Ballot Changes Cited in Vote's Discrepancy With Polls

ABC News is reporting (http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Decision2008/story?id=4107883&page=1) that the format of the New Hampshire ballot used in yesterday's primary election may be responsible for Barack Obama receiving less votes than the various polls suggested. While no one will know for certain, from my years working as a precinct captain, one should NOT underestimate the ability of voters to not understand lengthy ballots and as a result vote differently than intended going into the voting booth. Some years back when I ran for school board, the ballot had 25 names on it and there was widespread confusion on the part of some voters. If the Obama campaign did not have enough poll workers to make sure voters knew what ballot line his name was on, there may well be some substance to this story. Here are some highlights:

Without a doubt, a big source of the discrepancy between the pre-election surveys and the election outcome in New Hampshire is the order of candidates' names on the ballot and in the surveys. Our analysis of all recent primaries in New Hampshire showed that there was always a big primacy effect — big-name, big-vote-getting candidates got 3 percent or more votes more when listed first on the ballot than when listed last.

This year, the secretary of state changed the procedure so the names were alphabetical starting with a randomly selected letter, in all precincts. The randomly selected letter this year was Z.
As a result, Joe Biden was first on every ballot, Hillary Clinton was near the top of the list (and the first serious contender listed) and Barack Obama was close to last of the 21 candidates listed. Thus, I'll bet that Clinton got at least 3 percent more votes than Obama simply because she was listed close to the top.

More importantly, if New Hampshire had rotated name order in the voting booth as it has always done in the past, the race would probably have been too close to call without a recount and might even have been an Obama victory.