Presidential Polls as a Time Series: The Case of 1996

Abstract

The study of voters and elections has shed considerable light on people's vote choices and election outcomes. Yet little is known about the evolution of electoral sentiment over the campaign cycle. This article takes a small step toward addressing this issue by examining polls for a single election in a single year - the U.S. presidential race in 1996. The volume of poll data for 1996 allows us to observe the dynamics of voter preferences in far greater depth than is possible in previous years. Our analysis indicates that most of the variation in the polls during the 1996 presidential campaign represents survey error. What remains is mostly concentrated in the run-up to the fall campaign, not the fall campaign itself. During the fall, when political activity and media attention were at their peaks, aggregate presidential preferences remained largely unchanged. To the extent that campaign events influenced the underlying division of preferences, the effects were small and short-lived. Thus, our findings are consistent with the interpretation that the electoral verdict is already in place before the general election campaign begins