Election Studies:The State of the Field and Beyond

Ian McAllister

The Australian National University

ian.mcallister@anu.edu.auhttp://www.cses.org/ http://aes.anu.edu.au/

A Crisis in National Election Studies?

Many national election studies now more than half a century old

Expanded around the world. Now generally accepted part of political science

Oldest national election studies:

1. United States 1948-2. Sweden 1956-3. Germany 1961-4. Britain 1963-5. Canada 1965-6. Netherlands 1967-7. Germany 1969-8. Denmark 1971-9. Australia 1987-

Inspired by Michigan model But election studies appear to have reached their limits Length of questionnaire in Australian Election Study

Number of variables in American National Election Study

Declining response rates, AES

Declining response rates, BES since 1963

Intellectual Issues

Why study voting?

Voting worth studying—William Riker’s ‘democracy’s central act’

Less recognition of normative questions about democracy

But elections co-ordinating events, unique in social sciences

—Temporal acts: occur at same point in time

—Decisional acts: produce government

—Collective events: citizens must co-ordinate with others

—Social events: bring citizens, groups, parties together

Political scientists emhasize co-ordinating event. But other aspects of interest to social scientists

Intellectual Issues, continued

What should election studies focus on?

Obvious focus single election, but at least three other dimensions

—Longitudinal

As studies accumulate, greater potential to leverage big questions about change

—Comparative

Relative lack of comparative electoral studies. Only since 1996 CSES

—Contextual

Link contextual information to better understand electoral dynamics

Intellectual Issues, continued

Examples of contextual information:

political context of the election

institutional variations (CSES)

media consumption

social location elite studies (Comparative Candidate Survey

http://www.comparativecandidates.org/ )

Methodological Issues

Survey Method

Personal interview (some mail self-completion, phone)

Problems: declining response rates, cost, sampling frame

Internet surveys (avoid method effects, cheap, fast)

Problems: not probability, need to be weighted; payment of respondents

Sample Size

Usually 1,500-2,000 respondents

Problems: effective sample smaller for voters; difficult to analyze some issues, groups

Methodological Issues, continued

Study Design

An enhanced portfolio of coordinated studies

—independent rolling cross-sections in non-election years

—rolling-cross-sections within the campaign

—state or region over-samples

Administrative Issues

Emphasis on collaboration; public use; broad oversight

Economies of scale, test new ideas, hypotheses

Generation of intellectual capital

Capacity buildng, training in better social science

Co-ordination to leverage resources

Uniformity in study design, documentation, establish best practice

Summary

No crisis, but need for organic change/generational

replacement

Need to ‘sell’ election studies more widely

Restrict to ‘core business’

Link to other datasets, collections

Develop the methodology to respond to problems