Using national registrations to correct for selective non-response: political preference of ethnic groups

This paper discusses in detail issues dealing with the technical aspects of designing and conducting surveys. It is intended for an audience of survey methodologists.

This paper deals with non-response bias, discussing a few approaches in this field. It is demonstrated that non-response bias as to voter turnout is lower in a survey on living conditions than in a purely political survey. In addition, auxiliary information from registrations is used to investigate non-response and its bias among ethnic groups. Response rates among ethnic minority groups are rather low, but there is no evidence that response rates are less in lower social class areas. Correcting for limited socioeconomic deviations does not affect the distributions of political preference.