Blame it on turnout? Citizens’ participation and polls’ accuracy
| Author | Jean-François Daoust |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120986092 |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120986092
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2021, Vol. 23(4) 736 –747
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120986092
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Blame it on turnout? Citizens’
participation and polls’ accuracy
Jean-François Daoust1,2
Abstract
When pre-election polls fail, citizens make choices in an environment where the information is
inaccurate. This is bad for democracy. Understanding the conditions under which polls succeed
or fail is thus very important for the quality of democracy. Polling firms have often blamed voter
turnout when they failed to provide accurate information. There is, however, no systematic test
of the impact of voter turnout on polling errors. Using data from 2104 pre-election polls in
206 elections among 33 unique countries from 1942 to 2017, I test whether polling firms have
legitimate reason to blame their errors on turnout. Results systematically fail to provide evidence
that the quality of pre-election forecasting is a function of voter turnout. This research entails
important implications for our understanding of polls’ capacity to predict electoral outcomes and
polling firms’ public reactions across time and space.
Keywords
elections, forecasting, pre-election polls, polls accuracy, voter turnout
Elections are citizens’ key mechanism to influence governments in modern liberal democ-
racies and polls have become a key component of electoral campaigns. Hence, having a
deep understanding of the conditions under which polls are more likely to fail appears
crucial for social scientists and democracy. The stakes are clear: when polls fail, citizens
make choices in an environment where the information is inaccurate. A well-known
example of the potential democratic consequences that polls’ inaccuracy can generate is
the 2002 French presidential election. Many voters supported a minor far-right candidate
to send a signal and did so because the polls indicated that their preferred candidate was
supposed to finish easily among the top two of the first round (Blais, 2004; Durand et al.,
2004). However, things did not turn out as predicted and the far-right candidate ended up
making it to the second round. More recently, the media (and most citizens) interpreted
some political events like the Trump election in the United States, the United Kingdom
1
School of Social and Political Science, Politics and International Relations, The University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh, UK
2Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, QC, Canada
Corresponding author:
Jean-François Daoust, School of Social and Political Science, Politics and International Relations, The
University of Edinburgh, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15a George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK.
Email: jf.daoust@ed.ac.uk
986092BPI0010.1177/1369148120986092The British Journal of Politics and International Relations X(X)Daoust
research-article2021
Original Article
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