New publication by Jens Olav Dahlgaard

The article investigates survey (mis)measurement of turnout and its consequences. Most nonexperimental studies of voter turnout rely on survey data. However, surveys overestimate turnout because of (1) nonresponse bias and (2) overreporting. The article investigates 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. It shows that both nonresponse bias and overreporting contribute significantly to overestimations of turnout. Further, the authors use covariates from the administrative data available for both respondents and nonrespondents to demonstrate that both factors also significantly bias the predictors of turnout. 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.

The article is coauthored with Jonas Hedegaard Hansen, Kasper Møller Hansen, and Yosef Bhatti and it is published in Political Analysis. The article is Open Access and can be found here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/bias-in-selfreported-voting-and-how-it-distorts-turnout-models-disentangling-nonresponse-bias-and-overreporting-among-danish-voters/8B79D98885FBAB8D1783F51D9EDA6812