Unrepresentative Information: The Case of Newspaper Reporting on Campaign Finance

This article examines evidence of sampling or statistical biasin newspaper reporting on campaign finance. We compile all storiesfrom the five largest circulation newspapers in the United Statesthat mention a dollar amount for campaign expenditures, contributions,or receipts from 1996 to 2000. We compare these figures to thoserecorded by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The averagefigures reported in newspapers exceed the figures from the FECby as much as eightfold. Press reports also focus excessivelyon corporate contributions and soft money, rather than on themore common types of donors—individual—and typesof contributions—hard money. We further find that thesebiases are reflected in public perceptions of money in elections.Survey respondents overstate the amount of money raised andthe share from different groups by roughly the amount foundin newspapers, and better-educated people (those most likelyto read newspapers) showed the greatest discrepancy betweentheir beliefs and the facts.     

Models, assumptions and model checking in ecological regressions

Ecological regression is based on assumptions that are untestable from aggregate data. However, these assumptions seem more questionable in some applications than in others. There has been some research on implicit models of individual data underlying aggregate ecological regression modelling. We discuss ways in which these implicit models can be checked from aggregate data. We also explore the differences in applications of ecological regressions in two examples: estimating the effect of radon on lung cancer in the United States and estimating voting patterns for different ethnic groups in New York City.