election studies: the state of the field and beyond ian mcallister the australian national...
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Election Studies:The State of the Field and Beyond
Ian McAllister
The Australian National University
[email protected]://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