Influence Others
Question Language
1952,1956,1960-1964: I have a list of some of the things that people do that help a party or a candidate win an election. I wonder if you could tell me whether you did any of these things.
1968,1972 AND LATER: Now I’d like to find out (1990 AND LATER: We’d/we would like to find out) about some of the things that people do to help a party or candidate win an election.
ALL YEARS: During the campaign, did you talk to any people and try to show them why they should vote for (1984 AND LATER: or against) one of the parties or candidates?
- No
- Yes
All
By Education
By Gender
By Income
By Race
Note: Options for race have varied significantly overtime, and the size of the ANES means that there are very small samples Asian and American Indian. Because of this they are grouped together into “Other, non-Hispanic” which also includes those who identify as multiple racial categories. I also drop any years where there are fewer than 50 individuals in the sample. This is far from ideal.
By Subjective Class
Subjective class is what an individual identifies as when asked. The question used by ANES is:
There’s been some talk these days about different social classes. Most people say they belong either to the middle class or the working class. Do you ever think of yourself as belonging in one of these classes? Which one?
In some years respondents were asked where they identified within “working” or “middle” but not consistently so that has been dropped from this analysis.
By Party
Note: This includes “leaners” in the party they lean towards. Individuals were first asked whether they think of themselves as a Republican, Democrat or Independent. Those who identify as Independent are then asked if they lean towards one party or the other.
By Union Status
Data
The summary statistics are available here. The Group N column is the number of respondents in a given group in a given year while the N column is the number of respondents who selected the answer in the Influence Others column.
Note: These are all weighted statistics (using the VCF0009z weights) and are provided if you’d like to make you own visualizations. If you are interested in doing your own analysis, use the raw data available from the American National Election Studies survey.