Pocketbook Voting in U.S. National Election Studies: Fact or Artifact?

Some survey research suggests that economic self-interest influences the American voter. However, Sears and Lau suggested that these positive findings are essentially a methodological artifact, produced by the proximity of the economic and political items in the survey questionnaire. After a systematic analysis of the personal finance and vote items in 1956-82 Michigan CPS-SRC election surveys, the author concludes that no such artifact is operating to inflate the relationship between the two. Thus, the published work which reports a link between individual economic circumnstances and political preferences remains standing. Of course, this does not mean that it is impossible, under any conditions, to induce artifactual connections between items. As Sears and Lau indicated experimentally, at the extremes of questionnaire design, such artifacts may be produced.