Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T20:56:04.220Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Scandal and Bias in Survey Responses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2014

Nicholas Goedert
Nicholas Goedert*
Affiliation:
Lafayette College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article provides evidence for bias in the polling of American political candidates who are accused of personal or financial scandal, wherein the support of the accused candidate is understated. Evidence for this phenomenon is found in the analysis of a dataset of district-level polls of US House elections during the 2002–2012 election cycles. This bias helps to explain several unanticipated outcomes in recent American legislative elections, in which scandal-tarred incumbents unexpectedly were reelected or defeated by surprisingly narrow margins. The article also finds evidence of a smaller bias, previously observed by practitioners, wherein support is overstated for incumbents who are not accused of scandal.

Type
Features
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 813 - 818
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barone, Michael et al. . 2002–2012 editions. Almanac of American Politics, Washington, DC: National Journal Group.Google Scholar
Basinger, Scott. 2013. “Scandals and Congressional Elections in the Post-Watergate Era.” Political Research Quarterly 66(2): 385–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berinsky, Adam. 1999. “The Two Faces of Public Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 43: 1209–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackwell, Matthew, Iacus, Stefano, King, Gary, and Porro, Giuseppe. 2008. “CEM: Coarsened Exact Matching in Stata.” The Stata Journal 9: 524–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowers, Chris. 2004. “Incumbent Rule Research Update.” Available at http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=4852.Google Scholar
Campbell, James. 2000. The American Campaign. College Station: Texas A&M University.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert, and Wlezien, Christopher. 2008. “Are Political Markets Really Superior to Polls as Election Predictors?” Public Opinion Quarterly 72: 190–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkel, Steven, Guterbock, Thomas, and Borg, Marian. 1991. “Race-of-Interview Effects in a Pre-election Poll, Virginia 1989.” Public Opinion Quarterly 55: 313–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, David, Hudes, Esther, and Donovan, David. 1999. “Estimating and Correcting for Response Bias in Self-Reported HIV Risk Behavior.” Journal of Sex Research 35: 96–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendry, David, Jackson, Robert, and Mondak, Jeffrey. 2009. “Abramoff, Email, and the Mistreated Mistress: Scandal and Character in the 2006 Elections.” In Fault Lines: Why the Republicans Lost Congress, ed. Mondak, Jeffrey et al. . New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hirano, Shigeo, and Snyder, James M.. 2012. “What Happens to Incumbents in Scandals?” International Quarterly Journal of Political Science 7(4): 447–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopkins, Daniel. 2009. “No More Wilder Effect, Never a Whitman Effect.” Journal of Politics 71: 769–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iacus, Stefano, King, Gary, and Porro, Giuseppe. 2009. “Matching for Causal Inference without Balance Checking.” Available at http://gking.harvard.edu/files/abs/cem-abs.shtml.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, Karen, Petrocik, John, and Shaw, Daron. 2008. Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters. New York: Oxford University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellman, Mark. 2006. “Incumbent Rule Broken Sometimes.” The Hill, October 11, 2006. Available at http://thehill.com/mark-mellman/incumbent-rule-broken-sometimes-2006-10-11.html.Google Scholar
Panagakis, Nick. 1989. “Incumbent Races: Closer Than They Appear.” The Polling Report, February 27, 1989. Available at http://www.pollingreport.com/incumbent.htm.Google Scholar
Tourangeau, Roger, Steiger, Darby, and Wilson, David. 2001. “Self-Administered Questions by Telephone: Evaluating Interactive Voice Response.” Public Opinion Quarterly 66(2): 265–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tourangeau, Roger, and Yan, Ting. 2007. “Sensitive Questions in Surveys.” Psychological Bulletin 133: 859–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van de Ven, Niels, Gilovich, Thomas, and Zeelennberg, Marcel. 2010. “Delay, Doubt, and Decision.” Psychological Science 21: 568–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Winters, Matther, and Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca. 2011. “Lacking Information or Condoning Corruption? Voter Attitudes Toward Corruption in Brazil.” Presented at the 4th Annual NYU–CESS Conference on Experimental Political Science, March 2011.Google Scholar
Wyner, Gordon. 1980. “Response Error in Self-Reported Number of Arrests.” Sociological Methods and Research 9: 161–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Goedert supplementary material

Supplementary appendix

Download Goedert supplementary material(File)
File 227.1 KB