Gender Gaps in Electoral Turnout: Surveys versus Administrative Censuses

Abstract

Gender gaps in voter turnout are usually studied using opinion surveys rather than official census data. This is because administrative censuses usually do not disaggregate turnout according to voters’ sex. Without this official information, much of the research on gender gaps in electoral turnout relies on survey respondents’ self-reported behavior, either before or after an election. The decision to use survey data implies facing several potential drawbacks. Among them are the turnout overstatement bias and the attrition or nonresponse bias, both affecting the estimation of factors explaining turnout and any related statistical analysis. Furthermore, these biases may be correlated with covariates such as gender: men, more than women, may systematically overstate their electoral participation. We analyze turnout gender gaps in Chile, comparing national surveys with official administrative data, which in Chile are publicly available. Crucially, the latter includes the official record of sex, age, and the electoral behavior—whether the individual voted or not—for about 14 million registered individuals. Based on a series of statistical models, we find that analysis based on survey data is likely to rule out gender gaps in electoral participation. Carrying out the same exercises, but with official data, leads to the opposite conclusion, namely, that there is a sizable gender gap favoring women.

The gender gap in pro‐environmental political participation among older adults

“…For each of these forms of participation, respondents were first asked whether they performed an activity and if their response was affirmative, they were then asked whether they engage in those activities in relation to the environment. We focus here specifically on political acts for environmental reasons.7 The Cronbach's Alpha for the additive scale is .69.8 Correlations range between .12 for the correlation between the variable measuring boycotting and that measuring participation in demonstrations and .27 for the correlation between boycott participation and signing petitions.9 The only study we are aware of that compares survey and registered data to analyse whether selection and social desirability biases diversely affect estimated political participation by gender focusses on Chile, and shows that men over-report more political participation than women(Cox & Morales Quiroga, 2021). If the same mechanisms were at play in the Swiss case, the actual reversed gender gap found in the population should be even greater than the one we report.…”