IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/qualqt/v48y2014i3p1667-1683.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimating floating voters: a comparison between the ecological inference and the survey methods

Author

Listed:
  • Luana Russo

Abstract

There are two main approaches to estimating the proportion of the electorate who are floating voters: the survey method and the ecological estimate method. Both the methods have their advantages and their problems. The main difficulties with the survey method are the coverage of the sample and the problems introduced by reliance on the quality of memory of the subjects. Ecological estimates have different problems, the principal of which is known as the ecological fallacy. The aim of this paper is to assess whether the survey and ecological estimates of voter swing between two elections are significantly different. For this purpose I will consider the 2006 and 2008 Italian Parliamentary elections. Given the short temporal gap between these two elections, both the methods should give reliable estimates, as the shorter the time between the two elections, the fewer the problems which will be encountered by subjects recalling the party they voted for in the previous one, and the fewer the changes which will have taken place in the composition of the population between the two elections. The ecological data I will employ comprise all the votes cast in both of the elections under consideration (2006 and 2008), at the polling station level. In Italy there are about 60,000 polling stations, and I will analyse the data from these using the Goodman Model. The survey data has been provided by Italian National Election Studies (ITANES), and consists of a large representative sample, obtained by interviews conducted by CATI. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Luana Russo, 2014. "Estimating floating voters: a comparison between the ecological inference and the survey methods," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1667-1683, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:48:y:2014:i:3:p:1667-1683
    DOI: 10.1007/s11135-013-9867-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11135-013-9867-8
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11135-013-9867-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Himmelweit, Hilde T. & Biberian, Marianne Jaeger & Stockdale, Janet, 1978. "Memory for Past Vote: Implications of a Study of Bias in Recall," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 365-375, July.
    2. Andrew J. Drummond, 2006. "Electoral Volatility and Party Decline in Western Democracies: 1970-1995," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 54, pages 628-647, October.
    3. Herron, Michael C. & Shotts, Kenneth W., 2003. "Using Ecological Inference Point Estimates as Dependent Variables in Second-Stage Linear Regressions," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 44-64, January.
    4. Andrew J. Drummond, 2006. "Electoral Volatility and Party Decline in Western Democracies: 1970–1995," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 54(3), pages 628-647, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Forcina & Davide Pellegrino, 2019. "Estimation of voter transitions and the ecological fallacy," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1859-1874, July.
    2. Pablo Sandoval & Silvia Ojeda, 2023. "Estimation of electoral volatility parameters employing ecological inference methods," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 405-426, February.
    3. Álvaro J. Corral & David L. Leal, 2020. "Latinos por Trump? Latinos and the 2016 Presidential Election," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(3), pages 1115-1131, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ufen, Andreas, 2008. "The Evolution of Cleavages in the Indonesian Party System," GIGA Working Papers 74, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    2. Hadziabdic, Sinisa, 2023. "Turning no tides: Union effects on partisan preferences and the working-class metamorphosis," MPIfG Discussion Paper 23/2, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    3. Gavoille, Nicolas & Verschelde, Marijn, 2017. "Electoral competition and political selection: An analysis of the activity of French deputies, 1958–2012," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 180-195.
    4. Sinisa Hadziabdic & Lucio Baccaro, 2020. "A Switch or a Process? Disentangling the Effects of Union Membership on Political Attitudes in Switzerland and the UK," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 466-499, July.
    5. David Madden, 2018. "The Base of Party Political Support in Ireland: A New Approach," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 49(1), pages 17-44.
    6. David Madden, 2020. "The Base of Party Political Support in Ireland: An Update," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 51(1), pages 93-103.
    7. Arianna Degan, 2003. "A Dynamic Model of Voting," PIER Working Paper Archive 04-015, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 May 2004.
    8. Zvi Eckstein & Ron Shachar, 2007. "Correcting for bias in retrospective data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 657-675.
    9. Wladislaw Mill & John Morgan, 2022. "The cost of a divided America: an experimental study into destructive behavior," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(3), pages 974-1001, June.
    10. Geeyoung Hong, 2015. "Explaining vote switching to niche parties in the 2009 European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 16(4), pages 514-535, December.
    11. Arthur Schram & Frans Winden, 1989. "Revealed preferences for public goods: Applying a model of voter behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 259-282, March.
    12. Hans Andersson & Donald Granberg, 1997. "On the validity and reliability of self-reported vote: validity without reliability?," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 127-140, May.
    13. David (David Patrick) Madden, 2019. "The Base of Party Political Support in Ireland: An Update," Working Papers 201915, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    14. St'ephane Dupraz & Daniel Muller & Lionel Page, 2013. "Tactical Voting and Voter's Sophistication in British Elections," QuBE Working Papers 011, QUT Business School.
    15. Sarah Harrison, 2020. "What Is Electoral Psychology?—Scope, Concepts, and Methodological Challenges for Studying Conscious and Subconscious Patterns of Electoral Behavior, Experience, and Ergonomics," Societies, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-10, February.
    16. Carolina Plescia & Lorenzo De Sio, 2018. "An evaluation of the performance and suitability of R × C methods for ecological inference with known true values," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 669-683, March.
    17. Hipp, Lena & Bünning, Mareike & Munnes, Stefan & Sauermann, Armin, 2020. "Problems and pitfalls of retrospective survey questions in COVID-19 studies," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 14(2), pages 109-1145.
    18. André Blais & François Gélineau, 2007. "Winning, Losing and Satisfaction with Democracy," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(2), pages 425-441, June.
    19. André Klima & Thomas Schlesinger & Paul W. Thurner & Helmut Küchenhoff, 2019. "Combining Aggregate Data and Exit Polls for the Estimation of Voter Transitions," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 48(2), pages 296-325, May.

    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:spr:qualqt:v:48:y:2014:i:3:p:1667-1683. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.