The media inadvertently stumbled into the elephant in the room—and I don’t mean the Republican mascot.

It started when the McCain campaign aired a series of commercials ridiculing Barack Obama. Many people of color as well as a few palefaces sensed a racial subtext.

Concurrently Obama used one of his stock lines about looking different from other presidents whose faces grace our currency.

The McCainsters pounced first, charging that Obama not only “played the race card,” but dealt “from the bottom of the deck.”

The term “race card” was popularized during the O.J. Simpson trial. I’m not certain who benefited from it then, but the consensus says it hurts Obama if he plays it—also if the other guy plays it. It’s lose-lose for Barack.

So who really played it?

Right or wrong, Obama gets the blame. But, whoever is responsible, the race issue is again open for discussion. We’ll be hearing much more—perhaps even another Obama speech.

What concerns me, however, is whether some sectors of the public are playing their own version.

I’m not talking about those who come right out and say they wouldn’t vote for a guy with the wrong paint job—they are almost admirable in their candor. I am more concerned about those who tell the pollsters they will vote for Obama but are lying so as not to appear “prejudiced.”

This is called the “Bradley effect,” named for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Running for governor of California in 1982, he polled big, winning numbers, even on election day, but lost badly in the vote count.

Political scientists estimated the Bradley effect or lie factor at close to seven percent; others place it slightly lower, but it has been the bane of African American candidates for a long time.

Recent studies, however, suggest the effect has diminished or disappeared in major contests. In the 2006 Tennessee senatorial race, for example, Harold Ford Jr., the African American Democrat, lost narrowly, but actually exceeded his final poll numbers. This is believed to be one of the elements that convinced Obama to make his presidential run.

In some of this year’s primaries, however, exit polls showed Obama doing far better than he actually performed. Early exits in California, for example, had him ahead, but he lost by 10 points. Was this a return to Bradley because the stakes are higher when it comes to the presidency?

The question greatly concerns the professionals. In a recent Wall Street Journal, a half dozen major pollsters and academics agreed that people often lie about touchy issues—race among them. Pollsters for ABC and CBS expressed great caution and described ways they try to identify the lie factor.

Peter Hart, the respected Democratic partner in a team polling for NBC and the Journal, said as many as 10 percent of Democratic and independent respondents might be lying.

“This election is exceptionally tricky,” he said.

Pollster John Zogby said it takes only a few liars to skew a poll—which makes a narrow lead for Obama very precarious.

On the other hand, Obama supporters can take heart in the fact that the pollsters haven’t yet solved several problems in their models and samples this year.

First, there is a huge body of newly registered voters, young folk and African Americans, who turned out in the primaries and are expected in even greater numbers in November. They have not yet been properly accounted for in the models based on historic turnout patterns. That’s why Obama actually overperformed pollsters’ expectations in certain other primaries.

Another important ingredient is that perhaps a third of all households now have no landlines, only cell phones. Pollsters are just starting to include some of those households but haven’t solved the problem of properly incorporating them into their models.

Yes—those cell-only households are primarily younger and likely skewed toward Obama.

This year’s polling has been notoriously bad for all of the above factors. Which is another reason not to get too worked up in either direction—at least until late September when they might get these issues worked out.

But the most important issue to get worked out is race—still the elephant in America’s room.

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Don Rose, a veteran and highly respected analyst has been a strategist for a number of progressive and independent campaigns in Chicago. He is a regular columnist for The Chicago Daily Observer.