9421869 Lewis-Beck Comparison of voting models across advanced democracies is hampered by a number of things, among them difference in method, measurement, and theory. Franco-American election studies share in common a survey research methodology, but tend to be separated by differences of measurement and theory. The respective national election surveys do not pose many of the same questions and the dominant research paradigms in each country offer opposing explanatory models of vote choice. This project, a joint effort of US and French researchers, includes, for the first time, key American National Election Study (ANES) items in the French National Election Study (for 1995). Following on an analysis of new French pre-test data, these ANES items will be included: feeling thermometers, approval ratings, economic evaluations, seven-point proximity measures on social issues, party identification, candidate traits. Similarly, this project will include, again for the first time, key French National Election Study (FNES) items into ANES (for 1996). These items will be subject to American pre-test, thus paralleling the above French pre-test. The items are: left- right ideological measures, nonstandard social class measures (in particular, a social status "staircase" indicator, and indicators of property ownership). The end result will be unique: two presidential election surveys - - 1995 for France, 1996 for the US - - that contain comparable measures on key independent variables. These data sets, which will be made available to the scholarly community through the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, will enable unprecedented cross-cultural testing of rival theories of vote choice. ***
