Vote Buying Analysis

Vote buying analysis is the measurement-and-modeling toolkit for studying the distribution of private goods or cash in exchange for electoral support. Two problems define the field. First, who is being paid: Simeon Nichter's 2008 article showed that machines frequently engage in turnout buying — paying their own already-loyal supporters to show up — rather than the classic vote buying of swing voters, a distinction with sharp implications for who gets targeted. Second, how to measure something respondents are reluctant to admit: Gonzalez-Ocantos and colleagues' 2012 study demonstrated that direct survey questions sharply understate vote buying because of social-desirability bias and that list experiments recover far higher, more credible prevalence. Vote buying analysis combines such debiased measurement with regression models of targeting.