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Homenavigate_nextIssuesnavigate_nextBackissuesnavigate_nextVolume 31, No.1navigate_nextBandwagon, Underdog, and Strategic Voting: A Case Study of the 1992 U. S. Presidential Election
Bandwagon, Underdog, and Strategic Voting: A Case Study of the 1992 U. S. Presidential Election
During the last 50 years. as election polls in the U. S. and in most other countries have proliferated. there has been an ongoing controversy over their electoral effects. Their perceived influence on election outcomes has been sufficient to lead to calls for legislation restricting the publishing of opinion polls during a campaign, restrictions that already exist in countries as diverse as Germany. Japan, France, South Korea. and Brazil (McAllister and Studlar 1991; Mutz. 1992) . These restrictions suggest that pre-election polls have some effects on election outcomes, or at least that some people suspect some effects and think the results could. more or less, hurt the fairness of an election. Counter arguments conclude that perception of public opinion has little impact on vote preference (Asher 1992, Marsh. 1983; Merkle 1991 ) . Many believe that traditional factors such as affect. candidates, issue. party. etc ., are the factors that determine vote preference rather than the perceptions of public preference ( Niemi and Weishberg, 1993 ) . Despite these arguments. evidence from surveys and experimental studies remains inconclusive. One of the earliest discussions of polls' effect on voting. by Lazarsfeld. Berelson. and Gaudet (1948) , found many voters attempting to sense the direction of public opinion and the outcome in order to vote "with the winner. " Follow-up work (Berelson. Lazarsfeld, and McPhee. 1954) revealed that a bandwagon effect (perception guiding preference) and a projection explanation (preference guiding perception) carried about equal weight in presidential election voting. Some laboratory studies of artificial elections coupled with bogus poll results produced an "underdog" effect of people shifting to the minority rather than majority view (Ceci. 1982, Fletias, 1971 ) . Evidence from the 1988 NES Super Tuesday Study showed that some voters vote for their second (or even lower) choice rather than their most preferred candidate in order to stop another candidate they like even less (Abramson et. ai, 1992 ) .
