[gov3009-l] Ansolabehere on "Vote Validation in the 2006 CCES"

Dear Applied Statistics Community, Please join us this Wednesday (October 15th) when Stephen Ansolabehere, Professor in Harvard's Department of Government, will present his work on "Vote Validation in the 2006 CCES". Stephen provided the following abstract, New technology and recent political reform have made vote validation an easier and more reliable process than it has been in the past. We present a basic summary of the vote validation procedure used in the 2006 CCES, a Web-based survey of nearly 35,000 Americans that has been validated electronically with new state-wide voter files. As the validation method in the CCES is quite different from the method used by the National Election Studies (NES) in the 1960s through 1980s, we compare the CCES procedure and results with the most recent midterm elections validated by the NES. We show that while the rate of vote misreporting is substantially higher in the 2006 Web-based survey, the pattern of misreporting is consistent with the NES samples. We also show how the large sample size in the CCES can be exploited to study phenomena beyond vote misreporting using the validated records. A paper is available for download here ( http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~jgrimmer/AnsolabeherePaper.pdf) The applied statistics workshop meets at 12 noon in Room K-354, CGIS Knafel (1737 Cambridge St), with a light lunch. Our presentations begin at 1215 and usually conclude around 130 pm. As always, everyone is welcome! Cheers Justin Grimmer