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Is polling on Proposition 19, California's pot legalization initiative, subject to a "Broadus Effect"?

By Douglas A. Berman

A helpful reader pointed me to this fascinating post by Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight under the heading "The Broadus Effect? Social Desirability Bias and California Proposition 19."  Here are excerpts: The three automated surveys all have Prop 19 passing by a double-digit margin. The human-operator polls, meanwhile, each show it trailing narrowly.... Although some of these polls contain incomplete demographic information, the split appears to be driven more by minority voters than by whites.... There are a couple of reasons why these discrepancies might have arisen. One might be that the automated surveys are having difficulty getting a representative sample of minorities. Automated surveys generally have lower response rates, and that impact may be most felt among minorities, who are usually harder to get on the phone...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 27, 2010 (boomark / email).