2016:1 the 2014 CSM Campaign Panel Study Report
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2016 Gothenburg 2016-02-02 The 2014 CSM Campaign Panel Study Report Edvin Boije, Henrik Oscarsson & Maria Oskarson Report 2016:01 Swedish National Election Studies Program Department of Political Science University of Gothenburg Title: The 2014 CSM Campaign Panel Study Report Principal investigators: Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, Department of political science, University of Gothenburg. Please reference the data set in the following way: Boije, Edvin, Oscarsson, Henrik & Maria Oskarson (2016) The 2014 CSM campaign panel study. Dataset. University of Gothenburg: Swedish National Election Studies, The Department of Political Science. Maria Oskarson, Department of political science, University of Gothenburg Edvin Boije, Department of political science, University of Gothenburg Purpose: The main purpose of the 2014 CSM campaign panel study is to provide a detailed coverage of the evolution of voters’ consideration sets over the full span of the election campaigns in conjunction with the Swedish “super election year” of 2014. Abstract: The 2014 CSM (consideration set model) panel (in Swedish: Valrörelsepanelen) is a nine wave panel study carried out in conjunction with the Swedish ”super election year” of 2014. The super election year refers to the fact that in 2014, Sweden has had two elections in the span of just 112 days. 1: The European Parliament election in May and 2: the Swedish general election in September. During this intense period, over 17 000 respondents have participated by answering web based questionnaires containing topical and political questions in the context of the election campaigns. Topic classification: Political science, Election studies, Voting behavior Keywords: Political science, Election studies, Voting behavior, Election campaign, Consideration set, Election campaign panel Time period covered: 2014 – 2015 Mode of data collection: Web survey Unit of analysis: Individual Time method: Panel Sampling procedure: Swedish eligible voters/Opt-in Contact: Edvin Boije, [email protected] Homepage: www.valforskning.gu.se 1 The 2014 CSM Campaign Panel Study Report Edvin Boije Abstract The 2014 CSM (consideration set model) panel (in Swedish: Valrörelsepanelen) is a nine wave panel study carried out in conjunction with the Swedish ”super election year” of 2014. The super election year refers to the fact that in 2014, Sweden has had two elections in the span of 112 days. 1: The European Parliament election in May and 2: the Swedish general election in September. During this intense period, over 17 000 respondents have participated by answering web based questionnaires containing topical and political questions in the context of the election campaigns. This is the main technical report of the study design, recruitment and field work for the 2014 CSM panel. All users of the data from the 2014 CSM panel are advised to cite this report. Introduction The 2014 CSM (consideration set model) panel is a specially designed campaign panel study, conducted within the research project “Developing consideration set models of voting behavior”, financed by Riksbankens jubilieumsfond (project number: P13-0721:1). The main purpose of this campaign panel study is to provide a detailed coverage of the evolution of voters’ consideration sets over the full span of the election campaigns in conjunction with the Swedish “super election year” of 2014. Voter’s consideration sets refers to the party or parties that voters are considering to vote for. Typically, the key assumption in consideration set (or choice set) approaches are that, at the time of elections, many voters actively consider voting for more than one party (see e.g. Rosema 2006; Steenbergen & Hangartner 2008; Wilson 2008; Oscarsson & Holmberg 2008). The choice is not conceived as a discrete choice process. Instead, voters enter the election campaigns with an existing subset of alternatives from which they subsequently select a winning alternative. While earlier generations of citizens often manifested group based interests or identifications by routinely supporting parties at elections, many voters in the 21st century engage in an actual decision making process. Many voters decide closer to the elections and the choice process takes place in a context of intense campaigning and political information processing. In spite of the well documented developments in electoral behavior described above, party choice tend to still be analyzed with the same models and methods as was the case in the more predictable and steady periods. Thus, the CSM approach can provide a theoretically based explanatory model in response to contemporary voting behavior of citizens. Sweden stands out as a perfect testing ground for CSM. The proportion of voters that make up their minds during the election campaign has climbed from 18 to 53 percent between 1964 and 2010. At the same time, the share of party identified voters has decreased from 65 to 28 percent (Oscarsson & Holmberg 2013). Moreover, the number of viable alternatives that compete for votes at Swedish general elections have doubled from five to ten in the past twenty-five years. Finally, the exceptional situation with two national elections within a 112 day-period, makes the “super election year” of 2014 an intriguing ground for studying voter behavior. The purpose of this report is to give full account of the study design, recruitment and field work of the CSM panel. 