A New Question Sequence to Measure Voter Turnout in Telephone Surveys

Survey respondents typically report having voted at a rate higher than the nation in fact turned out on election day. This may be the result of errors people make when trying to remember whether they voted and of motivated misreporting due to social desirability bias. This paper explores whether a new sequence of questions designed to reduce both types of errors reduces reports of turnout in telephone interviews. An experiment embedded in the 2006 American National Election Studies Pilot Study indicates that the question sequence did do so, and that it resulted in turnout estimates more consistent with official records than did the simple, direct traditional ANES question.