The chattering classes have put the so-called Bradley effect front and center, asking what kind of dent it could potentially put in Barack Obama’s campaign for the Presidency. Few people can speak about the effects of race on voting with more knowledge than former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, who claims that he was the victim of a similar trend when he campaigned for the governor’s office almost 20 years ago. In a long profile in the Washington Post, Wilder admits that he believes his race almost cost him dearly in his tightly contested victory over Republican Marshall Coleman in 1989 — a race in which the margin of victory for Wilder was less than one half of one percent. From the Post piece:

During a lengthy interview about Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign for president, Wilder said he now believes he lost between 3 percent and 5 percent of the Democratic voters because of his race, although he quickly added, “we overcame it, and we won it.”

Now, it’s important to note that the Bradley effect doesn’t indicate white voters refusing to vote for black candidates. The Bradley effect, as Ezra Klein observes, registers that white voters will lie to polls before they vote against black candidates. The effect is more likely to be seen in primaries, where the political differences between candidates may be less pronounced.

The differences between the candidates voters will consider on Tuesday are quite pronounced. Obama and Sen. John McCain will be the first to tell voters that the differences couldn’t be larger — so voters don’t have an either/or situation in which race is bound to be the deciding factor. Unless it is — unless Tuesday finds “Democrats who know they should be supporting Obama, tell pollsters they will, but won’t be able to bring themselves to mark Obama’s name on their ballots” (to quote Klein).

But the differences between Virginia in 2008 and Virginia some 20 years ago are manifold. And Obama has addressed race forthrightly, while neither Bradley nor Wilder put race on their platforms. Nevertheless, it’s a testament to Obama — and, yes, change — that he’s leading in Virginia. A Democrat hasn’t carried Virginia in the Presidential election since 1964. The Commonwealth has only elected one African-American — Wilder — to statewide office. Virginia has the potential to show the largest Bradley swing of any state, but it’s also shown that it’s changed largely over the last couple decades.