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    Bias in Turnout

    Uploaded by

    Dardo Curti
    The document discusses potential biases in self-reported voter turnout data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys. It presents data on actual voter turnout rates calculated from voting population numbers alongside ANES estimates of voter turnout rates. The data is loaded and dimensions are checked in R. There are 9 observations covering election years from 1948 to 2016. Calculations show the ANES estimates are on average 1.9 percentage points lower than rates based on the voting eligible population, with a range of differences from 0.2 to 4.1 points. The bias does not vary significantly between presidential and midterm elections. Comparing two time periods, the bias of the ANES estimates appears to have increased

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    Bias in Turnout

    Uploaded by

    Dardo Curti
    67 views2 pages
    The document discusses potential biases in self-reported voter turnout data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys. It presents data on actual voter turnout rates calculated from voting population numbers alongside ANES estimates of voter turnout rates. The data is loaded and dimensions are checked in R. There are 9 observations covering election years from 1948 to 2016. Calculations show the ANES estimates are on average 1.9 percentage points lower than rates based on the voting eligible population, with a range of differences from 0.2 to 4.1 points. The bias does not vary significantly between presidential and midterm elections. Comparing two time periods, the bias of the ANES estimates appears to have increased

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    The document discusses potential biases in self-reported voter turnout data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys. It presents data on actual voter turnout rates calculated from voting population numbers alongside ANES estimates of voter turnout rates. The data is loaded and dimensions are checked in R. There are 9 observations covering election years from 1948 to 2016. Calculations show the ANES estimates are on average 1.9 percentage points lower than rates based on the voting eligible population, with a range of differences from 0.2 to 4.1 points. The bias does not vary significantly between presidential and midterm elections. Comparing two time periods, the bias of the ANES estimates appears to have increased

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    67 views2 pages

    Bias in Turnout

    Uploaded by

    Dardo Curti
    The document discusses potential biases in self-reported voter turnout data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys. It presents data on actual voter turnout rates calculated from voting population numbers alongside ANES estimates of voter turnout rates. The data is loaded and dimensions are checked in R. There are 9 observations covering election years from 1948 to 2016. Calculations show the ANES estimates are on average 1.9 percentage points lower than rates based on the voting eligible population, with a range of differences from 0.2 to 4.1 points. The bias does not vary significantly between presidential and midterm elections. Comparing two time periods, the bias of the ANES estimates appears to have increased

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Bias in Self-reported Turnout

    Octubre 19, 2020

    Surveys are frequently used to measure political behavior such as voter turnout, but some researchers are
    concerned about the accuracy of self-reports. In particular, they worry about possible social desirability
    bias where in post-election surveys, respondents who did not vote in an election lie about not having voted
    because they may feel that they should have voted. Is such a bias present in the American National Election
    Studies (ANES)? The ANES is a nation-wide survey that has been conducted for every election since 1948.
    The ANES conducts face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of adults. The table
    below displays the names and descriptions of variables in the turnout.csv data file.

    Name Description
    year Election year
    VEP Voting Eligible Population (in thousands)
    VAP Voting Age Population (in thousands)
    total Total ballots cast for highest office (in thousands)
    felons Total ineligible felons (in thousands)
    noncitizens Total non-citizens (in thousands)
    overseas Total eligible overseas voters (in thousands)
    osvoters Total ballots counted by overseas voters (in thousands)
    ANES ANES estimates of turnout rate

    Question 1
    Load the data into R and check the dimensions of the data. Also, obtain a summary of the data. How many
    observations are there? What is the range of years covered in this data set?

    Question 2
    Calculate the turnout rate based on the voting age population or VAP. Note that for this data set, we must
    add the total number of eligible overseas voters since the VAP variable does not include these individuals in
    the count. Next, calculate the turnout rate using the voting eligible population or VEP. What difference do
    you observe?

    Question 3
    Compute the difference between VAP and ANES estimates of turnout rate. How big is the difference on
    average? What is the range of the difference? Conduct the same comparison for the VEP and ANES estimates
    of voter turnout. Briefly comment on the results.

    Question 4
    Compare the VEP turnout rate with the ANES turnout rate separately for presidential elections and midterm
    elections. Note that the data set excludes the year 2006. Does the bias of the ANES vary across election
    types?

    1
    Question 5
    Divide the data into half by election years such that you subset the data into two periods. Calculate the
    difference between the VEP turnout rate and the ANES turnout rate separately for each year within each
    period. Has the bias of the ANES increased over time?

    Question 6
    The ANES does not interview overseas voters and prisoners. Calculate an adjustment to the 2008 VAP
    turnout rate. Begin by subtracting the total number of ineligible felons and non-citizens from the VAP to
    calculate an adjusted VAP. Next, calculate an adjusted VAP turnout rate, taking care to subtract the number
    of overseas ballots counted from the total ballots in 2008. Compare the adjusted VAP turnout with the
    unadjusted VAP, VEP, and the ANES turnout rate. Briefly discuss the results.

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