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Comment on “Voter Turnout and the National Election Studies”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Michael D. Martinez
Michael D. Martinez*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117325, Gainesville, FL 32611-7325. e-mail: martinez@polisci.ufl.edu
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Abstract

A recent article by Barry Burden in Political Analysis alerts us to a steadily increasing gap during presidential election years between self-reported turnout in the NES (National Election Studies) and “official turnout” figures based on the voting-age population (VAP), and points to declining response rates as a culprit. Changing the baseline from the VAP to the VEP (voting-eligible population) significantly changes these conclusions, and point to panel effects as a culprit. The rise in the gap was not linear, but it does emerge rather suddenly in 1996. Gaps between NES self-reported turnout and VEP estimates are higher in presidential election years than in off-years, and self-reported turnout is higher among long-term panel participants than among cross-section respondents in multielection panels.

Type
Replications and Extensions
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Spring 2003 , pp. 187 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association 2003 

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References

Bartels, Larry. 2000. “Panel Effects in the American National Election Studies.” Political Analysis 8:1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Robert, Chadha, Anita, and Montjoy, Robert. 2001. “Overreporting Voting—Why It Happens and Why It Matters.” Public Opinion Quarterly 65:22–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burden, Barry C. 2000. “Voter Turnout and the National Election Studies.” Political Analysis 8:389–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, Michael P., and Popkin, Samuel L. 2001. “The Myth of the Vanishing Voter.” American Political Science Review 95:963–974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar