The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How Should We Estimate Public Opinion in The States?
Abstract
We compare two approaches for estimating state‐level public opinion: disaggregation by state of national surveys and a simulation approach using multilevel modeling of individual opinion and poststratification by population share. We present the first systematic assessment of the predictive accuracy of each and give practical advice about when and how each method should be used. To do so, we use an original data set of over 100 surveys on gay rights issues as well as 1988 presidential election data. Under optimal conditions, both methods work well, but multilevel modeling performs better generally. Compared to baseline opinion measures, it yields smaller errors, higher correlations, and more reliable estimates. Multilevel modeling is clearly superior when samples are smaller—indeed, one can accurately estimate state opinion using only a single large national survey. This greatly expands the scope of issues for which researchers can study subnational opinion directly or as an influence on policymaking.
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Cites
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Cited by
The Democratic Deficit in the States
Lax, J. R., & Phillips, J. H. (2012) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00537.x · Cited by 574
Self-citationCerdá, M., Wall, M., Keyes, K. M., Galea, S., & Hasin, D. (2012) · Drug and Alcohol Dependence · doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2011.06.011 · Cited by 490
Forecasting elections with non-representative polls
Wang, W., Rothschild, D., Goel, S., & Gelman, A. (2015) · International Journal of Forecasting · doi:10.1016/j.ijforecast.2014.06.001 · Cited by 371
Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing
Kohavi, R., Tang, D., & Xu, Y. (2020) · doi:10.1017/9781108653985 · Cited by 297
Synthetic Replacements for Human Survey Data? The Perils of Large Language Models
Bisbee, J., Clinton, J. D., Dorff, C., Kenkel, B., & Larson, J. M. (2024) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1017/pan.2024.5 · Cited by 209
Metadata
- Authors
- Lax, J. R., & Phillips, J. H.
- Venue
- American Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2008-12-24
- Volume
- 53
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 107-121
- ISSN
- 0092-5853 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-5907
- OpenAlex
- W2142344524
- Cited by
- 513
- References
- 33
- FWCI
- 13.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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