Abstract

This study evaluates the impact of new voters and deceased voters in the statistical analysis of shifts in voting behaviour from one election to another. Conclusions about the shifts between the political parties from one election to another are ajfected by the fact that at the time of the analyzed election, the population of the former election bas substantial by changed. In order to fix the marginal distributions of the turnover table, estimations should be made about the distribution of the new voters and the deceased voters over the political parties. Information about the new voters can be extracted from the sample in use. Estimations of the last voting behaviour of the deceased are based on prior surveys. The conclusions about the mutual shifts between parties are affected to the degree that the parties differ according to the age distributions.The method has been applied to exit poll datafrom the 1991 general elections in Limburg.