Daniel A. Smith, Enrijeta Shino, Laura Uribe, and Brandi Martinez
May 2, 2021
Abstract
Might elite cue-taking and partisan motivated reasoning affect how we vote? Drawing on a large survey of validated Florida voters who regularly vote by mail, we find that Republicans were less likely to correctly recall the method by which they usually cast ballots and more likely to misestimate how they planned on voting in the November 2020 election. Notwithstanding health concerns of COVID-19, we find that retrospective misremembering and prospective misestimation of vote method is primarily driven by support for Trump; the President’s supporters were more likely to disavow their own mail-in voting and misestimate their plan to not voting by mail in November. Our analysis of the politicization of mail-in voting has important implications for our understanding of the effects, and limits, of elite cue-taking and partisan motivated reasoning on the electoral process itself, particularly when health
concerns are salient.
Key words: vote-by-mail, elite cue-taking, partisan motivated reasoning, COVID-19
Draft, here.