Thomasina Bradley ?

Matthew yglesias asks if Obama's surprising loss could be due to the Wilder effect, that is Black's do less well in the actual vote than in opinion polls. He argues that this is not what happened because the difference in the real vote vs the polls was concentrated among women.

I should say we're seeing some talk of a "Wilder effect" possibly doing Obama in. I don't buy that. If you look at the breakdown of the results, you'd need to believe that white women, but not white men, are inclined to lie to pollsters about that. More likely we're looking at a combination of gender backlash, plus the fact that Obama was so widely perceived as likely to win led independents to vote for John McCain in the GOP primary.

I agree and think his explanation is about as good as we are going to get. To be a devil's advocate, I could argue that there are two effects which cancel among men. White men who vote on race claim to be undecided and so do White men who vote on gender under these circumstances. I have to deal with the fact that there is no past data showing women doing better in opinion polls than in the actual vote.

OK so how about stong women who are considered to be cas_______ bi_____ ? Or how about presidential candidates who almost cry [I would ask my research assistant to look up data on the Musgee if I had one].

To be serious, I can see three explanations
I. What Matt said
II. What Clinton said, that is, she appealed to people when she showed emotion.
III. Another think Matt said "I don't think pissing off Chris Matthews is a good enough reason to pull the lever for Clinton, but I can certainly understand the impulse."