Tuesday 14th July      Wednesday 15th July      Thursday 16th July      Friday 17th July     

Thursday 16th July, 14:00 - 15:30 Room: N-132

Advancements of survey design in election polls and surveys 2
Convenor	Ms Vilma Agalioti-sgompou (ISER University of Essex )

Session Details

Political attitudes and behaviour are the main objects of measurement of Polls and Election Surveys. However, as it happens with surveys, they are affected from different types of error; for example, coverage error, questionnaire design effects, mode effects. Measurement error in political polls and election surveys can create different results between surveys. A distinct challenge for the researchers that aim at predicting electoral behaviour is that the reliability of the survey measurement is ‘tested’ with real electoral outcomes. This provides a unique opportunity for the validation of survey findings and examination of survey research quality.
The aim of this session is to provide a space for the latest advances in the design and development of polls and election surveys.

We welcome papers that investigate any methodological aspect of polls or surveys that:
a) measure political behaviour and/or attitudes, and,
b) provide validated information through administrative data or election outcomes.

Paper Details

1. Exit Polling in condition of Separatist conflict: The Ukrainian 2014 early elections
Mrs Natalia Kharchenko (Kiev International Institute of Sociology)
Professor Volodymyr Paniotto (Kiev International Institute of Sociology)
Mr Myhailo Myschenko (Razumkov Centre)

The recent Ukrainian mass protests for European integration led to the demise of President Yanukovych, occupation of the Crimea and war in the Donbas. In these extremely difficult conditions, Ukraine held early presidential and parliamentary elections. This presentation considers the methodological specifics of conducting exit polls in conditions of the threat to state sovereignty.
We consider steps to ensure the reliability of data in the following stages: 1) precinct selection; 2) respondent selection, and 3) data collection methods - interviews or self-administered questionnaires. We review also possibility of using phone survey during election day to improve the quality of data.

2. 2014 election forecasting failure in Ukraine: possible sources of error and experience of mathematical modeling of the behavior of undecided voters
Mr Eugen Bolshov (Kiev center of political and conflict studies)

Early national elections of the President (spring) and Parliament (autumn) were held in Ukraine in 2014. If pollster’s forecast of the results of presidential elections were fairly accurate, the prediction of the parliamentary elections was terribly wrong. The presentation will provide results of testing hypothesis about the possible causes of incorrect prediction elections. Several hypothesis were tested, such as: undecided voters behavior, "late swing", spiral of silence impact, likely voters and differential turnout problem, non-response and sampling frame biases etc. Our progress and experience of mathematical modeling of the behavior of undecided voters using discriminant analysis will be

3. Forecasting Turnout at UK Elections
Mr Simon Munzert (University of Konstanz)
Dr Andreas E. Murr (University of Oxford)

This paper proposes a forecasting model of voter turnout for the upcoming 2015 British General Election at both the constituency and the national level. The suggested model forecasts with a long lead time and a low prediction error. The paper thereby achieves two goals: First, it helps to correct for the overreporting of turnout before the election, and, second, it compares the predictive performance of key variables in several explanatory theories of turnout.

4. Predicting election outcomes from internet biased polls
Professor Jose M. Pavia (Universitat de Valencia)
Dr Salvador Carrasco (Universitat de Valencia)
Miss Elsa Olmeda (Universitat de Valencia)

On occasion of the 2015 Spanish local and regional elections, we poll public opinion in three cities of Valencian region through a web questionnaire, using chain sampling to recruit respondents. In a superpopulation model framework, election results of local elections corresponding to the three polled cities as well as outcomes of the regional election are forecasted using the answers of a new specific designed questionnaire which enables to intensively exploit small-area out-of-the sample available data as a mechanism to reduce the bias, mainly of self-selection and coverage, that both collection mode and recruitment process introduce.