The gender gap in voter turnout: An artefact of men’s over-reporting in survey research?
| Author | Daniel Stockemer,Aksel Sundstrom |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211056850 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211056850
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(1) 21 –41
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211056850
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The gender gap in voter
turnout: An artefact of men’s
over-reporting in survey
research?
Daniel Stockemer1
and Aksel Sundstrom2
Abstract
Is there a gender gap in voting? Most cross-national survey research on gender inequalities in voter
turnout finds that men have a higher probability to vote than women. Yet, some studies using
validated turnout data shed some doubt on this finding. We revisit the question of a gender gap in
voting using official records. In more detail, we compare the gender gap in turnout between survey
data and official electoral figures across 73 elections. Our results highlight that in surveys, men
still report higher turnout in most countries. However, official electoral figures reveal contrasting
trends: across countries, women are, on average, more likely to vote. We also test two explanations
for this difference in turnout between official figures and surveys: (1) men over-report voting more
than women and (2) the survey samples of men and women are different. We find some, albeit
very moderate, evidence for the first explanation and no support for the second explanation. All
in all, our research nevertheless suggests that scholars should be careful in using surveys to detect
gender differences in voting.
Keywords
gender gap, surveys, voter turnout
Introduction
One of the major discrepancies in voting research between survey data and validated
survey data concerns the likelihood of men and women to vote. By relying on self-
reported measures of turnout, most cross-national surveys suggest that there exists a gen-
der gap in electoral participation (Córdova and Rangel, 2017; Isaksson et al., 2014;
Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer, 2012; Kostelka et al., 2019; Robinson and Gottlieb, 2021;
Solijonov, 2016). Yet, the little research we have that compares self-reported turnout to
individuals’ official voting record disconfirms this gender gap in favour of men
(Ansolabehere and Schaffner, 2017; MacManus, 2018). The validated data seem
1School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
2Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Goteborg, Sweden
Corresponding author:
Daniel Stockemer, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier East, Social Science Building (7076), Ottawa, ON K1N
6N5, Canada.
Email: dstockem@uottawa.ca
1056850BPI0010.1177/13691481211056850The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsStockemer and Sundstrom
research-article2021
Original Article
22 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(1)
to indicate that women have a (slightly) higher likelihood to vote than men. Does this
signify that survey research is a suboptimal means to study gender differences in turnout?
Ideally, we would use validated survey data from different contexts to answer this ques-
tion. Unfortunately, validated survey data are rare, often based on non-representative
samples and frequently restricted to one country. Therefore, it is impossible to establish
cross-national gender differences in turnout with validated turnout data.
In the absence of validated turnout data, how else can we verify survey data and deter-
mine whether or not there is a gender gap in turnout and, if so, what is its direction? We
suggest the use of official turnout figures, which we could collect for 73 elections in 26
countries (see Table 1). We compare these official turnout figures with data derived from
cross-county surveys and find that more often than not, the self-reported gender gap in
voting from surveys is a poor proxy for the gap in voting between men and women. In
fact, the official figures suggest that women in most countries have a higher likelihood to
vote. Finally, we discuss two potential explanations for why men potentially report higher
turnout than women: (1) men might have an increased tendency to over-report turnout in
surveys and (2) the sample of men and women respondents might be different.
A gender gap in voting: What does the empirical literature
say?
It is currently unclear if a gender gap in voting still exists. There are two strands of
research. First, most comparative studies concur that, as a general rule, men are still more
likely to vote than women (Blais and Kostelka, 2015; Bratton et al., 2010; Córdova and
Rangel, 2017; Engeli et al., 2006; Isaksson et al., 2014; Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer,
2012; Kostelka et al., 2019; Robinson and Gottlieb, 2021; Söderlund et al., 2011). To
name a few examples, Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer (2012) find that women report lower
turnout in 21 of 31 mainly Western democracies. Similarly, Solijonov (2016) reports that
in the majority of 59 studied countries, men still report higher turnout than women. Some
recent studies also bolster this finding of a gender gap, where men are more likely to turn
out at Election Day. For example, using data from the European Elections Project,
Dassonneville and Kostelka (2021) report a consistent gender gap in favour of men in
European Parliament (EP) elections since 1979. They attribute this increased propensity
to vote to men’s higher political interest.
If we look at large-scale international survey programmes instead of single studies, we
find that most of these survey programmes tend to confirm this higher voting propensity
for men. These survey programmes include the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
(CSES) (Córdova and Rangel, 2017; Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer, 2012), the World
Values Survey (WVS) (Solijonov, 2016), the European Election Study (EES) (Kostelka
et al., 2019; Söderlund et al., 2011), the Afrobarometer (Bratton et al., 2010; Isaksson
et al., 2014; Robinson and Gottlieb, 2021), and the European Election Database (Blais
and Kostelka, 2015).1 The three survey programmes which shed some doubt on this gen-
der gap is the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), the AmericasBarometer, and
the Asian Barometer Survey from 2010. The two versions of the ISSP module on citizen-
ship, which include 18 and 33 countries, respectively, find inconclusive results with
regard to who votes more, men or women. For the 2004 version, the self-reported turnout
was 84% for men and 83% for women (Coffé and Bolzendahl, 2010). For the 2014 ver-
sion, it was 85% for women and 84% for men (Carreras, 2018). Research articles using
the AmericasBarometer further find that there is either no significant difference in the
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