A Study of Social Desirability Bias in the Russian

In authoritarian regimes election polls can be vastly polluted by measurement error, namely the social desirability bias, which can contribute to substantial inflation in the publicized estimates of an autocrat’s electoral support and voter turnout. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the magnitude of social desirability bias in polling estimates released before and after the 2012 Russian presidential elections by focusing on the implications of Noelle-Neumann’s “spiral of silence” theory. The empirical data analysis is based on list experiments from four data samples collected during the Russian presidential campaign. The estimated magnitude of the social desirability bias in Putin’s electoral support is statistically significant and reaches approximately 20%, for the voter turnout, however, my findings are somewhat mixed. My main conclusions are further validated by an alternative urns experiment conducted by one of the national pollsters. The detection of significant social desirability bias in the Russian presidential campaign brings forth the issue of survey research quality in authoritarian regimes and its effect on election outcomes. ∗Doctoral Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan. The author is thankful to Walter Mebane for his useful advice and suggestions, the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their important insights, and the Department of Political Science (University of Michigan) for funding the fieldwork stage of this project.