Sensitivity Bias in Regime Support: Panel Surveys in an Autocracy at War

• In Event: Public Opinion under Autocracy: Evidence from Russia during War

Abstract

This paper reports findings from the first comprehensive study of sensitivity bias
in regime support, and support for a cornerstone regime policy, in an autocratic
setting. Our focus is support for Russian president Vladimir Putin and his war
in Ukraine. We investigate potential sources of bias in survey estimates of crucial
political attitudes that may arise from survey nonresponse, item nonresponse, and
misreporting — making this the most wide-ranging study on the validity of survey-
based measures of political support in Russia to date. With a unique three-wave
panel study spanning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we analyze patterns
of attrition after February 2022, nonresponse to potentially sensitive questions, and
— using three of the most common indirect methods of eliciting truthful responses
to sensitive questions in the large literature on socially and politically stigmatized
behaviors — whether Putin and the war in Ukraine are as widely supported as
opinion polls suggest.

Author

• Bryn Rosenfeld, Cornell University