Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

Voter surveys of the presidential race have come a long way in the 80 years since The Literary Digest predicted Alf Landon would make Franklin Roosevelt a one-term president.

FDR actually won the 1936 race in a landslide and The Literary Digest poll became a notorious example of what happens when a survey doesn’t contact a diverse enough group people.

Election Compass USA 2016, a joint effort of European and American researchers and academics with news media partners, may cast the widest net to date to determine voters’ views on issues and try to match them with this year’s crop of candidates seeking the White House.

Patterned after similar surveys for several European elections, Election Compass asks participants 30 questions on key issues, then matches each voter’s personal opinion to the candidate’s positions.

In adapting the survey tool for the United States, the survey developers enlisted the help of more than 25 academics from universities across the country, including Travis Ridout, the Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy at WSU.

This Election Compass could be useful for voters who are facing a large number of candidates this year, particularly on the Republican side, Ridout said. Sorting through the choices can be a big task for voters, and the survey forces participants to think about the issue differences among candidates, he said.

Ridout had some of his students take the survey this week, and while some wound up being aligned with the candidate they were already supported, others didn’t. “Some of them were surprised where they landed,” he said.

Find out more

Take the survey in The Spokesman-Review