Likely (and Unlikely) Voters and the Assessment of Campaign Dynamics
ROBERT S. ERIKSON is a professor of political science at Columbia University. COSTAS PANAGOPOULOS is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at New York University, where he is also executive director of the Political Campaign Management Program. CHRISTOPHER WLEZIEN is a Reader of Comparative Government and Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University. A previous version of this paper was presented at the Meeting of the World Association of Public Opinion Research Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, September 17–19, 2003. The research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9731308 and SBR-0112856). For useful and stimulating comments, we are most grateful to Robert Shapiro and the anonymous reviewers.
Address correspondence to Robert S. Erikson; e-mail: rse14{at}columbia.edu.
Only in recent years has the "likely voter" technology been extended to polls well in advance of an election. In the case of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, CNN/USA Today/Gallup tracking polls indicated considerable fluctuations in likely voter preferences, greater than among the larger pool of registered voters surveyed. This article explores how Gallup’s likely voter model exaggerates the reported volatility of voter preferences during the campaign. Much of the reported variation in candidate preference reported by Gallup in that election is not due to actual voter shifts in preference but rather to changes in the composition of Gallup’s likely voter pool. The findings highlight dangers of relying on samples of likely voters when polling well before Election Day.
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