1. The “early call”—declaring a winner before all the polls have closed—is a con
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Question
1. The “early call”—declaring a winner before all the polls have closed—is a controversial staple of the media’s election night coverage. Convinced that “projections of the winner in key states may depress voter turnout on the West Coast if it appears that the election is or will be decided before polls close in the West,” many reformers advocate measures that would require all polls to close at the same time.19 These proposed reforms are based on the idea that the media’s early declarations depress turnout in areas where the polls are still open.
A. Think about the relationship between an independent variable, whether or not people have knowledge of an election’s predicted outcome (they either “know” or they “don’t know” the predicted outcome) and a dependent variable (they either “voted” or they “did not vote”). The reformers’ idea links one value of the independent variable, “know the predicted outcome,” with one value of the dependent variable, “did not vote.” For the reformers’ idea to qualify as an acceptable explanation, what else must it describe?
B. Suppose you believe that knowledge of an election’s predicted outcome is causally linked to turnout. Why might differences in knowledge of the outcome cause differences in turnout? Write a paragraph describing the causal linkages between these two variables. Be sure to describe the tendency of the relationship.
C. Using proper form, state a testable hypothesis for the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable.
Explanation / Answer
A.
A quantitative measure of whether the two variables actually have any dependency must be given to establish any possible connection. It must be noted that the sampling done is free from all the biases.Within such sample, a hypothesis testing can be performed to assess if there actually exists any dependency or not.
B.
The knowledge of the result before hand might cause the voters to turn up in lower numbers. This is because of the psychological fact that if the results are already decided, the voter feels that there is no point and going out to vote because his/her single vote wouldn't matter. This would specially be applicable to those voters who were supporting the candidate which is expected to lose after the results of the early polls are declared.
Thus knowing the probable outcome would effect the dependent variable of the decision to vote or not.
C.
The hypothesis to be tested would be
Ho : Pa = Pb
Ha : Pa and Pb are different
where, Pa = proportion of people whose chose to vote despite knowing the results of the early polls
Pb = proportion of people whose chosenot to vote, knowing the results of the early polls
Hope this helps.
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