[EL] Voter Recall of Voting

[David Adamany]

The flaws in survey research about voting behavior have been known for many decades.   Voters forget who they voted for as well as whether they voted at all.   Of course, voters may overreport voting because they wish to appear to be good citizens.  And they may misreport who they voted for after the election is in order to identify with the winner.   But sometimes people fail to remember voting as well--especially in low visibility or down-the-ballot  races.  This "underreporting" of the vote was reported decades ago.  See 39 POQ 227 and esp. 44 POQ 234 but remains largely obscure in social science.  A somewhat different problem is getting accurate survey reporting of "socially undesirable" voting, such as votes cast for George Wallace in northern primaries during the 1964 presidential campaign.  When we ask people whether they have contributed money to politics, forgetfulness may be less but a desire for privacy (even if only to avoid being deluged with requests from other candidates or organizations) may be considerably greater.  I think we're still quite far from having accurate pictures of voting and contributing through the use of survey data (even when we apply statistical estimates of survey respondent error).   Of course we are still working with fairly crude tools--as surgeons on the frontier did with whiskey and knives in the mid-1800s.



David Adamany
Laura Carnell Professor of Law
and Political Science, and
Chancellor
1810 Liacouras Walk, Ste 330
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
(215) 204-9278

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