IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ems/eureir/18637.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Correcting for Survey Effects in Pre-election Polls

Author

Listed:
  • Heij, C.
  • Franses, Ph.H.B.F.

Abstract

Pre-election polls can suffer from survey effects. For example, surveyed individuals can become more aware of the upcoming election so that they become more inclined to vote. These effects may depend on factors like political orientation and prior intention to vote, and this may cause biases in forecasts of election outcomes. We advocate a simple methodology to estimate the magnitude of these survey effects, which can be taken into account when translating future poll results into predicted election outcomes. The survey effects are estimated by collecting survey data both before and after the election. We illustrate our method by means of a field study with data concerning the 2009 European Parliament elections in the Netherlands. Our study provides empirical evidence of significant positive survey effects with respect to voter participation, especially for individuals with low intention to vote. For our data, the overall survey effect on party shares is small. This effect can be more substantial for less balanced survey samples, for example, if political orientation and voting intention are correlated in the sample. We conclude that pre-election polls that do not correct for survey effects will overestimate voter turnout and will have biased party shares.

Suggested Citation

  • Heij, C. & Franses, Ph.H.B.F., 2010. "Correcting for Survey Effects in Pre-election Polls," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI 2010-20, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:ems:eureir:18637
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repub.eur.nl/pub/18637/EI2010-20.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Franses,Philip Hans & Paap,Richard, 2010. "Quantitative Models in Marketing Research," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521143653, September.
    2. Rivers, Douglas & Vuong, Quang H., 1988. "Limited information estimators and exogeneity tests for simultaneous probit models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 347-366, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Clarijs, P. & Hogeling, B. & Franses, Ph.H.B.F. & Heij, C., 2007. "Evaluation of survey effects in pre-election polls," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI 2007-50, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    2. Risselada, Hans & Verhoef, Peter C. & Bijmolt, Tammo H.A., 2010. "Staying Power of Churn Prediction Models," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 198-208.
    3. Michis Antonis A, 2009. "Regression Analysis of Marketing Time Series: A Wavelet Approach with Some Frequency Domain Insights," Review of Marketing Science, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-43, July.
    4. Tansel, Aysit & Keskin, Halil Ibrahim, 2017. "Education Effects on Days Hospitalized and Days out of Work by Gender: Evidence from Turkey," IZA Discussion Papers 11210, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Insik Min & Jong‐Ho Kim, 2003. "Modeling Credit Card Borrowing: A Comparison of Type I and Type II Tobit Approaches," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(1), pages 128-143, July.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Philippe Aghion & Claire Lelarge & John Van Reenen & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2007. "Technology, Information, and the Decentralization of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1759-1799.
    7. Guillermo A. Calvo, 2008. "Crises in Emerging Markets Economies: A Global Perspective," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Kevin Cowan & Sebastián Edwards & Rodrigo O. Valdés & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt- (ed.),Current Account and External Financing, edition 1, volume 12, chapter 3, pages 085-115, Central Bank of Chile.
    8. Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda, 2012. "Targeted Subsidies and Private Market Participation: An Assessment of Fertilizer Demand in Nigeria:," IFPRI discussion papers 1194, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. Dean V. Williamson, 2010. "Financial-Market Contracting," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 24, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Shilpi, Forhad & Umali-Deininger, Dina, 2007. "Where to sell ? market facilities and agricultural marketing," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4455, The World Bank.
    11. Polo, Yolanda & Sese, F. Javier & Verhoef, Peter C., 2011. "The Effect of Pricing and Advertising on Customer Retention in a Liberalizing Market," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 201-214.
    12. Jinhyun Lee, 2013. "A Consistent Nonparametric Bootstrap Test of Exogeneity," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201316, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    13. Mozhaeva, Irina, 2022. "Inequalities in utilization of institutional care among older people in Estonia," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(7), pages 704-714.
    14. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    15. Jean-Pierre Lachaud, 2007. "Les déterminants de l'inactivité économique et de la non-scolarisation des enfants aux Comores et à Madagascar. Existe-t-il une courbe de Kuznets ?," Documents de travail 140, Groupe d'Economie du Développement de l'Université Montesquieu Bordeaux IV.
    16. Lurkin, Virginie & Garrow, Laurie A. & Higgins, Matthew J. & Newman, Jeffrey P. & Schyns, Michael, 2017. "Accounting for price endogeneity in airline itinerary choice models: An application to Continental U.S. markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 228-246.
    17. Anthony T. Lo Sasso & Bruce D. Meyer, 2006. "The Health Care Safety Net and Crowd-Out of Private Health Insurance," NBER Working Papers 11977, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Hélène Huber, 2006. "Decomposing the causes of health care use inequalities: a micro-simulations approach," Working Papers hal-04138520, HAL.
    19. Joseph G. Altonji & Rosa L. Matzkin, 2001. "Panel Data Estimators for Nonseparable Models with Endogenous Regressors," NBER Technical Working Papers 0267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Lo Turco, Alessia & Maggioni, Daniela, 2018. "Effects of Islamic religiosity on bilateral trust in trade: The case of Turkish exports," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 947-965.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    bias correction; data collection; intention modification; pre-election polls; self-prophecy; survey effects; turnout forecast;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ems:eureir:18637. 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: RePub (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feeurnl.html .

    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.