Goodbye, Bradley effect

WHILE RACE only rarely became an explicit issue in the presidential campaign, the nation's grim racial history cast a shadow from the moment Barack Obama declared his candidacy. Was America "ready" - whatever that meant - to elect a black president?

The reality is liberating. The senator from Illinois prevailed Tuesday with a popular-vote margin of six points or so - about what polls predicted - and cruised to an easy Electoral College victory. He fell short of expectations here and there. But he also took such GOP strongholds as Virginia and Indiana, and racked up a surprise double-digit margin in the battleground of Nevada. Perhaps these returns will ease some of the angst over race in American life.

Even as Obama soared in the polls in September, many observers suspected that prejudice would deny him the presidency in the end. By the numbers, the race wasn't close after mid-September. But pundits fretted about the so-called "Bradley effect" and "Wilder effect" - the hypothesized tendency of white voters to hide their opposition to black candidates.

Some voters doubtless did shy away from Obama because of his race. But even that was a measurable phenomenon, not some unknowable factor lurking beneath pollsters' radar. Anyway, Obama's race appeared to help him as often as not. Many voters of all races, it seems, were eager to throw off past divisions - and found Obama a more attractive candidate as a result.

Political analysts dine out on their theories of how voters behave. But over time, voting patterns change, and biases wither. Bradley, Shmadley. Maybe the voters of 2008 were simply worried about the nation's future - and picked the candidate they deemed best suited to secure it.