Ansolabehere, Schaffner push back on voter fraud claims

October 21, 2016
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At a Wisconsin rally, presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed that non-US citizens have voted in, and significantly affected the outcomes of, previous elections. However, IQSS affiliates Stephen Ansolabehere, Brian Schaffner, and YouGov managing director Samantha Luks, explain how this claim cites a questionable study. In their recent article for the Washington Post, Ansolabehere, Luks, and Schaffner explain, "We argue that the findings in the Richman et al. article can be entirely explained by measurement error. Specifically, survey respondents occasionally select the incorrect response to a question merely by accident." The full article, including references and links to the cited study and subsequent rebuttals, can be found at the Washington Post.

The Cooperative Congressional Election Study is an annual multi-institutional study, headed by Stephen Ansolabehere (Harvard Dept of Government) and Brian Schaffner (UMass Amherst), which involves a two-part national survey administered by a team at YouGov/Polimetrix led by Samantha Luks. More information about the Cooperative Congressional Election Study is available at the CCES website.