In 2000, President George Bush’s name was listed first on every ballot in Florida, and he won that State and the Presidency by the narrowest of margins. In 2016, Donald Trump had a similar experience. Have the outcomes of many recent elections been influenced by the order of candidates’ names on ballots? This talk proposes a theory of why and when such effects might occur and reviews the body of studies that have explored this issue in the U.S. and a dozen other countries. Spotlighted in this talk will be reanalysis of older data and analysis of newly collected data to shed light on the conditions under which name order effects occur, their magnitude, whether different research methods lead to different conclusions, and whether the States should reform their ballot design practices.
September 12th, 12:00 PM: Monroe 346
Speak Your Mind