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Another geography of turnout? Respondents and non-respondents to the 2005 British Election Study Johnston, Ron Harris, Rich Uploaded 08-15-2005 Keywords British Election Study response rates ecological analyses Abstract An issue of growing concern in studies of voting patterns using survey data is the falling response rate achieved by face-to-face surveys. The 2005 British Election Study (BES) pre-campaign survey achieved interviews with 55.6 per cent of the 6450 individuals sampled – a drop of nearly 20 percentage points over the average for the surveys undertaken in the 1960s and some 15 points over those in the 1970s. Of the addresses selected, no contact could be made at 5.8 per cent, the individuals selected at a further 26.0 per cent refused to be interviewed, 4.4 per cent were otherwise unproductive and 8.0 per cent of the addresses were ‘out of scope (deadwood)’. To what extent does this failure to reach a very substantial minority of the addresses selected have any impact upon the results of the sample survey and the conclusions drawn therefrom?

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Sampling people or people in places? The BES as an election study Johnston, Ron Harris, Rich Jones, Kelvyn Uploaded 08-15-2005 Keywords British Election Study representativeness sampling Abstract UK general elections involve a number of separate, though complexly inter-linked, contests for support among the parties. Two of these are reflected in the main types of model of voting behaviour used by political scientists, whereas the third involves the separate contests that take place – in most cases among the main political parties – in the (now) 646 constituencies which send representatives to the House of Commons. Ideally, electoral surveys should take account of all three. In this note, we explore the extent to which that is the case with the 2005 British Election Study – with the coverage restricted to England and Wales only, for technical reasons – and explore the implications of our findings for future electoral studies.