Elections and expectations: Evidence from electoral surveys in New Zealand

Citizen Forecasts of the 2008U.S. Presidential Election

“…Using American National Election Studies data, Lewis‐Beck and Skalaban () and Lewis‐Beck and Tien () find a consistent preference–expectation link in each U.S. presidential election since 1956. Similar results are found for expectations about public referenda (Granberg and Brent ; Lemert ; Rothbart ), as well as elections in Sweden (Granberg and Holmberg ; Sjöberg ), New Zealand (Babad, Hills, and O'Driscoll ; Levine and Roberts ), Israel (Babad ; Babad and Yacobos ), Canada (Johnston et al . ), the Netherlands (Irwin and van Holsteyn ), and Great Britain (McAllister and Studlar ; Nadeau, Niemi, and Amato ).…”

“…Other work compares how individuals predict elections in their own states versus national elections. In New Zealand, Levine and Roberts () and Babad, Hills, and O'Driscoll () find that WT bias is stronger for local results compared to national ones. However, Granberg and Brent () do not find this effect for the United States, hypothesizing that stronger bias and greater knowledge balance out.…”

“…There is mixed evidence that WT is exacerbated by partisan intensity(Dolan and Holbrook 2001;Granberg and Brent 1983;Levine and Roberts 1991) and reduced by knowledge(Babad 1997;Dolan and Holbrook 2001;Sjöberg 2009). However, the act of voting is found to increase WT bias(Frenkel and Doob 1976;Regan and Kilduff 1988).…”