Voter overrepresentation, vote misreporting, and turnout bias in postelection surveys

Figures from postelection surveys often grossly overestimate election turnout. Two distinct phenomena are responsible for this gap: overrepresentation of actual voters and vote misreporting by actual nonvoters among survey respondents. Previous accounts of turnout bias are inconclusive in that they either focus on a single component, or fail to separate between the two. In this paper, we formally decompose turnout bias in election surveys into its constituent parts, assess their empirical prevalence and heterogeneity using an extensive collection of 49 vote validation studies from six countries, and employ Bayesian meta regression techniques to account for cross-study differences. Our results indicate that both election and survey characteristics such as actual voter turnout and survey response rates differentially affect the components of turnout bias. We conclude with a discussion of the threats and potentials of our findings for survey-based comparative electoral research.

► This study offers a formal decomposition of the gap between official and reported sample turnout regularly observed in postelection surveys into its constituent parts.
► This study makes overrepresentation and vote misreporting amenable to empirical scrutiny.
► This study reports a meta analysis of 49 vote validation studies to assess cross-study heterogeneity of bias components.
► This study discusses threats and potentials of our findings for comparative electoral research.