaned to Douglas Wilder by 10
points.
The fact that Americans are notoriously unreliable when
answering questions related to race was dramatically evident in the
Virginia and New York City elections. Although several surveys in
the final fortnight gave Wilder and David Dinkins comfortable leads
(as high as 15 points for Wilder and 18 points for Dinkins), both
contests turned out to be squeakers.
The phenomenon is not new: seven years ago, Los Angeles Mayor
Tom Bradley seemed to be leading in California's gubernatorial
election -- until the ballots were counted and he lost by less than
a point. Some whites were reluctant to admit to pollsters that they
planned to vote against a black.
Racism in the crude sense does not necessarily motivate people
to misinform pollsters, Hickman says. Rather, some respondents
succumb to a misguided urge to give answers they think will please
the questioner. Whatever the reason, pollsters in black-white
contests should learn to take the discrepancy into account -- at
least until such racial match-ups cease to be novelties.