...this was the state that gave you stonings of school buses during desegregation, the spearing of a black man in front of Boston City Hall, old-boy white boardrooms that scared off black talent, a Red Sox franchise that allowed the exclusion of black players from spring training dinners well into the 1980s, and a Boston Latin where white parents ended affirmative action at the city's flagship public high school less than 10 years ago.
That's why I must remind him of the 1989 Dinkins vs. Giuliani election. This is from the NY Times archives...sorry, but you'd have to have that TimesSelect thing to read it all.
In New York, polls made public the day before the mayoral election gave David N. Dinkins leads of 14 percentage points (by The Daily News with WABC-TV) to 18 points (by The New York Observer). His actual margin of victory over Rudolph W. Giuliani was about 2 percentage points. Shifting Numbers...
Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, attributed the discrepancy to white voters who were reluctant to tell poll takers they were not voting for a black candidate, even under the cover of anonymity. ''Whites tell pollsters ahead of time that they are voting for the black candidate,'' he said, ''and then they go into the voting booth and can't quite pull down that lever.'' Dealing in Black and White
Other poll takers agree that some respondents are not candid about their racial attitudes when questioned in person or on the telephone. Two recent studies, by CBS News and The Washington Post, indicated that even the race of the person conducting the interview can affect the results.
Sweeping race out the door
September 16, 2006
FORTY YEARS after Edward Brooke was elected to represent Massachusetts in the US Senate, the Commonwealth is close to claiming a partial healing of its soul. It does not matter if Deval Patrick wins the Democratic gubernatorial primary next week. It is a colossal triumph for the race to get this far without Patrick's darkness becoming a shroud.
