The Bradley effect, less commonly known as the Wilder effect, is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white and a non-white candidate run against each other. The theory proposes that some white voters who intend to vote for the white candidate will nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate. It was named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to California attorney general George Deukmejian, an Armenian-American, despite Bradley's being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.