Gender and race gaps in voting and over-reporting: An intersectional comparison of CCES with ANES data

Abstract

ABSTRACT It is widely recognized that women, and perhaps Black women in particular, are more likely to vote than men. However, this is based on self-reports of voting, which can be unreliable. The Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) and American National Election Studies (ANES) help with this issue by validating votes. Here, we use the CCES and ANES data to take an intersectional approach to estimate the probability that men and women of different races over-report voting, and how it affects the gender gap in voting. We find that Anglo women are somewhat less likely to over-report voting, but Black men and women and Latinas may be more inclined to over-report. We find evidence that relying on self-reports may underestimate the degree to which women (Anglo, Black and Latina) are likely to vote. However, the CCES data estimate that Anglo men are more likely to vote than Anglo women. We examine the CCES data to better understand this unique finding and suggest there may be sampling issues with the CCES data.