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Political Analysis Political Analysis

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Internal and External Effects on the Accuracy of NES Turnout: Reply

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Barry C. Burden
Barry C. Burden*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University, Littauer Center 322, Cambridge, MA 02138. e-mail: burden@fas.harvard.edu
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Extract

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.

Type
Replications and Extensions
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Spring 2003 , pp. 193 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association 2003 

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References

Anderson, Barbara A., and Silver, Brian D. 1986. “Measurement and Mismeasurement of the Validity of the Self-Reported Vote.” American Journal of Political Science 80:771–785.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burden, Barry C. 2000. “Voter Turnout and the National Election Studies.” Political Analysis 8:389–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkel, Steven, and Freedman, Paul. 2002. “The Half-Hearted Rise: Voter Turnout in the 2000 Election.” Presented at the Conference on Assessing the Vitality of Electoral Democracy in the U.S., Columbus, OH.Google Scholar
Martinez, Michael D. 2003. “Comment on ‘Voter Turnout and the National Election Studies.’” Political Analysis 11:187–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, Michael P. 2001. “An External Validity Check of the National Election Study's Turnout Rate.” Unpublished manuscript. University of Illinois-Springfield.Google Scholar
McDonald, Michael P. 2003. “On the Overreport Bias of the National Election Study Turnout Rate.” Political Analysis 11:180–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, Michael P., and Popkin, Samuel L. 2001. “The Myth of the Vanishing Voter.” American Political Science Review 95:963–974.Google Scholar
Visser, Penny S., Krosnick, Jon A., Marquette, Jesse, and Curtin, Michael A. 1996. “Mail Surveys for Election Forecasting? An Evaluation of the Columbus Dispatch Poll.” Public Opinion Quarterly 60:181–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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