Exercise 8. Attitude on Environmental Protection and the Presidential Vote

Step A. Create and interpret Table 8A

Another example of a conditional relationship involves the relationship between attitudes on environmental protection and the presidential vote. Clinton and Trump disagreed on this issue. Clinton favored stronger laws to protect the environment and combat global warming. Trump argued that stronger laws would harm the economy, and he called for less regulation of the coal industry, more offshore drilling for oil and gas, and backing out of international agreements to combat global warming. Therefore, we might hypothesize that this was an issue that would have influenced how people voted, with the expectation that the more that the voter favors the government regulation to protect the environment, the more likely the voter would be to vote for Clinton. To see if this is so, create Table 8A, a two-variable table that examines the relationship between attitude on environmental protection (J14) and presidential vote (A02). To simplify the table, use the recoded version of A02 that excludes the minor party voters, as you have in previous exercises.

If you ran Table 8A as suggested, you should have a table with seven columns and two rows. Attitude on environmental regulation (the independent variable) should be on the top of the table (the column variable), and the two-party presidential vote (the dependent variable) should be on the side of the table (the row variable). Percentages should be calculated by column (i.e., they should sum to 100% for each column). In reading your table, take care to properly interpret the percentages, remembering that they are column percentages, not row percentages.

You should attempt to answer these questions to see if you are able to correctly read the table and interpret the data:

  1. What percentage of voters who were most strongly for environmental regulation cast a ballot for Clinton (or Trump)? What percentage of those who were most strongly against it did so? How about the groups who were between these two extremes: how did they vote?
  2. Overall, how strong is the relationship between these two variables? How does it compare to other relationships that you examined in previous exercises?

 

Step B. Create and interpret Tables 8B and 8C

The initial hypothesis that voters who favor stronger environmental regulations would be more likely to vote for Clinton (and those who do not favor stronger regulations more likely to vote for Trump) assumes that voters would perceive the two presidential candidates as differing in the expected way on this issue. To examine how voters perceived the positions of the two candidates on this issue, examine the frequency distributions for J15 and J16. Create Frequency Tables 8B and 8C. (Note: to create a frequency table for a single variable, enter the variable name in the box for the row variable and leave the column variable blank; be sure to use the weighted data.)

J15 and J16 measure the respondent’s perception of where the two presidential candidates stood on the issue of environmental protection. Respondents were asked to indicate where Clinton and Trump stood on this issue, using the same response set that these respondents were given when they were asked to place themselves on the issue: a seven-point scale running from favoring more regulation to opposing it. J15 and J16 do not measure whether the respondent agrees with either candidate on the issue. They only measure the respondent’s perception of where the candidates stood.

For Tables 8B and 8C, you should have generated simple frequency tables for each variable, not crosstabulations of variables. These tables show that while most respondents thought that Clinton had a generally pro-regulation attitude, some did not see her that way. Similarly, most respondents thought that Trump was opposed to stronger regulation, but some did not. Thus, a sizable minority of respondents incorrectly perceived where the candidates stood on this issue.

Step C. Create Tables 8D and 8E

As you can see, not every voter saw Clinton as favoring stronger regulation and Trump as opposed. This might lead us to hypothesize that the relationship between attitude on environmental protection and the vote will be much stronger for voters who correctly saw the differences between the candidates on this issue. To test that hypothesis, you should generate a table with attitude on environmental protection as the independent variable, presidential vote as the dependent variable, and two control variables (J15 and J16). To simplify the tables, recode J14, J15 and J16 so that they have just two categories, stronger regulation and weaker regulation. Create Tables 8D and 8E

Variables J14, J14, and J16 have seven response categories. If we did not recode these variables, our tables would be very complicated, and there would be too few respondents in many of the columns. Looking at Table 8A, we can see that a little over half of the respondents were in the first three categories of J14, and in each of these categories, a majority of the voters cast a ballot for Clinton. Therefore, if we want to dichotomize these variables into pro-regulation and anti-regulation categories, it seems most logical to combine the first three categories into the pro-regulation category, and the last four categories into the anti-regulation category.

In this example, you need to use both J15 and J16 as control variables. However, SDA only has a place for one control variable in the dialog box, so you have to improvise to use two control variables.

The easiest way to do this is to enter one of your control variables (e.g., J15) as the control variable in the dialog box and the other control variable (e.g., J16) as the selection filter variable. For the selection filter, you can only enter one value of that variable at a time, so if you use J16 as your filter variable, you will first have to run the table for those who thought that Trump favored regulation. You can do this by specifying “J16(1-3)” as the filter variable. This table will have two subtables, one for each value of J15 (there also will be a total table at the end).

Next, generate a new table, with “J16(3-4)” as your selection filter, which will select those who thought that Trump was basically anti-regulation. This will produce two more subtables (plus a total table at the end). Now you will have a total of four subtables, one for each combination of the dichotomized versions of J15 and J16 (one for those who thought that both Clinton and Trump basically favored environmental regulation, one for those who thought that Trump opposed it and Clinton favored it, and so on).

Step D. Interpret Tables 8D and 8E

If you generated the tables as we have suggested, you should have two tables, each with two subtables:

  1. Your first table will have only those respondents who thought that Trump was in favor of environmental regulation, and it will be divided into two subtables: those who thought that Clinton favored such regulation and those who thought that she did not. Each subtable should have the respondent’s attitude on environmental regulation as the independent variable and the presidential vote as the dependent variable.
  2. Your second table will have only those respondents who thought that Trump was opposed to environmental regulation, and it will be divided into two subtables, in the same manner as the first table.

Using these four subtables, you should be able to answer these questions to see if you are able to understand the data and interpret the table:

  1. For respondents who thought that Clinton was pro-regulation and Trump was anti-regulation, is there a relationship between the respondent’s attitude on environmental protection and his or her vote? How strong is this relationship?
  2. For respondents who thought that both Clinton and Trump were pro-regulation, is there a relationship between the respondent’s attitude on environmental protection and his or her vote? Is it stronger or weaker that what you found in the above case? Is this what you would expect?
  3. For respondents who thought that both Clinton and Trump were anti-regulation, is there a relationship between the respondent’s attitude on environmental protection and his or her vote? Is it stronger or weaker that what you found in the above case? Is this what you would expect?
  4. For respondents who thought that Clinton was anti-regulation and Trump was regulation, is there a relationship between the respondent’s attitude on environmental protection and his or her vote? What is that relationship? Is this what you would expect?

Overall, can you explain how the relationship between attitude on environmental protection and presidential vote depends on where the voter thinks that the candidates stood on the issue?

In this case, we find a very strong relationship between attitude on environmental protection and the vote for those who correctly perceived the differences between the candidates. But for those who did not correctly see the differences on this issue, the relationship is weaker, and sometimes it is even in the opposite direction, with those opposed to stronger regulation being more likely to vote for Clinton. If you look at the findings carefully and think about them, the results should make sense.