Voter Bias in the Associated Press College Football Poll

The authors investigate multiple biases in the individual weekly ballots submitted by the 65 voters in the Associated Press college football poll in 2007. Using censored Tobit modeling, they find evidence of bias toward teams (a) from the voter’s state, (b) in conferences represented in the voter’s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of sports economics Vol. 11; no. 4; pp. 397 - 417
Main Authors Coleman, B. Jay, Gallo, Andres, Mason, Paul M., Steagall, Jeffrey W.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.08.2010
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Bias
C (programming language)
College football
Colleges
Conferences
Football
Games
Presses
Voters
group decisions
voting
discrimination
football
censored Tobit
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Summary:The authors investigate multiple biases in the individual weekly ballots submitted by the 65 voters in the Associated Press college football poll in 2007. Using censored Tobit modeling, they find evidence of bias toward teams (a) from the voter’s state, (b) in conferences represented in the voter’s state, (c) in selected Bowl Championship Series conferences, and (d) that played in televised games, particularly on relatively prominent networks. They also find evidence of inordinate bias toward simplistic performance measures—number of losses, and losing in the preceding week—even after controlling for performance using mean team strength derived from 16 so-called computer rankings.
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ISSN:1527-0025
1552-7794
DOI:10.1177/1527002509346823