Misreporters in Candidate Choice Models

When asked whether they voted in the last election, many survey respondents say they did even though they did not. Although misreporting has the potential to produce specious findings in candidate choice models, researchers have ignored its effects on our understanding of candidate choice. We test an established candidate choice model first with and then without self-reported voters whose turnout could not be validated, in order to gauge whether misreporters undermine empirical tests of candidate choice models. The results for three different presidential elections indicate that misreporters have little impact on the overall performance of the model or on the impacts of most predictors. Misreporting does produce some misleading findings, but its disruptive effects are confined to factors peripheral to the model; misreporters have little or no effect on party identification or candidate evaluations, the main factors shaping candidate choice. When asked whether they voted in the last election, many survey respondents say they did even though they did not. Over the last three decades, numerous attempts have been made to establish who these misreporters are, to ascertain their motivations, and to determine how they affect our understanding of turnout (Abramson and Claggett 1984, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992; Anderson and Silver 1986; Atkeson 1999; Belli, Traugott, Young, and McGonagle 1999; Burden 1999; Cassel 1998; Clausen 1968-69; Deufel and Kedar 2000; Granberg and Holmberg 1991; Hill and Hurley 1984; Katosh and Traugott 1981; Leshner and Thorson 2000; Presser 1984, 1990; Presser and Traugott 1992; Presser, Traugott, and Traugott 1990; Sigelman 1982; Silver, Abramson, and Anderson 1986; Silver, Anderson, and Abramson 1986; Traugott and Katosh 1979; Traugott, Traugott, and Presser 1992; Traugott 1989; Volgy and Schwarz 1984; Wright 1993). Oddly, despite the attention that researchers have lavished on misreporting, they have ignored its effects on the central issue in the study of electoral behavior: why people vote for one candidate or another. Interest in voter turnout is motivated in large measure by the drive to explain why elections turn out the way they do, and such an explanation is obviously impossible unless the determinants of candidate choice are well understood. Nonetheless, in two decades of intensive research on misreporting, no one has even broached, let alone resolved, the fundamental question of whether it undermines our understanding not just of voter turnout, but also of candidate choice. The purpose of this note, then, is to gauge whether research on candidate choice goes astray when, as often happens, people who did not really vote are counted as voters. We approach this task by testing an established candidate choice model first with and then without selfreported voters whose turnout could not be validated. Because one respondent in six who claims to have voted for one presidential candidate or another is a misreporter,' misreporting has the potential to produce specious findings in candidate choice models. Obviously, the difference between those for whom turnout can be validated and those for whom it cannot must be substantial in order for misreporters to make conclusions based on all self-reported voters, validated or not, inapplicable to validated voters. That, however, is an empirical question, and in light of its importance we think it is a question that deserves an answer rather than being assumed away. In the absence of a single, consensually accepted model of candidate choice, we employ a model that Weisberg and Mockabee (Table 1, 1998; 1999) developed for the 1996 presidential election. This model comprises four sets of predictors: social-demographic variables, long-term predispositions (partisan and ideological identification and evangelical commitment), short-term issues (opinions about the economy and policy preferences), and candidate evaluations (perceptions of the candidates' integrity, empathy, competence, and leadership). …