National Election Studies

National Election Studies
Name	National Election Studies
Abbreviation	NES
Formation	1948
Type	Scientific survey program
Purpose	Study of electoral behavior, public opinion, political participation
Headquarters	United States (origin)
Region served	International
Notable people	Paul Lazarsfeld, V. O. Key, Angus Campbell, Warren E. Miller, Philip Converse

National Election Studies

National Election Studies are large-scale, systematic survey programs designed to measure electoral behavior, public opinion, political participation, and voting patterns across time. Originating in the aftermath of World War II, these studies have become foundational resources for scholars of presidential elections, comparative politics, political sociology, and political psychology. They inform debates at institutions such as the American Political Science Association, the Social Science Research Council, and research centers at universities like Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan.

Overview

The projects produce repeated cross-sectional and panel datasets used by researchers at the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the Population Association of America, and the National Academy of Sciences. Core outputs include questionnaire instruments, codebooks, and public-use datasets disseminated to scholars at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and specialized data archives at institutions like Princeton University and the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Influential figures associated with the enterprise include Paul Lazarsfeld, V. O. Key, Angus Campbell, Warren E. Miller, and Philip Converse.

History and Development

Development began with interdisciplinary collaborations among social scientists at organizations such as the Social Science Research Council and the Brookings Institution during the late 1940s and 1950s, paralleling methodological advances at the University of Chicago. Early seminal studies drew upon the methods of the Columbia School and the Michigan School of Political Science and Public Opinion, producing landmark publications like "The American Voter" by Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes. Later institutionalization involved funding and oversight from agencies such as the National Science Foundation and partnerships with university research centers including the Institute for Social Research and the Political Behavior Laboratory at various campuses.

Methodology and Data Collection

Methodological evolution reflects innovations in sampling, weighting, and measurement pioneered by scholars linked to the American Statistical Association and the Association for Computing Machinery for data processing. Techniques include probability sampling using frames from the U.S. Census Bureau, face-to-face interviews modeled after protocols used in field studies at the University of Michigan, telephone surveys influenced by the work of Roper Center researchers, and mixed-mode designs that draw on web panels administered via platforms developed at Stanford University and Harvard University. Question wording, question-order experiments, and panel reinterviews follow experimental designs advocated by scholars associated with the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Politics. Datasets are typically archived at repositories such as the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research and distributed for secondary analysis by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Major National Election Studies by Country

Several countries host analogous long-term election study programs. Prominent examples include the British Election Study in the United Kingdom, the German Longitudinal Election Study in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Canadian Election Study in Canada, the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study in the Netherlands, the Australian Election Study in Australia, the Swedish National Election Study in Sweden, the Norwegian National Election Study in Norway, the French Election Study in France, the Japanese General Election Study in Japan, and the Swiss Election Study in Switzerland. Additional programs operate in democracies such as Spain, Italy, Israel, South Korea, India, New Zealand, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, and Poland, often collaborating through networks like the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the European Consortium for Political Research.

Key Findings and Contributions

Longitudinal evidence from these studies underpins major theoretical claims in political science: party identification stability articulated in "The American Voter" links to scholarship on partisan alignment studied at Harvard University and Princeton University; the role of campaign effects discussed in research by scholars at Columbia University and Yale University; the influence of political information and media exposure investigated in collaborations with researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Knight Foundation; and analyses of turnout inequality examined by teams at the Brennan Center for Justice and the Urban Institute. Major contributions include benchmarks for measuring polarization analyzed in work at the Brookings Institution, models of retrospective economic voting tied to research from the National Bureau of Economic Research, and methodological standards used by the American Political Science Association.

Criticisms and Limitations

Critiques address sampling bias controversies raised in debates involving the American Association for Public Opinion Research, nonresponse and coverage error scrutinized in reports by the U.S. Census Bureau, and measurement error problems debated in the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology. Scholars at institutions like Columbia University, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan have highlighted limitations in cross-national comparability when applying instruments developed for the United States to contexts such as India and Brazil. Additional concerns involve ethical review and data access overseen by institutional review boards at universities including Yale University and Duke University, and the impact of technological change on time-series continuity discussed at workshops hosted by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Category:Public opinion Category:Survey methodology Category:Political science