2022 Cooperative Election Study

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) is a collaboration of over 50 different university research teams throughout the United States. Collectively this group designs and fields a large sample survey of at least 50,000 American adults. The very large sample size allows researchers to have sufficient data to study state electorates as well as the entire nation. The survey measures demographics, opinions and attitudes, and voting behavior in national and state elections. The survey is used to study who votes and why, and what explains the choices that voters make. The data from this project are used widely by researchers, journalists, and members of the public to understand American elections and public opinion. The survey helps to create and sustain a network of researchers interested in state and national elections, survey design, and public opinion. The 2020 CES survey is developed by a consortium of research teams. Each research team that wishes to be involved in the project purchases a 1,000-person sample survey from the same firm. Each individual team determines half of the questions on its survey. The other half of the content (Common Content) is created by a design committee, drawn from the participating teams. Common Content consists of questions that every team would like to measure or questions that are of broad interest and require a very large sample. The project, thus, fields as many surveys as there are teams and also produces a single large sample survey that consists of the Common Content. The survey is fielded over the Internet, with samples constructed to be nationally representative. Each team receives the data from its own 1,000-person survey and a dataset consisting of the 50,000+ observations from the Common Content survey. Survey data are validated using voter validation and through comparisons of state level election results to the survey results from the sub-samples for each state. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.