Single Regression Estimates of Voting Choices When Turnout is Unknown
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Jeffrey S. Zax
Abstract
This paper demonstrates that conventional single regression estimators of voting preferences for groups within the electorate are unreliable when group-specific turnout rates are unknown. In this context, the relationship between voting choices and the composition of the electorate is defined by two applications of Goodman’s Identity. Several methods appear in the scholarly and litigation literature which attempt to estimate characteristics of this relationship with variants of “Goodman’s regression”, including “correlation analysis” and “homogeneous precinct analysis”. Most of these methods are inconsistent with the Identities. For all methods, the expected values and variances of the dependent variables and of all regression statistics are unknown. None of these methods are capable of identifying any of the underlying parameters, much less the statistical significance of any estimators. Consequently, none has any scientific validity.
©2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Single Regression Estimates of Voting Choices When Turnout is Unknown
- Synthetic Priors that Merge Opinion from Multiple Experts
- Estimating Partisan Bias of the Electoral College Under Proposed Changes in Elector Apportionment
- Elections 2012: Suppressing Fraud or Suppressing the Vote?
- Risk-limiting Audits and the Margin of Victory in Nonplurality Elections
- Response to Andrew Gelman by Charles Murray
- Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and the measurement of social and political divisions
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Single Regression Estimates of Voting Choices When Turnout is Unknown
- Synthetic Priors that Merge Opinion from Multiple Experts
- Estimating Partisan Bias of the Electoral College Under Proposed Changes in Elector Apportionment
- Elections 2012: Suppressing Fraud or Suppressing the Vote?
- Risk-limiting Audits and the Margin of Victory in Nonplurality Elections
- Response to Andrew Gelman by Charles Murray
- Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and the measurement of social and political divisions
