Do Partisan Norms Cause Citizens to Misreport How They Cast Their Ballots?

• In Event: Experimental Studies of U.S. Voters

Abstract

Scholars have devoted considerable attention to understanding the rates of and reasons for the intentional overreporting of voter turnout in surveys. Little is known, however, about whether citizens consciously misreport their mode of voting and the factors that might predict such misreporting. Given the heightened politicization of how one casts their ballot and President Trump’s consistent attacks on voting by mail throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, some voters may feel pressure to report compliance with their party’s voting mode “norm” even when they did not do so (i.e., voting in-person for Republicans and, to a much lesser extent, voting by mail or early for Democrats). I test this expectation using the 2020 CCES and an original survey of registered California voters, both of which combine respondents’ report of their mode of voting with official records of how their ballots were cast. A complimentary survey experiment assesses whether informing respondents that their mode of voting will be checked against government records reduces the rate of vote method misreporting. These findings have important implications for survey measurement, our understanding of opinions toward election policies, and the extent to which at least in 2020 partisans felt social pressure not just to vote but to vote a particular way.

Author

• Daniel R. Biggers, University of California, Riverside