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Estimating Vote Persistence Sources without Panel Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Ron Shachar  and
Michal Shamir
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Abstract

Vote has been found to be among the most persistent political attitudes and behavior patterns. We specify three sources of vote persistence: persistence in (observable) factors structuring the vote, habituation through repeated vote for the same party, and stable (unobservable) personal preferences. The paper proposes an estimation procedure for distinguishing among these different factors based on one-shot election surveys, that is, without need for panel data, which are not often available. Applying the procedure to Israeli 1992 election data, the results suggest that a priori fixed preferences are relevant but have little impact on vote persistence. One's past voting record has much more impact, and continuity in political attitudes and evaluations has the most effect. We tested the suggested procedure on the American national presidential elections 1972–76 panel data, which provided further validation for our suggested method.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 6 , 1996 , pp. 107 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Political Methodology 

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