Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Voter behaviour
end of the phone or in the room with the respondent – response rates can be
very low.
• Phone survey: this is are the most frequently used survey method. Phone
surveys are cheaper than in-person interviews. Most general population
telephone samples use random digit dialing, with phone numbers sampled
from computerised lists of all possible telephone exchanges in the relevant
population. These surveys generally provide a high-quality representative
sampleandarefastandreliable.Anationalrepresentativesampleofathousand
respondents can usually be collected in a few days at limited cost. However, the
rapid spread of mobile phones and caller ID has complicated survey research.
In addition, phone surveys tend to be quite time-limited, as it is difficult to keep
the respondent on the phone for more than a few questions. To reduce costs,
some survey research companies have adopted ‘robocall’ technologies. These
use prerecorded questions, with respondents providing answers through the
keys on their telephone or through automated voice recognition. This reduces
costs and the problem of social desirability bias. There is no interviewer to
offendorbejudgedby–orfortheresearchertopay.However,robopolls
have high non-response rates and can only be used for shorter interviews, as
respondentsaremorewillingtohanguponamachinethanahuman.
• Online survey: these tend to have lower response rates than surveys involving
human interviewers. However, they have fewer problems with social
desirability bias and tend to be affordable. Originally, they were criticised for
not being representative, with their samples skewed towards a young, internetconnected
population. However, this has become less of a problem as internet
penetration has increased. Additionally, some survey research companies have
tried to build representative panels that samples can be drawn from, often
providing high-quality results.
Conclusions
Learning about voter behaviour is the first step to understanding if and how
democracy works. For students of electoral democracy, this is important as
representation sits at the heart of democratic theory. Research shows that citizens’
aggregate preferences influence policy outcomes to varying degrees. 38
While there are questions about the ability of voters to function as competent
political actors, some of the early critiques were found to have been overly
pessimistic. It is arguable that many studies set unrealistic expectations of the
average voter. Rather, public opinion and the involvement of voters are necessary
safeguards of democracy.
38 Gilens 2012.
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