Bob Somerby makes a good point about the rush of some pundits to blame Obama losing New Hampshire despite the polls on the Bradley effect. Particularly given that, for example, Harold Ford's final vote totals were similar to his poll numbers, the fact that Obama greatly overperformed his poll numbers in South Carolina suggests that the more logical explanation is that in volatile races in which turnout is enormously important it's simply difficult to get accurate polls. (And as John McWhorter pointed out, Obama didn't underperform; Clinton overperformed, which seems especially difficult to explain with the Bradley effect.) It's hard to know for certain if the Bradley effect is in play (for that matter, it's far from certain that Bradley himself was the victim of the Bradley effect), but it seems silly to speculate about it given the difficulty of polling primaries. --Scott Lemieux
