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In the last few months, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about the presidential election, looking at the polls and scrolling through social media. There’s a lot at stake in the 2020 election, and there are a thousand ways to track its trends—many of which originated in the American National Election Studies (ANES).

Based in U-M’s Institute for Social Research, ANES was founded in 1948 and has since been primarily led by faculty in LSA’s Department of Political Science. ANES is an electoral research program that has generated much of what we know about voting behavior, public opinion, and political participation in the United States.

Under Robert Kahn, professor of psychology, and Angus Campbell, professor of psychology and sociology, the Michigan Election Studies (ANES’s original name) conducted the first pilot study of the country’s electorate in 1948 to determine how the public felt about the nation’s foreign policy. That same year, the presidential polls that predicted John Dewey would best Harry S. Truman in a landslide defeat were surprisingly off base. The colossal miscalculations intrigued Kahn and Campbell and inspired them to train their attention on voting behavior—an attention ANES has sustained for more than 70 years.

ANES’s surveys disentangle the elements and attitudes behind the way voters do—and do not—vote in presidential elections. Much of what the media and the public monitor during elections is based upon insights originally gleaned from ANES: the way race, religion, age, and class relate to voting behavior, for example, or how people’s identification with a political party is as deeply significant to their psychological identity as a religious belief.

In the last few months, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about the presidential election, looking at the polls and scrolling through social media. There's a lot at stake in the 2020 election, and there are a thousand ways to track its trends—many of which originated in the American National Election Studies (ANES).

Based in U-M’s Institute for Social Research, ANES was founded in 1948 and has since been primarily led by faculty in LSA's Department of Political Science. ANES is an electoral research program that has generated much of what we know about voting behavior, public opinion, and political participation in the United States.

Under Robert Kahn, professor of psychology, and Angus Campbell, professor of psychology and sociology, the Michigan Election Studies (ANES’s original name) conducted the first pilot study of the country’s electorate in 1948 to determine how the public felt about the nation’s foreign policy. That same year, the presidential polls that predicted John Dewey would best Harry S. Truman in a landslide defeat were surprisingly off base. The colossal miscalculations intrigued Kahn and Campbell and inspired them to train their attention on voting behavior—an attention ANES has sustained for more than 70 years.

ANES’s surveys disentangle the elements and attitudes behind the way voters do—and do not—vote in presidential elections. Much of what the media and the public monitor during elections is based upon insights originally gleaned from ANES: the way race, religion, age, and class relate to voting behavior, for example, or how people’s identification with a political party is as deeply significant to their psychological identity as a religious belief.

To glean these insights, ANES asks a carefully selected sample of respondents to answer its survey’s questions twice: once before each presidential election and again after the election is over. Responding to the ANES survey is not for the faint of heart: The survey asks between 800 and 900 questions and takes between 70 and 80 minutes to complete. And even in this internet age of robocalls and instant messaging, ANES has still gathered its survey data in face-to-face interviews—until COVID-19.

“If we could have kept a face-to-face component, we would have, but the pandemic made that impossible,” says Nicholas Valentino, professor of communication and media and political science, research professor in the Center for Political Studies, and a principal investigator of ANES. “It is the first time in the history of the survey that we aren’t going to have a face-to-face sample, and it’s scary to abruptly change sampling strategies and interviewing modalities.

“The survey research community has reached a long-standing consensus that face-to-face interviews with trained interviewers produce the most reliable, valid measures of public opinion,” he continues. “In person, interviewers can develop a rapport with respondents that lets them ask follow-up questions, which gives them multiple opportunities to make sure they’re accurately recording the individual’s opinion.”

Prioritizing accuracy over methods that require less time and fewer resource is emblematic of the commitment ANES researchers have made to the integrity of their data and an acknowledgement of the exceptional responsibility it feels to the social scientists, students, journalists, and public policy makers who use them. ANES distinguishes itself from other electoral research projects with its high quality sample and meticulously crafted survey questions. Because it believes its data are a public good, it makes them free and available to anyone.

But its most valuable feature is what's called the “time series”: the responses to the same set of questions the study has asked again and again for more than 70 years.

To glean these insights, ANES asks a carefully selected sample of respondents to answer its survey’s questions twice: once before each presidential election and again after the election is over. Responding to the ANES survey is not for the faint of heart: The survey asks between 800 and 900 questions and takes between 70 and 80 minutes to complete. And even in this internet age of robocalls and instant messaging, ANES has still gathered its survey data in face-to-face interviews—until COVID-19.

“If we could have kept a face-to-face component, we would have, but the pandemic made that impossible,” says Nicholas Valentino, professor of communication and media and political science, research professor in the Center for Political Studies, and a principal investigator of ANES. “It is the first time in the history of the survey that we aren’t going to have a face-to-face sample, and it’s scary to abruptly change sampling strategies and interviewing modalities.

