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Political Behavior
Jumping on the Bandwagon or Jumping Ship? Testing Alternative Theories of Vote Share Overestimation (with David Crow & Shaun Bowler)
Post-election poll results typically overstate the proportion of people who voted for winning
candidates at all levels of government. We test several alternative explanations of this
apparent post-election "bandwagon" effect using data from the American National Election
Study: conventional ones include expectations that respondents misrepresent how they voted
to save face, genuinely forget how they voted, or experience shifts in opinion just before
an election. We develop and test an unexplored alternative hypothesis, that post-election
surveys inflate the winner's vote because a greater proportion of people who voted for the
winning side want to participate in a post-election survey than people who voted for the
loser. We devise empirical tests to distinguish and test each of these hypotheses. We find
evidence that, rather than misrepresenting their votes to poll-takers, people who voted for
the losing side are less likely to participate in post-election surveys.
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