Citizen Attitude Survey 2015 - Additional Analysis

The purpose of this analysis is not to redo what the contractor, National Research Center Inc., did. They did an excellent job of reporting the results of the survey. The purpose of this analysis is to extract a little more information from the demographic data. Specifically, I wanted to investigate the relationship between how often people vote and their demographic characteristics. Moreover, I wanted to investigate the demographic differences between the “waves” of respondents and estimate the demographic characteristics of the survey non-responders.

Voter Characteristics

Findings:

• The better the health, the more often one votes.
• People working full time or fully retired tend to vote more often than those working part time or unemployed.
• People who have lived in Corvallis six or more years tend to vote more often than those living here for less than six years do.
• People living in single-family homes tend to vote more often than those who live in multifamily buildings. The 12 respondents who live in mobile homes always voted.
• People owning their homes tend to vote more often than those who rent their homes.
• People over age 65 or living with someone over, 65 tend to vote more often than younger people.
• People with incomes greater than $25K tend to vote more often than people with incomes less than $25K.
• People age 35 and up tend to vote more often than people less than 35. The age bracket with the largest percentage of people always voting is 55 to 64.
• People who use their cell phone as their primary phone tend to be more erratic in their voting habits than those who use their landline -- or both cell and land line – as their primary phone. This later group tends to always vote.

Conclusions:

Older more prosperous people who have lived in Corvallis for a long time tend to vote often. People who use their cell phones as their primary phone tend to vote more erratically than other people.
Wave Characteristics

A random sample of 1200 households within the City of Corvallis was selected to participate in the survey. About 5% of the 1,200 surveys mailed were returned because the housing unit was vacant or the postal service was unable to deliver the survey as addressed. Of the remaining 1,138 households that received the survey, 310 completed the survey.
There were three “waves” of respondents: zero, one, and two. The zero wave consists of the people who responded on line after receiving the first letter asking them to participate. The first wave consists of the people who responded by mail to the first letter. The second wave consists of the people who responded by mail to the second letter. We do not know the characteristics of the people who did not respond at all; but it would be interesting to speculate what those characteristics might be extrapolating from the characteristics of those who did respond.

Findings:

• Wave zero tends to vote often. Wave one tends to vote more often than does wave two. Do the non-responders vote less often than wave two?
• Wave zero tends to work in Corvallis but outside of the home. Over one-half of waves one and two work outside of Corvallis.
• Wave zero tends to have lived in Corvallis for shorter periods of time than waves one and two. Wave one tends to have lived in Corvallis for more time than wave two. Have the non-responders lived in Corvallis for shorter periods of time than waves one and two?
• All waves tend to be less than age 65 but wave zero tends to be much less, than 65 and wave, two had fewer people over 65 than wave one. Are the non-responders even younger than waves one and two?
Conclusions:

I speculate that the non-responders tend to be younger, have lived in Corvallis shorter times, and vote less often than the responders.
John H. Detweiler
BCRCC <>