The ranD continuous 2012 presidential election poll (cpep) was conducted within the american Life panel, an internet panel recruited through traditional probability sampling to ensure representativeness. Because the cpep asks the same respondents repeatedly about their voting preferences, observed changes are attributable primarily to individuals changing their minds and not to random sampling fluctuations. The cpep asks respondents to state in terms of percent chance both their preferences for a candidate and the likelihood that they will vote. Moreover, we asked the respondents about their actual voting after the election, so we can study the predictive power both within sample and out of sample (the national results). The cpep appears to Tania L. Gutsche is managing director of the center for economic and social research at the university of southern california, playa Vista, ca, usa, and an adjunct unit administrator at the ranD corporation, santa Monica, ca, usa. arie Kapteyn is executive director of the center for economic and social research at the university of southern california, playa Vista, ca, usa, and an adjunct senior economist at the ranD corporation, santa Monica, ca, usa. erik Meijer is a senior economist in the center for economic and social research at the university of southern california, playa Vista, ca, usa, and an adjunct economist at the ranD corporation, santa Monica, ca, usa. Bas Weerman is the information technology director of the center for economic and social research at the university of southern california, playa Vista, ca, usa, and an adjunct information systems analyst at the ranD corporation, santa Monica, ca, usa. The authors thank several people for their help during the course of this project: Marco angrisani for constructing the base weights; the ranD aLp team for implementation of the questionnaire in the aLp; the ranD web team for web implementation; adeline Delavande and charles Manski for comments on the questionnaire; rebecca Kilburn, Lynn Karoly, and two anonymous ranD reviewers for their comments on the methodology; many colleagues within and outside ranD, journalists, and other interested individuals who sent email messages with comments or commented on the poll in blogs, on websites, and in newspapers. The authors also thank the editors and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. *address correspondence to arie Kapteyn, university of southern california, center for economic and social research, 12015 Waterfront Drive, playa Vista, ca 90094–2536; e-mail: kapteyn@usc.edu. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 78, special issue, 2014, pp. 233–254 doi:10.1093/poq/nfu009 by gest on Sptem er 3, 2015 http://poqrdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from have predicted well. Our final prediction of the difference in popular vote between Obama and romney differed about half a percentage point from the final tally, which would place it near or at the top of the polling firms. The probabilistic questions, even months before the election, were strongly related to actual voting behavior. Our approach allows us to gain insights into stability of voting preferences and the effect of events on individual preferences; for example, various shifts can be clearly related to major events.
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Sep 23, 2023
Donna Talarico 