“The survey research community has reached a long-standing consensus that face-to-face interviews with trained interviewers produce the most reliable, valid measures of public opinion,” he continues. “In person, interviewers can develop a rapport with respondents that lets them ask follow-up questions, which gives them multiple opportunities to make sure they’re accurately recording the individual’s opinion.”

Prioritizing accuracy over methods that require less time and fewer resource is emblematic of the commitment ANES researchers have made to the integrity of their data and an acknowledgement of the exceptional responsibility it feels to the social scientists, students, journalists, and public policy makers who use them. ANES distinguishes itself from other electoral research projects with its high quality sample and meticulously crafted survey questions. Because it believes its data are a public good, it makes them free and available to anyone.

But its most valuable feature is what's called the “time series”: the responses to the same set of questions the study has asked again and again for more than 70 years.

From the Start

Asking the same questions in the same way year after year allows researchers to take the temperature of our democracy, to definitively compare people’s answers across time, and to compare the circumstances of one election to another. How does trust in the government today compare to 1956? Did people’s attitudes about race or ethnicity change between 1972 and 1992?

“We always ask certain questions from one election cycle to the next,” explains Vincent Hutchings, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, Hanes Walton Jr. Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies, research professor in the Center for Political Studies, and a principal investigator of ANES from 2010-2017. “We always ask people if they are registered to vote and if they plan to vote, and, after the election, we ask them how they voted. We always ask about presidential approval and party identification, about how people feel about different ethnic and racial groups in society. More recently, we’ve asked about discrimination and whether some groups have too much or too little influence in society.”

“About 20 percent of our questions go back to the 1950s or ’60s, and another 20 percent go back to the ’70s or ’80s,” says Ted Brader, professor of political science, research professor in the Center for Political Studies, and a principal investigator of ANES. “A large share of our survey is built on this time trend, and that data is irreplaceable.

“I mean, sure, you could start another big study, invest a lot of money, and get a really high quality sample or survey,” he continues. “You could even decide to make your data free, but you can't go back in time and start doing it in 1952.”

From the Start

Asking the same questions in the same way year after year allows researchers to take the temperature of our democracy, to definitively compare people’s answers across time, and to compare the circumstances of one election to another. How does trust in the government today compare to 1956? Did people’s attitudes about race or ethnicity change between 1972 and 1992?

“We always ask certain questions from one election cycle to the next,” explains Vincent Hutchings, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, Hanes Walton Jr. Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies, research professor in the Center for Political Studies, and a principal investigator of ANES from 2010-2017. “We always ask people if they are registered to vote and if they plan to vote, and, after the election, we ask them how they voted. We always ask about presidential approval and party identification, about how people feel about different ethnic and racial groups in society. More recently, we’ve asked about discrimination and whether some groups have too much or too little influence in society.”

“About 20 percent of our questions go back to the 1950s or ’60s, and another 20 percent go back to the ’70s or ’80s,” says Ted Brader, professor of political science, research professor in the Center for Political Studies, and a principal investigator of ANES. “A large share of our survey is built on this time trend, and that data is irreplaceable.

“I mean, sure, you could start another big study, invest a lot of money, and get a really high quality sample or survey,” he continues. “You could even decide to make your data free, but you can't go back in time and start doing it in 1952.”

 

 

Taking Measure

ANES’s election-related data isn’t intended to forecast an election’s outcome; it’s intended to help researchers understand people’s voting decisions, an issue’s relative importance, and to explain why an election unfolded the way it did. Does climate change motivate voting behavior as much as opposition to abortion? Do same-sex marriage supporters share similar views on the economy or immigration? In order to capture these data for future scientists to use, Hutchings says, you have to anticipate the kinds of questions you need to ask.

“Every election cycle has different issues that come up and, obviously, there are different personalities, so the study is constantly in tension between continuity and innovation,” Hutchings says. “If something happens in the campaign that had not been anticipated when the study was designed, there is usually some wiggle room to make adjustments.”

In the United States, in the last 70 years, a lot of things have happened—wars, recessions, demographic shifts, new technologies—and it’s likely that, at some point, ANES has surveyed the electorate about them. If an issue unexpectedly develops during an election, they can often reach back to earlier survey questions and ask them again now.

Reaching back to resuscitate earlier questions about particular events has two advantages: It allows researchers to ask questions that have already been tested and it generates data that allows them to compare earlier periods to contemporary times. For example, Brader says, “The original 2020 survey didn't have any questions about urban unrest. Like many people, we saw parallels to the past, and we found ANES had asked relevant questions in 1968 that were still, sadly, on point 50 years later—questions that had been asked continuously from 1968 through 1976, and then again in 1992 because of the Rodney King riots.”

