Linking Together Preference Falsification and Election Fraud: A Cross-National Analysis

Abstract

This study sheds new light on whether public opinion polls, namely, preference falsification, can affect the level of election fraud by employing Kuran's model of preference falsification, which is empirically tested on the data collected from the most recent presidential campaign in Russia (2012) as well as a cross-national dataset. My research findings reveal the presence of a statistically significant effect of preference falsification on election frauds, thus enabling me to conclude that preference falsification is, indeed, conducive to election fraud. My findings can be generalized to a broad set of authoritarian regimes, enabling scholars to get a better understanding of the mechanism by which survey polls can incentivize officials to commit election fraud, and this, I hope, will invite more interdisciplinary research in the field of election forensics and survey methodology.