IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/polals/v27y2019i04p590-598_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bias in Self-reported Voting and How it Distorts Turnout Models: Disentangling Nonresponse Bias and Overreporting Among Danish Voters

Author

Listed:
  • Dahlgaard, Jens Olav
  • Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard
  • Hansen, Kasper M.
  • Bhatti, Yosef

Abstract

Most nonexperimental studies of voter turnout rely on survey data. However, surveys overestimate turnout because of (1) nonresponse bias and (2) overreporting. We investigate this possibility using a rich dataset of Danish voters, which includes validated turnout indicators from administrative data for both respondents and nonrespondents, as well as respondents’ self-reported voting from the Danish National Election Studies. We show that both nonresponse bias and overreporting contribute significantly to overestimations of turnout. Further, we use covariates from the administrative data available for both respondents and nonrespondents to demonstrate that both factors also significantly bias the predictors of turnout. In our case, we find that nonresponse bias and overreporting masks a gender gap of two and a half percentage points in women’s favor as well as a gap of 25 percentage points in ethnic Danes’ favor compared with Danes of immigrant heritage.

Suggested Citation

  • Dahlgaard, Jens Olav & Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard & Hansen, Kasper M. & Bhatti, Yosef, 2019. "Bias in Self-reported Voting and How it Distorts Turnout Models: Disentangling Nonresponse Bias and Overreporting Among Danish Voters," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 590-598, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:27:y:2019:i:04:p:590-598_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1047198719000093/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Amilon, Anna & Hansen, Kasper M. & Kjær, Agnete Aslaug & Steffensen, Tinne, 2021. "Estimating disability prevalence and disability-related inequalities: Does the choice of measure matter?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    2. Philip S. Brenner, 2021. "Effects of Nonresponse, Measurement, and Coverage Bias in Survey Estimates of Voting," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(2), pages 939-954, March.
    3. Ersanilli, Evelyn & van der Gaag, Marieke, 2022. "MOBILISE Data report: online surveys Wave 2 & Polish 2021 online survey," SocArXiv twrzq, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:27:y:2019:i:04:p:590-598_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pan .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.