“We found a set of questions from 1998 about the impeachment process and spent a lot of time thinking about them,” Valentino says. “When COVID-19 broke and more than a million people filed for jobless claims for 20 weeks in a row, we went back to questions from the subprime mortgage crisis. And then Black Lives Matter protests spread across the country, the security of mail-in ballots were questioned, and a Supreme Court justice passed away weeks before the election.”

Writing and programming a questionnaire for a project of this scale requires months of work, which meant that some late-rising issues, like the debate about replacing Justice Ginsburg, did not make it into the study. At the same time, other issues, such as voters’ confidence that their voices will be heard and counted, were already part of the survey, so its robust measurements and tools could yield a treasure trove of research data.

Taking Measure

ANES’s election-related data isn’t intended to forecast an election’s outcome; it’s intended to help researchers understand people’s voting decisions, an issue’s relative importance, and to explain why an election unfolded the way it did. Does climate change motivate voting behavior as much as opposition to abortion? Do same-sex marriage supporters share similar views on the economy or immigration? In order to capture these data for future scientists to use, Hutchings says, you have to anticipate the kinds of questions you need to ask.

“Every election cycle has different issues that come up and, obviously, there are different personalities, so the study is constantly in tension between continuity and innovation,” Hutchings says. “If something happens in the campaign that had not been anticipated when the study was designed, there is usually some wiggle room to make adjustments.”

In the United States, in the last 70 years, a lot of things have happened—wars, recessions, demographic shifts, new technologies—and it’s likely that, at some point, ANES has surveyed the electorate about them. If an issue unexpectedly develops during an election, they can often reach back to earlier survey questions and ask them again now.

Reaching back to resuscitate earlier questions about particular events has two advantages: It allows researchers to ask questions that have already been tested and it generates data that allows them to compare earlier periods to contemporary times. For example, Brader says, “The original 2020 survey didn't have any questions about urban unrest. Like many people, we saw parallels to the past, and we found ANES had asked relevant questions in 1968 that were still, sadly, on point 50 years later—questions that had been asked continuously from 1968 through 1976, and then again in 1992 because of the Rodney King riots.”

“We found a set of questions from 1998 about the impeachment process and spent a lot of time thinking about them,” Valentino says. “When COVID-19 broke and more than a million people filed for jobless claims for 20 weeks in a row, we went back to questions from the subprime mortgage crisis. And then Black Lives Matter protests spread across the country, the security of mail-in ballots were questioned, and a Supreme Court justice passed away weeks before the election.”

Writing and programming a questionnaire for a project of this scale requires months of work, which meant that some late-rising issues, like the debate about replacing Justice Ginsburg, did not make it into the study. At the same time, other issues, such as voters’ confidence that their voices will be heard and counted, were already part of the survey, so its robust measurements and tools could yield a treasure trove of research data.

 

 

If the election’s fast-moving developments presented one kind of problem, anticipating which ones would matter was another. “If we produced a 2020 study without content on these significant topics, people would think we had lost our minds,” Valentino says. “There is no moment in American history that can provide a direct comparison to what's happening in 2020—including people’s concerns about the election’s outcome.”

There have been other close and controversial elections, Valentino says, but 2020 is beyond comparison. “I think it is a historically unique moment. It is simply not hyperbole to say this is unprecedented. We overuse the word, but if the sitting president is not behaving in a way that any other sitting president has ever behaved, you need to point that out and be honest about it,” Valentino says.

"But we're dedicated to this project and to each other as an intellectual community," he continues. "And we're dedicated to the scientific study of elections and to our junior colleagues and graduate students. They will use the ANES to write dissertations and scientific papers that will help us understand what's happening in this time of upheaval. I think everybody would say that they're really proud of this work that they're doing, but it is a lot of pressure."

 

If the election’s fast-moving developments presented one kind of problem, anticipating which ones would matter was another. “If we produced a 2020 study without content on these significant topics, people would think we had lost our minds,” Valentino says. “There is no moment in American history that can provide a direct comparison to what’s happening in 2020—including people’s concerns about the election’s outcome.”

There have been other close and controversial elections, Valentino says, but 2020 is beyond comparison. “I think it is a historically unique moment. It is simply not hyperbole to say this is unprecedented. We overuse the word, but if the sitting president is not behaving in a way that any other sitting president has ever behaved, you need to point that out and be honest about it,” Valentino says.

“But we're dedicated to this project and to each other as an intellectual community,” he continues. “And we’re dedicated to the scientific study of elections and to our junior colleagues and graduate students. They will use the ANES to write dissertations and scientific papers that will help us understand what’s happening in this time of upheaval. I think everybody would say that they’re really proud of this work that they’re doing, but it is a lot of pressure.”

 

 
Illustrations by Emma Bumstead

 


 


 

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Release Date: 10/26/2020
Category: Faculty; Research
Tags: LSA; Political Science; LSA Magazine; Social Sciences; Susan Hutton