deukmejian narrowly defeated los angeles mayor tom bradley in the general election. deukmejian won the election by about 100,000 votes, about 1.2 percent of the 7.5 million votes cast. the victory came despite opinion polls leading up to the election that consistently showed bradley with a lead, and despite exit polling conducted after voting closed that led some news organizations on the night of the election to make early projections of a bradley victory. the discrepancy between the polling numbers and the election's ultimate results would come to be termed the "bradley effect", which refers to a hypothesized tendency of white voters to tell interviewers or pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, but then actually vote for his opponent.