Abstract
In an earlier issue of this journal I brought attention to the fact that estimates of voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections from the National Election Study (NES) series have been increasingly biased. Although researchers had already noted that the NES overestimated turnout, I was concerned with the growing severity of the problem. While admitting that other factors were at work, my explanation centered on the representativeness of surveys, in particular that selection bias in the sample is correlated with the likelihood of voting (Burden 2000). Martinez (2003) and McDonald (2003) offer three possible additions to my argument. First, panel effects are responsible for particularly egregious discrepancies in a few presidential elections, particularly in the 1996 survey. Second, official turnout statistics that rely on the Voting Age Population (VAP) are themselves biased and lack perfect comparability with the NES. Third, the degree of misreporting might also depend on actual voter turnout.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Political Science and International Relations,Sociology and Political Science
Reference11 articles.
1. Comment on “Voter Turnout and the National Election Studies”
2. Mail Surveys for Election Forecasting? An Evaluation of the Columbus Dispatch Poll
3. To keep results comparable with those of Burden (2000), my analyses include only the years 1952–1996. McDonald generally removes 1948 as I do because it was experimental. But he also removes 1996 because it was an “outlier” and includes 2000, though these data were not available when my original article was published. Fortunately the effect sizes do not depend much on whether these three observations are included or excluded. The VAP coefficient varies from .195 to .216 whereas the RVAP coefficient varies from .093 to .126 (all statistically significant at p <.03). Using or not using the NES-provided weights has only small effects on these relationships.
4. Voter Turnout and the National Election Studies
5. Measurement and Mismeasurement of the Validity of the Self-Reported Vote
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