2 Study Design Multi-wave campaign panels have proven to be very useful for developing theory and instrumentation both in recent years and historically (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944). Further, modern technology has enabled researchers to conduct relatively easy-administered and cost efficient panel studies online. Accordingly, the SNES has long experience with conducting internet campaign panels in conjunction with elections and referendums. Web based campaign panels have been conducted by the Swedish National Election Studies program (SNES) at every general election since 2002. Altogether, the SNES have carried out six previous web based campaign panel studies - the 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 national elections, the 2004 referendum on the euro, and the 2009 European Election (Dahlberg, Kumlin & Oscarsson 2006; Nilsson, Ohlsson, Dahlberg & Oscarsson 2008; Dahlberg, Lindholm, Lundmark, Oscarsson & Åsbrink 2010). The original design of the CSM panel was a seven wave panel study that would cover the period March-October of 2014. However, this design had to be adjusted when the Swedish Prime Minister, early in December, announced that he would call for an extra election in March 2015 due to the failure of the government’s budget proposal. The fieldwork was therefore prolonged to also cover th{Boije, 2016 #9088}e campaign before the extra election. Hence, the seven wave panel was extended with two additional panel waves although the extra election was eventually canceled as an agreement (the so-called December agreement) between the government and the opposition was reached. The field period of the CSM panel thus spans from March of 2014 to March of 2015. Below, the timeline and field period for each panel wave is presented. Figure 1. The 2014 CSM panel study design •Recruitment survey Wave 1 •2014-03-11 – 2014-05-13 •Pre European Parliement election survey Wave 2 •2014-05-14 – 2014-05-24 •Post European Parliament election survey Wave 3 •2014-05-26 – 2014-06-30 •Pre National election survey I Wave 4 •2014-08-25 – 2014-09-01 •Pre National election survey II Wave 5 •2014-09-02 – 2014-09-14 •Post National election survey I Wave 6 •2014-09-16 – 2014-10-06 •Post National election survey II Wave 7 •2014-10-07 – 2014-11-07 •Pre Extra election survey I Wave 8 •2014-12-09 – 2015-02-01 •Pre Extra election survey II Wave 9 •2015-02-02 – 2015-03-01 The main purpose of the CSM panel, which is formulated in the project application, is to “provide a unique and very detailed coverage of the evolution of consideration sets over the 3 full span of the election campaign in the Swedish ‘super election year’ in 2014” (Oscarsson & Oskarson 2013). Thus, measurements of political parties which respondents are considering to vote for are the recurring theme from which all surveys in the CSM panel are designed. Instrumentation needed for CSM analyses – i.e. survey questions to identify individual voters’ consideration sets – has previously been developed within the realm of the SNES (Oscarsson & Holmberg 2008; Oscarsson & Rosema 2008). One important conclusion from this research is that question formats that encourages respondents’ cognitive reasoning about their choices (i.e. asking about alternatives that are actually considered) are better to use for identifying consideration sets than instruments that tap emotional evaluations of the alternatives (i.e. feeling thermometers or dislike-like scales). The full data set of the CSM panel includes well over a thousand variables including meta- data. Hence, in addition to survey instruments on consideration sets, the CSM panel data covers an extensive amount of information. This includes a comprehensive set of demographic variables and a full set of general political questions, usually included in official election studies. Furthermore, all panel waves include multiple questions on current policy proposals as well as political knowledge. Also, due to the flexibility of the web-based survey questionnaire, each survey could be adjusted on relatively short notice in order to capture sudden events in conjunction with the election campaign, e.g. exposure to various controversies and media events. Experiences from previous web-based campaign panels have shown that participants prefer when questionnaires are very short. A typical web questionnaire should not take more than five to ten minutes to answer and if longer, response rates tend to be dramatically lower and lead to panel attrition. Consequentially, in an effort to increase response rates and to keep as many respondents as possible in the panel, making the surveys user friendly was a high priority. Apart from keeping the questionnaires short, our strategy here was to use a similar setup for each survey throughout the study.