Anyone who has been to grad school in the social sciences knows that any research outcome depends upon how one operationalizes one’s variables. In plain English that means how you define an attribute, like racism, for instance. If your variables are operationalized incorrectly, you will end up measuring one thing and calling it something else.

ABC found in June that three in 10 whites “expressed feelings of prejudice or racial insensitivity” (emphasis added). It is not clear how “racial sensitivity” was operationalized. But, however it was defined, ABC “found that among the two in 10 whites ‘at the high end of racial sensitivity,’ Obama led by 19 points” (emphasis added).

Did any white respondent who said they found race irrelevant, and maintained that it shouldn’t factor into any electoral decision, get put at the low end of the racial sensitivity scale? Did any white voter who expressed support for McCain get labeled racially insensitive? It’s not clear.

But the Obama campaign and much of the media are trying hard to define any voter who supports McCain-Palin as racist by definition. Even a Democratic governor said recently that Republicans are likely to be racists, though the mainstream media tried hard to hide it. This is a dangerous path for the polity.

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