Indirect “announcement-effects” of electoral poll results

Two empirical approaches

Abstract

The influences of electoral forecasts on election results are called as “announcement-effects” in Japan. In this paper I examined indirect ways of “announcement -effect”, that is, how financial contributions to candidates or the morale boosting of campaign workers are affected by publication of pre-election poll results.
In the first part of this paper, the relationship between amounts of financial contributions for candidates and their positions in electoral poll results in the 1990-1993 general elections is examined by pass analysis, but it would be difficult to find such indirect announce-effects as a whole.
In the second section of this review, field research methods and questionnaire investigation are both used to study about morale changes of voluntary canvassing workers according to opinion poll figures in 1996 general election. In this inquiry, I could recognize that the enthusiasm for canvassing and intention to pay contributions of campaign volunteers are significantly increased when their candidate's position in polls is marginal.