Elections Perceptions and Gender: Questionable Analysis

A Gallup Poll released on October 11, 2012, indicates that of 125 countries surveyed in 2011, “women worldwide are less confident than men in the honesty of elections.”

The analysis states (emphasis added), “There is no clear relationship between the type of democracy a country has or the percentage of women serving in government with women’s perceived confidence in elections.” This would be acceptable if the study only presented democratic systems, but the analysis attempts to compare both democratic and non-democratic systems.

The data presented in the fifth and sixth tables shows the top ten countries in which women are most and least confident in elections. The countries are classified in the tables by “democracy type” auspiciously using classifications from the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2011 Democracy Index: “Full,” “Flawed,” “Hybrid,” or “Authoritarian.” The Gallup table provides a correlation of so-called “democracies” when in fact the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index does not refer to hybrid or authoritarian regimes as democracies: the EIU uses the terms “Full Democracies,” “Flawed Democracies,” “Hybrid Regimes” and “Authoritarian Regimes.” This is a significant difference between Gallup’s interpretation and the EIU’s 2011 Index.

The Gallup report does not correlate the elections perceptions data based on a comparison of democracies but instead on a comparison of democracies and non-democracies alike. All regime types appear to have been (mis)categorized as democracies in the analysis and in the column for tables five and six.

Based on the presentation of the data, a more accurate way to express the earlier statement is to rephrase it to read: “There is no clear relationship between the type of government a country has or the percentage of women serving in government with women’s perceived confidence in elections.”

Why does this matter? If we are comparing all countries regardless of government, we are left with the deeper contextual problem presented by the data: comparing women’s perceptions of elections regardless of whether a country has free and fair elections and moreover, regardless of whether citizens are free to speak without fear of reprisal from government.

While measuring individual perceptions of elections is completely different than measuring the legitimacy of elections, comparing self-reported perceptions of elections in democratic versus non-democratic systems creates a significant challenge for data analysis. Gallup correctly notes that in non-democratic states, respondents may respond with confidence out of fear, but dismisses that finding and presents the data to suggest the country findings can be compared in a political vacuum.

Since the comparison is based on self-reporting via phone or face-to-face, a more telling comparison of responses ought to take into account regime type as well as actual and perceived levels of political rights and civil liberties. For more information to compare the Gallup elections perceptions findings with whether countries polled permit freedom of express to actually answer the questions, check out Freedom House‘s Freedom in the World reports.